Bearing Assembly for Lawn Mower Cutting Blade

Commercial lawn mowers that are put to use on a daily basis for lawn maintenance of large tracks of land require continuous servicing in order to perform efficiently. Unlike the conventional home-owner type of lawn mower which requires relatively little servicing, the commercial machine must be lubricated periodically in order for its working parts to function normally, particularly the shaft and bearing assemblies associated with the cutting blades. Such bearing assemblies involve more than one race of bearings, often times two or more races in a spaced apart relationship in order to adequately support and bear the heavy duty drive shaft of the commercial lawn mower. In the past, however, it has been a problem to insure that such bearing assemblies are adequately lubricated, so that all the bearings in the spaced apart races are sufficiently and effectively greased for any given bearing assembly housing.

In order to overcome the aforementioned problem in the art of bearing lubrication for commercial lawn mowers, the present invention has for its primary purpose and main objective the provision of a simple and cost-efficient lubricating system that will insure that all the bearings in the separate and spaced-apart bearing races in a given bearing assembly housing will be sufficiently greased upon a single application of lubricant.

It is another object of the invention to provide a single grease fitting for the introduction of a lubricant into a bearing assembly housing of a commercial lawn mower having more than one bearing race and in which the lubricant is caused to grease all the bearings in the bearing housing and not just a portion of the bearings.

It is yet another object of the invention to provide a single grease fitting for a bearing assembly housing for a commercial lawn mower which is readily accessible for easy maintenance and at the same time affords the introduction of a lubricant to all the bearings in the housing.

In accordance with one embodiment of the invention a bearing assembly housing is seen to have at least one pair of spaced-apart bearing races that surround a heavy duty drive shaft of a commercial lawn mower. A single grease fitting for introducing a lubricant to the housing is critically located in the upper area of the housing so that the grease will lubricate the upper races and will flow down to lubricate the lower race.

The invention will be better understood and further objects and advantages thereof will become more apparent from the ensuing detailed description of the preferred embodiments taking in conjunction with the drawings.

FIG. 1 is schematic elevational view of an embodiment according to the invention;

FIG. 2 is a schematic elevational view of another embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 4 is an explosive schematic of the embodiment shown in FIG. 1; and

FIG. 3 is a schematic perspective of the assembled housing shown in FIG. 4.

Referring now to FIGS. 1 and 3, there is shown a heavy duty drive shaft 10 for driving one or more lawn mower blades (not shown). The drive shaft is seen to extend through a bearing assembly housing 12 having end caps or seal members 14 disposed at each end thereof by suitable screw means. Within the housing 12 and spaced apart from each other on the drive shaft 10 are a pair of ball bearing races 16 and 18, each race shown to have the requisite number of bearings 20 therein. Each of the ball bearing races 16 and 18 are of a suitably conventional design and are readily available as an off-the-shelf item. While two sets of bearing races are shown, it is to be understood that more than two could be disposed along the drive shaft in a spaced-apart relationship and contained within a suitably elongated bearing assembly housing.

The ball bearing races 16 and 18 are shown to held in place by suitable snap rings 22, and the outer periphery of each race is shown to be contained in a suitable ledge provided on the inner wall of the housing 12. An outer flange 24 is shown extending around the outer wall of the housing 12 and is provided with suitable holes for attachment to the lawn mower blade housing 26. In accordance with the invention a grease or lubricant fitting 28 of a suitably conventional design is provided just under the flange 26 and is angled upwardly to thereby provide ingress to a lubricant passageway 30 in a wall portion of the housing that runs parallel with the outer face of the upper bearing race 16 and communicates with the space above the bearing race adjacent the seal 14. Further, the housing 12 is seen to have an annular passageway 32 surrounding the drive shaft 10 and extending between the upper bearing race 16 and the lower bearing race 18. In operation the grease or lubricant is applied to the fitting 28 in the usual manner so that the grease is introduced into the passageway 30. The lubricant will migrate, upon its continued application, into the area above the upper bearing race 16 and eventually squeeze past the ball bearings themselves and by force of gravity and/or pressure drop down through the passageway 32 to the bearing race 18 below, as shown by the arrow. It will be seen, then, that continued application of a lubricant to the grease fitting 28 will insure that all the bearings in the two races 16 and 18 will completely and effectively greased, not only during the greasing operation itself but subsequent to it when the lawn mower is in use, since gravity will always be at work to cause the lubricant to pass from the upper area above the upper bearing race 16 to the lower bearing race 18.

In FIG. 2 is shown a another modification in which the fitting 28 is disposed at right angles to the long axis of the bearing assembly housing 12. In this embodiment the flange 24 is shown to be below the fitting 28, and when attached to the lawn mower blade housing, will allow access to the fitting above the housing rather than from below it, as shown in FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 shows the bearing assembly housing of FIGS. 1 and 4 completely assembled with the shaft 10 disposed along the long axis of the housing 12 and surrounded by the flange 24. The upper seal 14 is also shown suitably affixed to the housing by a conventional screw means.

The foregoing relates to a preferred exemplary embodiment of the present invention, it being understood that other embodiments and variants thereof are possible within the scope of the invention, the latter being defined by the appended claims.