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Pulley puller is a term used to describe a category of tools used to install or remove various mechanical pulleys and similar pressed or pressed mechanical parts. While most commonly associated with the removal and installation of automotive pulleys, bearings, and gears, pulley puller tools are used in a variety of consumer and industrial applications. Pullers are often designed to grip and hold round parts that would otherwise have no clear grip or leverage points. Varying in size, construction, and operation, most pulley pullers rely on carefully applied stabilized back pressure to prevent damage to components or surrounding machinery during the removal or installation of pulleys, bearings, sprockets, or gears.
The need for a pulley puller often depends on the lack of force required to remove or install a part. Many original equipment pulleys, gears, sprockets, and bearings are press-fitted at the factory when a particular machine or machine component is manufactured. Removing these parts by hand is often impossible. As such, a pulley puller makes up for the difference between the strength of hydraulic fabrication equipment and the strength of a human repair professional. Pullers allow repair personnel to remove or install a replacement part previously assembled by powerful equipment, without the need for additional heavy manufacturing equipment to be available.
Types of pulley pullers include manual jaw pullers, harmonic pullers, hydraulic pullers, pneumatic pullers, and various other pulley puller designs for specific machines and other applications. For automotive applications, pullers are often designed to remove or install only a specific part, such as power steering pumps, wheel bearings, or harmonic balancers. In these cases, removing or installing a specific part requires a custom tool to fit into a confined space with limited leverage points.
Universal pulley puller tools are available, but the universal designation primarily refers to multiple automakers or machine builders, rather than the ability to use the tool on a variety of pulleys, bearings, or other parts. Alternatively, a jaw pulley puller set is the most universally adaptable hand pull tool, offering graduated sizes to fit a variety of possible uses. These generic pulley removal tools allow repair professionals to have more universally applicable tools for use in a variety of environments, on a variety of industrial machinery or automotive components.
While the auto repair industry may be the most common user of pulley puller tools, other industries require similar tools for heavy equipment maintenance and repair. To illustrate the wide and varied use of such tools, shipyards use hydraulic pulley puller tools to maintain and repair gears, bearings, and pulleys used on commercial ships. Manufacturing facilities, such as steel and paper mills, use pulleys to maintain and repair processing and assembly equipment.