There are so many types of axles! Do you know how to choose?

As an important part of the car, the axle is the focus of many car enthusiasts. Its role, I believe the old drivers are also very clear. As an important part that shoulders the power transmission, bears the weight of the truck, and maintains the stability of the vehicle, if truck friends do not have a systematic understanding of the axle, it is absolutely impossible. Today, let's talk about the doorway inside the bridge.

Since we want to talk about axles, we must first have a concept of classification of axles, so let's start with the classification of axles. Generally speaking, if there is no power output, the axle can be divided into two categories: drive axle and driven axle.

However, if the axles are distinguished by the manufacturing process, or the type of structure, they can be divided into casting bridges and stamping and welding bridges. According to the reduction ratio, there are single-reduction axles and double-reduction axles (single-stage deceleration, double-stage deceleration), and even axles, which are named after numbers. Next, let's talk in detail.

Regarding the driving axle and driven axle, we can understand that the driving axle can make the wheels turn, and the driven axle can't turn the wheels. In other words, on most cars, the drive axle is connected to the drive shaft, and vice versa is the driven axle.

In the drive axle, it is divided into drive axle, steering drive axle and electric drive axle. In fact, the drive axle and the steering drive axle are relatively easy to understand, that is, one wheel can swing left and right, with steering function, while the other does not. As for the electric drive axle, this thing is based on the electric vehicle of the new era. It integrates the motor and reducer on the axle, thereby reducing the components of the vehicle and making the vehicle lighter and more efficient. Although it is not connected to the drive shaft, it is actually a drive axle. And from the perspective of traditional experience, a car driven by an electric drive axle is better than a car driven by a motor with a rear axle.

The biggest difference between the driven axle and the driving axle is that it cannot directly provide power to the wheels, and it belongs to the type of "following". Most lifting bridges are driven bridges, also called support or support bridges, and follower bridges. Of course, driven bridges are also divided into follower bridges and steering follower  bridges, lifting bridges and so on. Generally speaking, for rear-drive trucks (such as 4 meters 2 in the form of ordinary 4x2 drive), the front axle is a steering driven axle.

As we talked about earlier, there are many ways to distinguish axles. In fact, it is also a good way to divide them by manufacturing process. In this way, there are also two types of axles: cast axles and stamped and welded axles. Let's talk about casting bridges first.

As shown in the figure, this relatively round axle housing is a casting bridge. It is easy to understand that its axle housing is manufactured by casting technology or based on casting technology. To put it simply, this thing is poured out of molten iron. This kind of bridge has low cost and strong bearing capacity. An affordable option for heavy-duty vehicles.

 However, its dead weight is also relatively large, which is not conducive to the lightweight design of vehicles we are pursuing now.

The stamping and welding bridge is not painful, most of it is welded by stamping parts. Relatively speaking, its structure is much more complicated. For example, it must have the main body of the axle housing, reinforcements, reinforcing plates and so on. Due to the more complex manufacturing process, the production cost of the stamped and welded bridge is higher, but it is precisely the complex structure that makes it less bulky and more in line with the current lightweight requirements for vehicles. In addition, card lovers don’t need to worry too much about the bearing capacity of this kind of axle, after all, manufacturers will reinforce key components.

Now that we have talked about the bearing capacity of the axle in the manufacturing process classification, we have to talk about another major function of the axle: deceleration. The deceleration here is what we often call the speed ratio. The rear axle converts the high speed output by the engine into the low speed used by the wheels through the gears inside, thereby amplifying the torque of the engine and making our car run.

What we often see is that there is a big bag in the middle, and the axle with the speed ratio written on it is usually a single-stage reduction axle, also called a single-reduction axle. It only has a set of reduction gears inside the axle pack. When the power of the transmission shaft is transmitted to the axle, the axle will further reduce the speed through the group of final reducers in the axle package and output it to the wheels.

And the "485 bridge, 457 bridge" we often say is named according to the diameter of the basin teeth in the single-stage reduction bridge. In other words, what is the diameter of the deceleration basin teeth in the bridge bag, and the bridge is the number of the bridge. Of course, not all the numbers on the front of the bridge come from this way, and the names of some axles follow the model code. To avoid confusion, we will not list them here.

Here we add another knowledge, the speed ratio of a single-stage reduction axle cannot be made very large, do you know the reason for this? Because the speed ratio is too large, the gears in the bridge will become larger, and the axle package will also become larger accordingly, and the passability of the car will also be affected. So what if you want a large speed ratio to pull a heavy load? Double-stage reduction bridge (wheel side reduction bridge) just appeared.

The double-stage reduction bridge generally adds a set of reduction gear mechanism at the wheel end, and then further reduces the speed and increases the torque on the basis of the reduction of the main reducer. Isn't the speed ratio larger? Generally speaking, the speed ratio of this double reduction axle can be made very large, which can provide very strong power. Moreover, the small size of the bridge package does not affect the passing capacity, and it is very good for climbing and non-paved roads. So in general, muck trucks use this structure. But correspondingly, it is not good enough to run at high speed.

After reading these, I don’t know if the card friends have figured it out. If you want to be cheap and able to pull, go for cast bridges. If you want to be lightweight, go for stamped and welded bridges. If you pull the muck and go to the construction site, then choose the wheel and reduce the bridge. Of course, for new energy users, you can also choose a more efficient electric drive axle.

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