Forming the subject of the present invention is a device for guiding bundles of parallel ropes, cables, or pipes according to a three-dimensional path in an earth-digging machine.
One of the problems frequently encountered in the sector of earth-digging machines consists in supplying a piece of equipment set within the excavation itself with a source of hydraulic power, external to the excavation.
In some cases, numerous flexible pipes are envisaged to be arranged possibly in orderly bundles that have to run out of and into the excavation and are to be gathered on winding drums.
In a similar way, there can be provided steel cables for suspension and maneuver and electric cables for control and/or transmission of data, with an arrangement and movements similar to those of flexible pipes or hoses.
In a particular case, which in what follows will form the preferred, but non-limiting, embodiment as reference for the description and the drawings, the excavation is vertical and requires at least one bundle of parallel pipes set in a plane, which descend vertically into the excavation as far as the piece of earth-digging equipment and are unwound from and wound onto individual winding drums set on the earth-moving machinery.
The most obvious solution is for each individual pipe to have a path that lies in a vertical plane, which passes through the axis of the pipe in the excavation and constitutes the median plane of the sheave and of the winder. In this way, parallel pipes have paths in parallel planes, and the vertical pipes can be in a single plane perpendicular to the aforesaid parallel planes.
Likewise obvious is the solution according to which different pipes converge towards the axis of excavation with paths in vertical planes that are different and convergent.
The European patent No. EP-0843050 describes one of these cases in which a piece of equipment is provided with winding drums having a horizontal axis and guiding sheaves with an axis closely parallel to that of the drums, in a way similar to a winch and the respective sheaves.
In the case where there are parts of the machine that interfere with the path in a plane, or if it is necessary to provide various bundles of pipes with different paths that can interfere with one another, a solution proves useful that enables three-dimensional paths and arrangements of co-planar bundles that are not orthogonal with respect to the planes of the path, with a wide freedom of choice.
This type of approach affords a good degree of flexibility of solution to various problems of arrangement and path of flexible elements, such as hydraulic pipes, steel cables, electric cables, and the like, set in planar bundles of parallel elements.