Ross steering
The Ross steering is a steering gear that was patented in 1925 by the US inventor David E. Ross, founder of the Ross Gear and Tool Company Inc. It works with a worm gear . The worm sits at the end of the steering column, the corresponding worm wheel is a crown wheel with only one tooth, the steering finger, which engages the worm from the side. The steering finger is attached to the steering lever shaft parallel to its axis. The rotation of the steering wheel or the steering column is converted into a pivoting movement of the shaft. At the other end of the pitman arm, the movement over the steering linkage and the sitting tie rods on to the stub axle transmits.
Ross also made other steering gears, including finger steering with two steering fingers and one with roller bearing steering fingers. Maurice and Georges Sizaire received a patent in 1914 for a steering system with a steering finger mounted on ball bearings .
The steering gear, patented in 1923 for Reginald Bishop, is similar to the Ross steering. The rigid steering finger here has a roller bearing role. Because of the larger diameter of this construction, the pitch of the steering worm is greater and the translation cannot be made as small as with a Ross steering.
From 1932 the Friedrichshafen gear factory was producing steering gears under licenses from Ross Gear & Tool .
The Ross steering is inexpensive to manufacture and easy and vibration-free to handle. It has little play , an automatic return and can be easily adjusted. The construction was used, for example, in the VW Transporter T1 , which was built until 1967 .
Web links
The ZF Ross steering on zf.com, accessed on January 4, 2017
