The steering gear is a most important component of the vehicle’s power steering system. It helps to steer the wheels of the vehicle. The steering gear is a unit which uses to control the vehicle direction such as airplanes, ships, or cars.
Types of Steering Gears
The steering gear has the below given major types:
- Cam and double lever
- Cam and peg
- Recirculating ball
- Cam and roller steering system
- Rack and pinion
- Worm and ball bearing nut
- Worm and roller
- Worm and sector
1) Rack and Pinion Steering Gear
With rack and pinion steering, the pinions are mounted on the ends of the steering shaft. It is attached to the frame and has ball joints at both ends of the frame to allow the wheels to roll up and down.
The method of connecting a ball joint to a short pipe is excellent. When you turn the handle, the pinion rotates and the rack moves sideways. The movement of this frame becomes wheels.
2) Recirculating Ball Steering Gear
Recirculating ball gears look more like worm gears and ball bearings than steering gears. This steering gear has a ball that is installed in the transfer tube and the half nut. When the cam turns, the ball is transferred from the nut’s one end to the other end of the transfer tube. Since this nut can’t rotate, the motion of the ball with the cam track transfers the nut and turns the rocker arm shaft.
3) Worm and Sector Steering Gear
The worn and sector gear has a gear attached to the end of the steering shaft. This gear engages directly with the sector gears. This is known as a “sector” gear because it is an individual part of a complete gear. As the driver turns the steering wheel, the steering shaft drives the worm wheel to rotate. The sector gears rotate on their axis while their teeth move alongside the worm wheel and move the link arm.
In this type of steering gear, the bearing assists the screw at both sides. In addition, the designer offers various methods for adjusting bearing to regulate the end performance. The Pitman arm shaft is mounted in the socket-supported steering gear. Though, designers can also utilize roller bearing. These bearings also deliver screws to adjust the clearance to increase or decrease the worm gear sector. This process helps to control the gap between the worm teeth or threads sector and the sector.
4) Worm and Roller Steering Gear
The six sector axes are also referred to as articulated arm shafts, cardan shafts, roller shafts, steering arm shafts and cross shafts.
With helical steering gears, a two-toothed roller is attached to the sector or the shaft of the roller and meshes with the thread of the worm gear or the shaft at the end of the steering shaft or the tube.
When the worm shaft rotates, the rollers move in an arc, turning the roller shaft and at the same time rotating the pins connected to the shaft. The rollers have ball bearings.
The worm shaft is bearing-mounted and designed to withstand radial and end thrust. This type of steering mechanism is widely used in American passenger cars.
5) Worm and Sector Type
In the worn and sector system, the worm installed at the steering shaft’s end interlocks with the sector linked with the sector shaft.
When the auger rotates due to the rotation of the handle, the fan shape also rotates with the rotation of the fan shaft. The movement is transmitted to the wheel via the connecting rod. The sector axis is connected to the forearm or the articulated arm.
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