Software helps SKF roll out new bearings
An
Adept Scientific product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Jun 16, 2004
SKF has harnessed the power of Mathcad for managing its critical design calculations.
The SKF Group, headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, is the leading global supplier of products, customer solutions and services in the business of rolling bearings and seals.
For the last century SKF, now a $6 billion company with 40,000 employees, has been the source of every new bearing type in the evolution of one of the most pervasive technologies in the industrial world: the rolling bearing.
The latest new bearing type is the CARB toroidal roller bearing, which was introduced in 1995.
It has been designed entirely by the use of Mathsoft's Mathcad, a visual design environment that allows engineers from all industries to draw from a variety of data sources during the design phase of a product and document all mathematical formulas and calculations.
The challenge was to efficiently design a revolutionary new bearing type.
Magnus Kellstrom is the Manager of Design and Development for SKF Industrial Division's toroidal roller bearings.
He sought to create a bearing that could take angular misalignment as well as axial displacement and higher load; properties that no previous bearing has possessed.
The result was the CARB toroidal roller bearing.
CARB combines the self-aligning capability of a spherical roller bearing, the axial alignment ability of a cylindrical roller bearing, the possibility of low section height and great carrying capacity of a needle roller bearing.
It is used exclusively as a nonlocating bearing.
This completely new kind of bearing opens up new opportunities to save space, weight and arrangement costs.
Applications for CARB now include paper machines, continuous casters, gearboxes, windmills, electric motors, sugar cane shredders, mobile cranes/wheels on rails, compressors and wind energy plants.
It is also used as a maintenance free bearing for oscillating movement, such as in steering mechanisms.
Kellstrom and his team selected Mathcad, which is currently used by more than 1.5 million engineers worldwide, as the design tool for this innovation.
Mathcad performs every calculation from basic dimensions to complete finished product with all its tolerances.
It also makes the necessary choices of materials and dimensions, based on given rules.
"Mathcad was the ideal design tool because the software makes it so easy to read and follow the design process", said Kellstrom.
"The program allows us to try out various design variants very quickly".
"When we are satisfied, the latest calculation is saved as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file".
"For every bearing designed, there is then a complete documentation of how and why every dimension and tolerance was chosen".
"This is an easy way to meet SKF's strict requirements for quality assurance".
SKF has harnessed the power of Mathcad for managing its critical design calculations.
To make the results available to their manufacturing units around the world, SKF uses Mathcad in combination with a database and a web interface.
Starting from basic dimensions, Mathcad programs extract data from the base and feed back results after calculating and optimising the components of the bearing.
Once this process has been completed, which can be within minutes, SKF manufacturing units in any country can have access to the data they need through a web interface.
Using Mathcad this way, SKF has been able to efficiently create hundreds of designs of toroidal roller bearings in sizes ranging from 50mm to 2m.
Mathcad streamlines the design work for these cutting-edge bearings by allowing SKF's engineers to easily perform complex computations through a simple interface that displays calculations as they would appear on a written page.
Kellstrom and his team can specify critical design parameters, such as load carrying capacity, size and material compositions, then perform what-if analyses for different bearing sizes and applications.
Because of its unique, self-documenting interface, as Mathcad performs the calculation processes, it creates a record of the work and the thinking behind at the same time.
This is the key to Kellstrom's well documented designs and the future products that will be based on them.
Mathcad is supplied and supported in the UK and Ireland by Adept Scientific.
Not what you're looking for? Search the site.
Contact Adept Scientific
Tel +44 1462 480055
Other Adept Scientific stories
-
Engineering software improves documentation
Mathcad 14 expands the ability of users to solve pressing engineering calculation needs and improves the associated documentation of these calculations -
Calculation software upgrades to XML
Mathcad 12 is the latest version of the industry-standard calculation software from Mathsoft Engineering and Education. -
Software guarantees safety in numbers
Mathcad Enterprise removes barriers to engineering efficiency through management of a key corporate asset: engineering calculations. -
Enterprise software serves a thousand engineers
The Nordic region's leading engineering company, The Ramboll Group deploys Mathcad Enterprise to manage calculations for 1000 engineers. -
Mathcad takes the stress out of aerospace design
Stress engineers at GKN Aerospace Engineering Services use Mathcad to produce calculations and product designs that are shared among customers.
Browse by category
-
Capital Equipment (3,507)
- Capital Equipment (1)
- Compressors and Air Treatment (537)
- Electrical hardware (131)
- Electronics Manufacturing, Tools, Instruments (192)
- Machinery and Production Equipment (1,128)
- Manufacturing Machinery and Plant Equipment (474)
- Production line blowers and fans (73)
- Robotics, Handling and Storage (971)
- Consultancy and Services (920)
-
Control and Instrumentation (5,117)
- Cabling, Conduit, Signal Conditioning (814)
- CNC and Motion Controllers (189)
- Control and Instrumentation (2)
- HMIs/Operator Interfaces (296)
- Logic Controllers, Timers and Relays (96)
- Mid-range and Large PLCs (203)
- Plant- and Machine-Wide Communications (1,201)
- Plantwide control (1,350)
- Power Supplies, Uninterruptible Power (574)
- Smaller-Sized PLCs (392)
-
Drives, Motors and Controls (3,432)
- Drives, Motors and Controls (2)
- Industrial Drives/Controls (1,290)
- Industrial Motors (501)
- Linear Drives and Motors (120)
- Precision Motors and Gears (429)
- Stepper and Servo Drives, Motors, Controls (1,088)
-
Electrical and Electronic Equipment Design (4,296)
- Batteries, chargers and circuit protection (582)
- Connectors, Terminals, Busbars, Slip Rings (715)
- Electrical and Electronic Components (647)
- Electrical and Electronic Equipment Design (3)
- Electrical and Electronic Subassemblies (374)
- Enclosures and Equipment Cooling Fans (721)
- Knobs, Handles and Enclosure Hardware (430)
- PCs and Embedded Systems (824)
-
Engineering Design Software (6,348)
- 2D CAD software (203)
- 3D CAD software (1,187)
- CAM, CNC, production management software (581)
- Data, document management software (322)
- Electrical design software (166)
- Engineering Design Software (17)
- FEA and structural analysis software (376)
- File conversion software, data capture (358)
- Fluid, thermal, noise, vibration software (339)
- Materials design and moulding design software (152)
- Maths, charting, statistics, QA software (325)
- PLM and collaboration software (663)
- Process, instrumentation, automation software (269)
- Publishing and documentation software (234)
- Rendering, visualisation, styling software (206)
- Simulation, modelling, validation software (950)
-
Engineering Industry News, Resources (6,205)
- Electronic Resources for Engineers (278)
- Engineering Business News, Views (388)
- Engineering Conferences (438)
- Engineering Education, Resources, Standards (850)
- Engineering Exhibitions, Events (575)
- Engineering Guides, Newsletters (365)
- Engineering Industry Developments, Awards (636)
- Engineering Industry News, Resources (4)
- Engineering Industry Reports, Surveys (597)
- Engineering Recruitment, Employment (219)
- Engineering Seminars (415)
- Engineering Training Courses (457)
- Health and Safety Consultancy, Software (180)
- Health and Safety Events, Training, News (285)
- Health and Safety Legislation (403)
- Health and Safety Strategy, Risk Assessment (115)
- Machine Building (4,612)
-
Materials and Processing (3,025)
- Materials and components (2,263)
- Materials and Processing (5)
- Materials processing and testing (291)
- Rapid Prototyping (466)
-
Monitoring, Measurement and Quality (5,639)
- Data Acquisition Hardware and PC I/O Boards (488)
- Data acquisition Software and Communications (505)
- Data loggers (425)
- Electrical and Electronic Testing, PAT Equipment (642)
- Form/co-ordinate, optical, vision instruments (759)
- Gauges, Indicators and Instruments (448)
- Materials testing equipment (431)
- Monitoring, Measurement and Quality (1)
- Telecomms/network test equipment, software etc (158)
- Testing and Calibration Services and Information (518)
- Testing, analysing and monitoring equipment (1,264)
-
Powertrain Design (3,704)
- Bearings (977)
- Chains and belts (333)
- Gears, brakes, couplings and engines (1,474)
- Hydraulic Components (475)
- Lubricants (441)
- Powertrain Design (3)
-
Sensors (7,266)
- Accelerometers and Vibration Sensors (448)
- Barcode Sensors (103)
- Flowmeters and Flow Sensors (641)
- Gas, Chemical, Radiation, Magnetic Sensors (290)
- Humidity and Environmental Sensors (158)
- Level Sensors and Leak Detectors (537)
- Linear Position Sensors (413)
- Loadcells, Force Sensors, Torque Sensors (727)
- Pressure sensors (639)
- Proximity Sensors (712)
- Rotary Position, Tilt and Angular Sensors (560)
- Sensors (10)
- Temperature sensors (621)
- Vision and Colour Sensors (1,407)
- Small Mechanical Components, Joining, Tools (2,037)
- Valves, Pumps, Process Hardware (3,719)
