What design flaw do you think contributed to, or caused the front axle housing failure of your Kioti NX6010?
Looks to me there is a big loop of thick cast metal which has one of the pivot point bore holes. I wonder if this continued to flex during operations resulting in the pivot point rapid wear, hence the pivot boss popping out of the bore, then total failure of the front axle. The bore looks very shallow also.
i think a good welder and machine shop could put the assembly back into good shape, and new Kioti gears, bearing installed, then reinstall onto your tractor. I would also gusset plate the large axle loop so to render it as solid as possible with no flexure. A good welder can nickel rod weld to cast steel. Preheat, weld, slow cool. I'll use at least 1/2 plate steel to close those loops up. Kioti should have known this would flex under load. If the steering cylinder passes through the loop, then that is a major design flaw.
Ideas?
1) Although cast iron can be welded with the MIG process and specialized flux-cored electrode wires, the resulting welded joint likely would not be as strong as the factory casting. Moreover, there really isn't any extra space to plate the pivot bosses once assembled.
2) The welded part must then be machined at considerable expense, and even then, without one to copy, we're making educated guesses on the alignment.
3) The broken-off rear pivot shown in the photo below, houses two tapered roller bearings, a spacer, and shim stock to support and correctly shim the pinion gear and its shaft and this shaft must be precisely aligned. Since we have no way to support a guide, we'd likely screw up the alignment and shell over $900 of new parts trying on top of whatever expense we'd have in welding and machining the axle's center support.
So yeah, in my mind it would be easier for me to hand the broken bits off to my sister (a manufacturing engineer) and have her design a pattern in Solid Works, that pass that design off to my brother, to have him make the pattern and molds, then send that off to Sure Cast to have them cast a new one (since my brother doesn't cast iron in his foundry), then pass that casting off to Eagle Engineering along with the broken bits (for reference) for the machining, than to screw around and make weaker welds and inaccurately machine the welded bits.
That or I could purchase a new casting, which is what I did, and get to the tedious job of properly shimming the pinion and ring gear which is going to be a PITA just to extract the old housing's six studs and alignment pins.
