Moulded oil bearings slash plant downtime costs for pipe maker 29 September 2010

NSK is claiming that its asset improvement programme has delivered an annual cost saving of €38,400 for an unnamed manufacturer of concrete pipes.

A spokesperson for the firm says the savings have been achieved by reducing failures on the blade support roller of a concrete pipe-slotting machine – replacing the original bearings (which were lasting just two to three months on average) with NSK Moulded Oil bearings.

To date, he says, these bearings have operated for 12 months with not a single failure.

The problem on the original bearings, as identified by an NSK applications engineer, was the ingress of concrete dust – a common problem in the industry. Dust combines with bearing lubricant to produce an abrasive mixture that causes premature bearing failure.

In this instance, the dust- contaminated lubricant was causing failures four-times per year, with each failure resulting in eight hours of downtime, at a cost of €1,200 per hour.

NSK recommended using bearings equipped with its so-called Moulded Oil, a solid lubricant technology developed by NSK for bearings used in remote locations and/or where oil and grease absorbing dust is produced.

It's not the same as many other oil impregnated plastics, where the oil content is a few percent by weight: NSK's system has a lubricating oil content of more than 50% by weight. That enables the material to maintain a good lubrication regime, helped by oil discharge from the matrix, which is temperature dependent – the higher the heat, the higher the oil discharge rate, although operating temperatures are normally limited to 60°C.

Certainly, the system has been proven to transform the performance of some bearings in machinery and equipment, in terms of reliability, maintenance free intervals and operation – particularly in environments exposed to contamination.

It also enables plant operators to make cost savings by replacing existing, and often costly, methods of lubricating machine parts.

Brian Tinham

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NSK Europe Ltd

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