Bearing system boosts tyre shredding efficiency

A Baldor product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Nov 14, 2007

The Dodge Grip Tight adapter-style bearing has a mechanical maintenance feature that loosens it by simply turning a nut.

An adapter-mounted ball bearing system has transformed the economics of maintaining Sapphire Energy Recovery's tyre shredding machines.

Switching to the Dodge Grip Tight bearing, which features a flinger seal and a built-in mechanism for removing the bearing from the shaft, has resolved a recurrent - and expensive - repair problem.

Sapphire Energy Recovery operates high-throughput shredding machines in four major conurbations throughout the UK, providing a sustainable solution for end-of-life car and van tyres by processing them into chips.

These chips are then used as an alternative to coal in cement manufacture.

After shredding, the tyre chips are graded for size by a classifier with 36 sets of bearings.

The classifier shafts' set-screw style bearings were being damaged by both the fine metal wires in the tyres and the water used for cooling.

As a result they had a life, typically, of less than six months.

Changing the classifier bearings could then take anything up to two hours per bearing, depending on the problems encountered and the skill of the operators.

Corrosion sometimes meant that the bearings needed to be loosened by heat, and in some cases the whole shaft had to be replaced.

Addressing the planned and emergency maintenance requirements of these machines became a priority for Sapphire's Reliability Manager Andy Booth and he called in the specialist Dodge distributor, Bearing Transmission and Pneumatics, to discuss the problem.

Bearing Transmission and Pneumatics suggested that Sapphire try a type of ball bearing from Baldor's range called the Dodge Grip Tight.

This adapter-style bearing has a mechanical maintenance feature that loosens it by simply turning a nut.

The action automatically pulls the bearing off, avoiding any need for forcible removal or expansion heating - eliminating fretting corrosion and preventing shaft damage.

The bearings were a little more expensive than the set screw type that Sapphire had been using, but the easy-off mechanism made changeovers a predictable operation.

Sapphire purchased some Grip Tight bearings and installed them as and when the previous bearings failed.

Although predictable maintenance was Andy Booth's major requirement, it soon became obvious that the bearings offered a superior life too, as the life period came and went.

The Grip Tight 's built-in flinger seal is protecting the bearings in the hostile environment to such as en extent that they are lasting typically twice as long as the previous set screw types.

Changeovers are predictable and take only 15 minutes, including the time required to remove and refit machine casings.

Moreover, there has been no shaft damage to date.

"The aggressive nature of tyre shredding meant that repairing these machines was taking up far too much of our time and reducing our productivity", says Andy Booth.

"Grip Tight bearings have given us back predictability of maintenance, with the welcome bonus of much longer life, protecting some of our company's most crucial assets".

"Our operational team now has the time to be more pro-active, focusing its major efforts on preventive maintenance rather than breakdown maintenance".

"Our work means that we tend to see a lot of bearing failures and we've come to regard the Dodge Grip Tight as a genuine problem solver", says Edward Fielding of Bearing Transmission and Pneumatics.

"Although the major requirement was to simplify changeover, this bearing also manages to survive much longer in very hostile operating conditions".

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