Industrial tyre shredder gets energy saving rebuild 20 July 2010

A tyre shredder used at one of the UK's largest tyre recycling centres, capable of recycling five million tyres per year into soft surfaces, has been remanufactured with help from Eriks' UK engineers.

Eriks specified and sourced a range of power transmission products for the in-house build, ensuring a more efficient and productive finished machine.

Mahesh Patel, technical manager at Eriks, explains that a large number of components needed to be repaired or replaced – including motors, gearboxes, couplings, bearings and drive chains.

Also; due to the high energy usage of the machine, the unnamed operator also saw this as an opportunity to up-date the shredder and make it more energy efficient.

"Once we had seen the damage, we could identify which parts could be repaired and which needed to be replaced. Not having to outsource jobs to other companies allows us to drastically reduce lead times and manage costs," says Patel.

Large 75kW WEG high efficiency motors were chosen to drive the main shears that reduce the tyres to a fine crumb. Smaller WEG motors were also chosen to drive the primary handling rotors that feed the tyres into the shears.

Patel explains that one of the benefits of WEG's W22 range is its energy efficient performance, which reduces losses by between 10% and 40%, compared with typical motors, he says.

Fenaflex Tyre Couplings were also used to connect the motors to the inline gearbox – partly for their high efficiency and partly because of their ability to tolerate misalignment in all planes, as well as their shock absorbing properties – isolating the motors from vibration and torsional oscillations.

Patel explains that these tyre couplings also exhibit zero backlash, which makes them ideal for reversing applications, especially with geared drives. He also says that high-strength Falk gear couplings were used to drive the main gearbox from the two in-line primary reduction gearboxes.

Brian Tinham

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