Finishing The Plow Design

After a successful first run, it was time to finish the plow design. I never had a finished design when I started. Nothing is really ever "finished" with an engineer though is it? Up until now, having a design has helped this build tremendously. Two  things I didn't plan out though were the hydrostatic hoses and the control linkage. I went back to my old way of just building it as I go. The linkage worked out but I struggled with the hoses and how I was going to route them. I ended up with a lot of extra fittings by the time I was done and had something I was happy with.

I first had thoughts of hydraulic up and down and a manual swivel blade with a few pinned positions. As this point, I figured why not make it hydraulic swivel as well. This time, I wanted all of the hoses laid out completely. I wanted to finish the design before I built anymore. So I stopped all work and did just that.

I used a separate fixed displacement pump. There is a two groove pulley on the engine (which is now a smaller diameter to slow down the hydrostatic pumps) that drives this pump.

A standard valve operates the up and down and an electro-hydraulic valve operates the swivel. I did this for a few reason. Ease of hose routing and space issues for the operator controls which you will see later.

The plow is 48" wide, swivels a total of 50 degrees and raises up about 12" off the ground.

After some suggestions of forum members, the plow is allowed to break away in the winter when plowing snow and it can be locked when moving dirt in the summer. I'll explain more in future posts.

You can see the standard valve in the center and the electro-hydraulic valve to the left. I ended up mounting is slightly different but this was the screen shot I had saved.

The fixed displacement pump was mounted near the front of the dozer.

I would say the model was about 95% at this point.

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