At its plant in Italy, one internationally-renowned snack food company operates six production lines. Across all of these, however, the fixed tail drum conveyor bearings were failing due to their operating environment being damp. To overcome the problem, NSK investigated the application and proposed replacing the existing double-row ball bearings with its Molded-Oil spherical roller bearings.
Ideal for food processing machinery, these have a special solid lubricant that greatly improves the performance of machinery and equipment in environments exposed to high humidity and contamination.
According to the company, Molded-Oil offers more than twice the operating life of grease lubrication in water contaminated environments and also means that operating environments are kept free of grease. There is no need for refilling of lubricant, as these provide a continuous supply of lubricating oil.
Since fitting of the new spherical roller bearings, bearing life has increasedto 15 months, reducing maintenance intervals. The result has been major savings in production downtime costs which have been calculated at €192,600 annually. Of additional benefit to the manufacturer, the costly regreasing operation has now been eliminated.
