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Conveyor-belt oil saves food producer 50k a year

A NSK UK product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jan 23, 2009

NSK's Molded-Oil technology has helped a major food producer cut the cost of operating food production conveyors by GBP50,968 a year.

Regular high-pressure washdowns were causing grease wash-out from the bearings, seal damage and corrosion.

Molded-Oil bearings employ a special solid lubricant that effectively addresses loss of lubricant resulting from washdowns.

Molded-Oil bearings employ a special solid lubricant that effectively addresses loss of lubricant resulting from washdowns.

This resulted in ball bearing inserts failing every four to six weeks.

The result of these failures was lost production time, running at GBP2000 per month/line, maintenance costs of GBP1200 per year/line, and bearing replacement costs of GBP673 a year.

An engineer from NSK quickly identified the problem of water washout, extremely common in food processing applications.

This is the tendency of lubricant to be flushed out of conventional bearings subjected to repeated washdowns.

The loss of lubricant is usually progressive rather than immediate, but the result is inevitably the same: premature failure of the bearing or bearings concerned.

NSK developed Molded-Oil to solve this problem.

Molded-Oil bearings employ a solid lubricant that effectively addresses loss of lubricant resulting from washdowns.

Molded-Oil transforms the performance of machinery, in terms of reliability, maintenance-free intervals and operation, in corrosive and contaminated environments.

Molded-Oil can provide up to twice the operating life of grease lubrication in water-contaminated environments.

The technology also keeps operating environments grease-free.

There is no need for lubricant replenishment, as Molded-Oil provides a continuous supply of lubricating oil.

NSK recommended F-UC204/LP99 stainless steel Molded-Oil bearing inserts to overcome the existing failure modes.

These bearings were ordered for trial on one production line and after 12 months there were no reported failures.

A complete bearing change across the second line was then implemented by the customer, resulting in total cost savings across the two lines of GBP50,968 a year.

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