YORK, Pa., Aug. 22, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- To a modern farmer, a tractor is a lot more than just a machine to pull a plow. It's the place where he or she spends much of the up to 3,100 hours a year it takes to run a farm, often for 12 hours or more at a stretch during busy planting and harvesting seasons. It takes a great deal of work to farm 321 million acres of cropland.
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The reality is that today a tractor not only has to be rugged and dependable, it also has to be as comfortable as possible to maximize operator safety and productivity by reducing fatigue. Comfort is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions tractors, but today's high-end tractors are probably as comfortable as many automobiles, with standard features including air conditioning, stereo systems, onboard computers, and GPS tracking systems. Most of them use a device called a torsional vibration damper in the drivetrain to smooth out the impact of shock loads on a tractor's powertrain.
Those loads may be generated by any number of things, ranging from implements hitting rocks and other obstructions in the soil to simple variations in the density of the soil the tractor is moving. Reducing torsional shock loads can significantly extend the life of mechanical components. Of course, all of that comfort and mechanical sophistication comes at a price, which is why many of these high-end features have not been available on less expensive tractors. That is changing, however, as modern manufacturing technology helps take the cost out of the components like torsional vibration dampers that are required to achieve high-end durability and comfort levels.
Torsional vibration dampers are complex couplings using springs and oil-filled chambers to "soak up" and smooth out vibrations as they happen. One of the world's largest producers of torsional vibration dampers, Voith Turbo of Heidenheim, Germany, decided to see if they could take enough cost out of the manufacturing process to make these units practical for high-volume, mid-line tractors. Their "Turn Four Into Two" program focused on reducing the number of components in their Hydrodamp units, and eliminating as many of the costly metalcutting operations as possible.
The result is a torsional vibration damper made largely from stampings. The Hydrodamp HTSD 300 NewDesign is significantly less expensive to manufacture than its predecessors, yet retains most of the performance features of the company's more sophisticated torsional vibration dampers. It was introduced to the world market by John Deere in 2004, and will be standard equipment on many other tractors in the future.
The Hydrodamp HTSD 300 NewDesign isn't going to make every inexpensive tractor into a luxury vehicle, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. After all, with today's farmers spending longer and longer hours in their tractors, every little bit helps.
