FEATURE BELTS, PULLEYS & CHAINS Specialist chain from
Tsubaki is offering many benefits for harsh and
demanding applications such as paper mills and bakeries
D
uring paper manufacturing, large amounts of abrasive dust often gets into the air. Such an
environment can cause products like chains to fail – the dust can contaminate the lubricant and work its way into the chain’s internals, leading to corrosion and increased wear, and causing the chain to elongate and eventually fail. At a paper mill in Austria, regular delays
were occurring due to the drive chain installed in the paper coil elevator failing. The heavy coils of paper at the site are moved
to different floors of the facility by ten elevators, ready to be cut and processed. Chains from three different brands were being utilised across the elevators, but none of these were proving robust enough to offer long service life. The different chain types also resulted in inconsistent wear which meant they were 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 was causing the plates of the chain to crack. Sometimes, a company will see a chain as
a commodity rather than engineered product, so will opt for a budget chain to reduce cost. However, this can result in premature failure, leading to plant downtime, shorter maintenance intervals and increased frequency of repairs, Tsubaki explains. As a result, despite offering an initially cheap solution, the TCO of an inferior chain during its lifetime is greatly increased compared to a premium chain. Realising this, the manufacturer approached
Tsubaki to provide an improved chain solution. After assessing the elevators, the company identified its GT4 Winner chain as a suitable solution. Designed to provide strength in high wear environments, the chain has four key features which are designed to reduce wear and minimise chain elongation: 1: Lube-grooved (LG) bushes hold oil at the 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
36 JUNE 2020 | DESIGN SOLUTIONS CHAIN REACTION
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 kW rating; unlike the typical standard slip-fit connecting links used by competitors which are usually much weaker than the base chain. The new chain was trialled on a single
Tsubaki’s GT4 Winner chain was the ideal solution for the paper mill
elevator at the Austrian facility to gauge performance and potential benefits. Due to its increased strength, the premium Tsubaki chain proved capable of comfortably withstanding the shock loads inherent to the application, eliminating the issue of cracked plates. This also minimised elongation and minimised likelihood of premature failure, which consequently reduced maintenance requirements. Longer service life, a decreased risk to 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 ten of the paper coil elevators.
BUN IN THE OVEN Tsubaki chain has also been proving its worth in
a bakery in France. When the bakery decided to review its costs and procedures, it quickly identified that the tunnel oven used to produce pre-baked bread rolls was requiring a shut- down period for replacement conveyor chain every 1.5 to two years. This, however, required a complete de-mount of the machine. The average temperatures experienced by the
chain throughout the oven cycle was 240˚C (peaking at 300˚C), which was causing the inside of the rollers to wear and the chain to fail earlier than expected. Tsubaki identified that chain designed for operation in hard wearing environments, combined with a specialised lubrication system, could significantly extend the gap between replacement and reduce the TCO of the oven at the same time. The engineers recommended a solution
from Tsubaki’s large size conveyor chain catalogue that featured heat treated rollers and bushes to ensure smooth interaction, even at high temperatures. The chain has been built for strength and performance to cope with regular loading and delivers stable performance. In this case it was suggested that the bakery lubricate the chain with a specialty food-grade lubrication formulated to be stable in very high temperatures. This is dispensed through an electrically operated gear pump, that is synchronised with the speed of the chain to ensure that an optimised coating is always maintained. The new chain proved
to offer more than twice the reliability – eventually reaching a service life of over five years. Reducing periods of non- production has been a significant benefit to the TCO of the chain, which reflects directly onto the bakery’s bottom line.
Tsubaki
tsubaki.eu
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