20 TSUBAKI


INDUSTRY NEWS


Pulp Paper & Logistics


Focus on total cost of ownership


Budget-priced components easily find their way into pulp and paper mills, but they often result in more frequent maintenance and downtime. Chain supplier Tsubaki suggests that premium products provide lower total cost of ownership in this case study. PPL reports


A


paper mill is a demanding environment for power transmission components such as drive chain. The manufacturing process


inevitably generates large amounts of abrasive dust particles in the air. This dust will contaminate chain lubricant and work its way into the chain’s internals, leading to corrosion and increased wear. Ultimately this will cause the chain to elongate and eventually fail completely. The continuous nature of paper production compounds these issues, as the high-duty requirements cause improperly specified chains to fail faster. A single unexpected failure can bring the whole production line to a standstill. For a major European paper manufacturer, a mill in Austria was suffering from regular delays caused by chain failure – specifically the drive chain installed in the paper coil elevator. The heavy coils of paper at the site are moved by 10 elevators to different floors of the facility, ready to be cut and processed. Chains from three different brands were


being used on the elevators, none of which were robust enough to offer long service life. The use of three different chain types resulted in inconsistent wear, resulting in the drive becoming uneven. In addition to the general


atmospheric challenges of the application area, the chains installed on the elevators were regularly subjected to very high shock loads, which were causing the side plates of the chains to crack. While being cheaper to source, budget chain


struggles to meet long-term requirements. Premature failure leads to plant downtime, which interrupts order schedules. Maintenance intervals are also shortened, increasing the frequency of repairs. As a result, despite offering initial savings, the total cost of ownership of an inferior chain is greatly increased. Realising this, the mill’s management


approached Tsubaki to provide an improved chain. With more than a century of experience, Tsubaki is a key supplier of power transmission components to the paper industry, along with other sectors. A responsive service and a global engineering capability ensured that Tsubaki engineers were quickly on-site at the Austrian mill to carry out a thorough inspection. After assessing the 10 elevators, Tsubaki specified its GT4 Winner chain. Designed to provide strength in high-wear environments, the chain boasts four key features that are designed to reduce wear and minimise chain elongation: 1: Lube-grooved (LG) bushes hold oil at the


Tsubaki’s GT4 Winner chain features grooved bushes to retain lubricant and centre sink rivets


point of contact which provides an internal reservoir for lubricant where the chain needs it most (sizes RS16B – RS24B). 2: Seamless and perfectly cylindrical bushes result in both better contact between the pin and bush and improved lubricant retention. 3: Centre sink rivets – for easy disassembly – which are designed with markings to identify pin rotations caused by chain overloading (sizes RS08B - RS16B). 4: Ring Coined connection links allow the chain to be specified up to its full power rating; unlike the typical standard slip-fit connecting links used by competitors which are usually weaker than the base chain. The GT4 Winner was trialled on a single


elevator at the Austrian mill to gauge performance and potential benefits. Increased strength ensured that the premium Tsubaki chain could withstand the shock loads inherent to the application comfortably, eliminating the issue of cracked plates. This also minimised elongation and the likelihood of premature failure, which consequently reduced maintenance requirements. Longer service life, a decreased risk to


A global manufacturer of pulp and paper products turned to Tsubaki to reduce total cost of ownership by specifying a premium chain


May/June 2020


uptime and reduced maintenance translated to a greatly improved TCO compared to the previous chains. The successful test period led to the GT4 Winner being installed on all 10 of the paper coil elevators.


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