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SKF showcases new products at SMM 2018

Category : News

At the SMM2018 trade fair (Hamburg, 4-7 September), SKF will showcase a range of new products that help owners and operators comply with present and future environmental regulations, as well as help them improve maintenance processes and performance. The new products include environmental-friendly shaft line and condition-monitoring solutions.

Gothenburg, Sweden, 20 June 2018: SKF will launch four new products at the SMM show while showcasing a wide range of its latest offerings for the maritime sector.

The first new launch at SMM is SKF’s new environmental-friendly shaft line solution – Simplex BlueRun. This range of water-lubricated sterntube solutions includes Simplex BlueRun bearings, carrier bushes as well as the Simplex BlueRun tail shaft monitoring system.

Also on show will be SKF’s EcoMode. This software has been developed to ensure optimised fin stabiliser operation and it delivers recommendations and actions based on retrospective movement analysis.

In addition for the optimisation of oily water treatment processing onboard any kind of vessels SKF has developed two new products. The new products include the Turbulo SolidMaster, a filtration unit that precedes an oily water separator and mechanically removes suspended solids in the bilge water. Also on stand will be the new Turbulo HycaLogger, an electronic tool/log book to log raw data of the oily water separator i.e. all oil discharges from the oily water separator.

Alongside the wide range of marine solution exhibits, SKF will also have the product developers and marine experts available throughout the show, so that visitors can discuss how the solutions could relate to their specific application needs.

See SKF at SMM 2018: Hall A1, stand 210

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Tool case solution for fretting corrosion protection

Category : Announcements , News

The SKF anti-fretting paste LGAF 3E is a well-proven mounting paste that helps to reduce fretting corrosion in metal to metal contact areas that are subject to vibrations or small relative movements.
The new 35 gram tube is designed to be readily available in every tool case for mounting bearings or protecting other metal to metal contact areas from fretting corrosion. Since only little amounts are needed for effective protection, the 35 gram tube is sufficient for many installations. More than 25 installations of 23120 CC/W33 can be performed with a single tube.

LGAF 3E 35 grams tube box

  • Effective protections against fretting corrosion
  • Small pack size for tool cases
  • High economics in application
  • Recommended for all bearing installations
  • Usable for many other applications

 

 

 

Typical applications

  • Bearing mounting

The most common usage of LGAF 3E is for mounting bearings. Applying the anti-fretting paste in the loose fit between the bearing and the housing (or shaft) significantly reduces fretting corrosion and helps to increase the service life of the bearing, shaft and housing. LGAF 3E reduces fretting corrosion in the loose fit of bearings.
Less corrosion makes bearing dismounting easier. Reducing corrosion repair work helps to maintain a good bearing fit.

  • Heater maintenance

The contact area between the TIH heater core and the yokes needs regular maintenance to ensure long term performance. Cleaning the contact area and applying LGAF 3E help to
reduce corrosion of the contact surface in between core and yoke,
reduce noise of the heater in operation and
maintain high heater performance over time.

  • VIBRACON re-installation

SKF VIBRACON chocks are delivered with protective layer of LGAF 3E and are ready for use. After equipment re-installations where the spherical surfaces were separated and cleaned, a thin layer of LGAF 3E needs to be applied to prevent fretting corrosion and keep the chock in a good condition.

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Cooper Roller Bearings becomes SKF Cooper Split Bearings

Category : Announcements , News

Now an established brand within the SKF Group, Cooper Roller Bearings product ranges will henceforth be marketed as ‘SKF Cooper split bearings’.

Gothenburg, Sweden, 15 January 2018: SKF acquired Cooper Roller Bearings Co Ltd in 2013 as part of the US based Kaydon Corporation, Cooper’s parent company at the time. Following a period of consolidation within the SKF, it has now been decided that all Cooper Split Bearings ranges will be marketed under the name of SKF Cooper going forward.

SKF Cooper products will continue to complement the growing SKF portfolio of complete solutions for the marine, mining, quarrying, construction and energy sectors. In addition to the brand name change, the channels to market for SKF Cooper products, including responses to customer enquiries, product supply and after-sales support, will be handled on a global basis through local SKF sales outlets going forward.

SKF Cooper split roller bearings can be fitted, removed and inspected without having to dismantle surrounding equipment, providing savings in terms of reduced maintenance and downtime. The products include both split cylindrical roller bearings and split double row tapered roller bearings, the latter with the ability to take axial loads in either direction. Both are housed and sealed in special swivel cartridges, which are suitable for mounting in pedestal or flanged outer housings.

The cartridges have a spherical outer surface that fits into a conforming surface in the mounting unit rather like a ball and socket joint; any shaft misalignment tends to move the cartridge, seal and bearing together, maintaining the seal on an axis parallel to the shaft. This configuration allows extremely close tolerances to be maintained between the housing and the shaft, delivering a sealing performance that is recognised as one of the best in the anti-friction bearing industry.

As well as their complementary product ranges and reputations for engineering excellence, Cooper and SKF have one other thing in common: both mark 1907 as a particularly momentous year in their respective histories. 1907 was the year that Cooper’s founder, Thomas Cooper patented the world’s first split rolling element bearing, and in that same year Sven Wingquist invented the first self-aligning bearings and founded the Svenska Kullagerfabriken company – nowadays more commonly known as SKF.

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SKF delivers its largest sealed spherical roller bearing

Category : Announcements , News

SKF’s Gothenburg factory has produced the company’s largest sealed spherical roller bearing (SRB) to date. The ‘241/900’ SRB is 50 per cent larger and three times heavier than the previous largest SKF sealed SRB.

Gothenburg, Sweden, 4 October 2017: Destined for a Polysius Polycom 8 roller press at a large copper mine in Peru, the three-tonne 241/900 sealed SRB is dimensionally equivalent to a standard SKF non-sealed version, with inner diameter (bore) of 900mm, outer diameter of 1,420mm and width of 515mm. The seal itself consists of a rubber over-moulded steel plate with the same profile and offering the same characteristics as those currently used with existing SKF sealed SRBs.

The customer’s sealed SRB will be fitted to a horizontal shaft and will operate in extremely dusty conditions, with very fine stone dust from both the desert location itself and the grinding processes posing a major contamination risk. The roller press is a highly loaded application (C/P of 2-3) subject to frequent shock loading; the predominantly radial loads, when coupled with the high level of contamination at the site, poses a significant risk of early bearing failure. SKF’s custom made seal aims to at least double the bearing service life by reducing the risk of contamination in this application significantly.

The actual performance of the seal for this size of SRB remains to be verified in service by the customer, but the same seal design used in smaller SRB sizes has achieved a service life of at least double that of an open, non-sealed bearing. Even longer service lives of around three to five times that of a non-sealed bearing can be achieved with SKF’s ‘Three-Barrier’ bearing protection solution, which comprises premium SKF sealed SRBs housed within sealed housings containing a barrier grease.

This record-breaking sealed SRB was designed and manufactured within a tight, six-month schedule by a team led by Daniel Ortega – Project Manager, Business Development.

 

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Assured quality from approved service suppliers

Setting new standards

Assured quality from approved service suppliers

For centuries, classification societies have helped shape standards and regulations to improve the safety of ships. Vessels that live up to these requirements receive approval. Thomas Knödlseder, senior engineer at DNV GL Maritime, explains how classification societies ensure the quality of services suppliers.

Thomas Knödlseder: With ships and offshore structures, it is especially important that certain levels of quality and reliability are achieved. At DNV GL, our purpose is to safeguard life, property, and the environment. As a classification society, we check and approve the design, materials, and components of newly built vessels and carry out periodic inspections on ships in operation to verify that standards continue to be met. If they fulfill our requirements, they receive the classification certificate, which is typically valid for five years.

In recent years, the maritime industry has undergone significant change. Has this had an impact on your approval process?

Of course. We always have to adapt our rules and regulations to reflect changing practices and advances in technology. For example, as more and more ship operators implement CBM (condition-based maintenance) strategies, we need to make sure that our rules enable this method of verifying machinery condition. However, first we must make sure that it is done correctly.

Our purpose is, and always has been, to safeguard life, property, and the environment.”
Thomas Knödlseder, Senior Engineer, DNV GL – Maritime

So how does DNV GL go about doing this?

We have to ensure that the condition monitoring (CM) systems deliver accurate information. If, for example, the systems are not monitoring correctly, the crew on board a vessel might draw false conclusions from the data. This could jeopardize the reliability of a ship. For this reason, we check that the service suppliers live up to certain standards before they are permitted to work with DNV GL approved vessels.

What are the main things you look out for when assessing service suppliers?

First of all, the service supplier has to be able to carry out its services at a consistently high standard of quality. We verify that CM systems are installed properly, that they are collecting the right amount of information to form an accurate picture, and that the data is analyzed by qualified, skilled personnel. In addition, we demand that service suppliers have a continuous improvement program in place, including training. If they can meet all of these conditions, they receive certification that is valid for three years.

What does this mean for ship operators? Why should they choose approved service suppliers?

Ultimately, our services help establish mutual trust between shipping companies, operators, and suppliers. When a ship operator works with a DNV GL approved service supplier, they can rest assured knowing we have checked and verified everything in great detail, so they can rely on the information from their CM systems. And for certain applications, having properly implemented CM systems means we will remove the standard survey intervals of five years and even maker’s recommendations for periodic maintenance.

On the other hand, the service suppliers themselves also benefit from approval. During the process, we provide them with guidance on how to comply with the requirements. We’ve seen suppliers that have identified room for improvement after taking another look at their own processes and the way they deliver services. As a result, they can actually enhance the quality of their services during the process.

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GT4 European Series Northern Cup 2017

Category : News

JTEKT is one of the sponsors (with Koyo brand bearings) the GT4 European Series Northern Cup 2017.

This event is one of the best race series for both Am and Pro drivers either driving in the same team or on their own. 2017 will be the 10th anniversary for this successful series again visiting Europe’s premier circuits. Sofia Car Motorsport by BADI and SIN R1 will participate for the third season in this series.

The drivers for this season are Mrs. Bianca Anton 19 years old, and she will share the car with her brother Mr. Eduard Anton 16 years old, youngest pilot from this competition, both with huge potential and an extended racing/driving background and accomplishments. They are part of BADI team in Bucharest Romania, one of Koyo’s major Distributors in Romania. The first open round took place last 31st of March in Misano (Italy). The next one will take place May 7th in UK at Brands Hatch

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SKF inaugurates large-size bearing test centre

Category : Announcements , News

SKF has inaugurated its newly-built Sven Wingquist Test Center in Schweinfurt, Germany, an investment totalling EUR 40 million. The center is the first in the world that is able to test large-size bearings under actual operating conditions. This allows for a more efficient development process for customers, as well as improved bearing performance and increased service life.

The Sven Wingquist Test Center has two testing rigs. One rig is designed for the testing of wind turbine main shaft arrangements. The second rig will be used for testing bearings used in other industrial sectors, including mining, construction, steel manufacturing and marine transport.
Combined with SKF’s continued development of diagnostics, condition monitoring and simulation methods, these rigs will contribute to reduced testing and product development lead-times and provide deeper insights into bearing performance.

Victoria Van Camp, CTO and President, Innovation and Business Development, says: “No other test center is capable of testing large-size bearings this accurately, under actual operating conditions, giving us and our customers a significant strategic advantage. The technologies being used here in the Sven Wingquist Test Center will help save our customers time and resources, whilst supporting their ambitions of increased reliability and service life.”

The test centre has received funding from the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Media, Energy and Technology and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Construction and Reactor Safety.

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SKF delivers higher-performance across its INSOCOAT bearings range

Category : Announcements , News

With it’s latest generation of electrically insulated bearings, SKF has raised the performance standard to provide constant electrical performance, even in high humidity.

SKF’s INSOCOAT bearings range – comprises bearings with an electrically insulating coating on the external surfaces of its inner or outer ring, plasma-sprayed with an aluminium oxide coating. The coating, which is naturally hygroscopic, is sealed with a resin to protect against the conductive effects of high humidity and moisture ingress.

These bearings are specially designed and manufactured for use in rotating electrical machines, such as industrial electric motors, traction motors and generators. They prevent the passage of harmful electrical currents from the rotor to the machine frame via the bearings, which causes progressive electrical erosion of the bearings’ rolling contact surfaces and ultimately premature failure.

Following the introduction of an improved plasma spray coating process and optimised ceramic layer, SKF can provide this superior insulating coating as standard and off-the-shelf across its entire INSOCOAT range.

INSOCOAT bearings are now able to withstand voltages of 3000V DC sufficient to cope with the vast majority of stray bearing current problems in electrical machines.

In addition, the upgraded moisture-resistant coating provides greater protection against humidity storage environments which can compromise a bearing’s insulating properties before it is even placed in service, making INSOCOAT bearings highly robust during transport and handling.

Combining both bearing and insulation in a single solution, INSOCOAT protects against electrical erosion at significantly lower total cost of ownership compared with other techniques such as shaft or housing insulation.

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Spare parts management

Category : Technical Articles

Better management of spare parts inventories can unlock a hidden source of profit, explains Dr. Liang Dong, Service & Solutions Offer Manager at SKF.

Machines need spare parts. Any business operating significant quantities of machinery will carry of a stock of replacement components. Those parts fulfill a variety of purposes. They are there to replace items that wear out during normal operations, such as bearings, seals and filters and they need to be ready for planned upgrades and overhaul activities. They act as insurance, allowing maintenance teams to fix breakdowns faster than the lead times required to secure replacements from an external supplier.

Ensuring the organisation has the right number of the right spare parts in its inventories can be a continual source of tension, however. Maintenance and operations teams want to maximise availability, to reduce the risk of unplanned downtime and lost production due to missing parts. Finance staff want to minimise the valuable capital tied up on the shelves, and they worry about the obsolescence costs associated with parts bought for equipment no longer in use.

Both sides are right. Research by SKF has shown that optimising spare partsmanagement can reduce inventory budgets and holding costs by 15 to 20 percent, while simultaneously cutting stock-outs (and the resulting lost production) by 30 to 50 percent.

But how does a company achieve those optimal inventories? The trick lies in a better understanding of the organisation’s assets, of the spare parts they require, and of the nature of demand for those parts.

Some parts are all the same
Most organisations maintain a register of their assets, together with a database of the spare parts required in the support of those assets. Often, however, such partsdatabases have been developed organically over time, leading to inconsistency and duplication. Parts for two versions of the same asset may be listed in different ways on the database, for example, and simple standard parts like belts or switches may appear on the database under different names. This duplication matters because it reduces inventory efficiency. A company may order additional versions of the same part, since the database doesn’t show that they already have an appropriate item in their inventory.

Eliminating this waste requires database standardisation. The best companies use a common architecture for assets in their database, and standard maintenance bill-of-materials (BOM) structures and catalogue descriptions for the spare parts associated with those assets. In our experience, it is common for companies to be able to reduce the number of items in their spare parts inventories by 10 to 15 percent, just by eliminating duplicate or obsolete items.

Understanding demand
Once it knows which parts its assets require, a company needs to decide how many of each part it should keep in its inventory. Getting that right calls for an understanding of the way demand patterns vary, according to the nature of the part, and of the criticality of the asset to which it belongs.

Demand for spare parts falls into three basic categories: consumable spares, operational spares and insurance spares, and the best forecasting strategies for each are very different.

Consumable spares are items such as filters and lubricants. Typically, they are lower cost objects used in quite large numbers. When companies look at their historical consumption of spares like these, they will see a record of relatively level demand over time. Setting the optimal inventory level for these parts is a matter of establishing the quantity required to meet the overall average level of demand, plus an appropriate safety stock. That figure can then be refined to account for seasonal variations in demand as production patterns change, and updated over the longer term as the company makes alterations to its asset base.

Operational spares are items like fans and motors, for which demand is intermittent and unpredictable. Setting the right inventory level for these parts requires a more sophisticated statistical approach. By analysing historical usage, companies can gain an understanding both of their average consumption of these parts and its variability. They can also build a picture of the mean, minimum and maximum lifetimes for parts in service.

In practice, the lifetime of operational parts usually follows a “bathtub” curve. Some parts fail early, typically as a result of manufacturing or installation defects.  After some time, these early failures tail off and the failure rate falls to a low level of random events. Finally, as parts get older, they begin to wear out, and the failure rate rises again. By applying different statistical distributions to each of these three causes of failure, companies can build a picture of the probability of failure of a particular type of part at any point in its life.

They can then establish an appropriate service level for the part in question and set their inventory targets to meet that level, given the probability of failure and lead time required to obtain extra parts from the original supplier. The right service level will depend on the price of the spare and the criticality of the asset.  A 10 percent probability of a stock-out for a motor that runs one of six ventilators in a building may not create a significant problem, for example. An identical motor used to run a vital production machine will require a much higher level of availability, however.

The final category, insurance spares, requires a very different approach. These are typically high value parts for critical assets with very long supply lead times. Analysis of historical consumption is unhelpful in setting inventory levels for such parts, since the company may have consumed few, or none, of the part in the past. Likewise, it is very difficult to make meaningful estimates of the risk of the part failing in service in the future. One powerful way to make decisions about these kinds of part is to use a return-on-investment (ROI) approach to prioritise spend.

To do this, the company calculates the likely financial impact of the part failing with no immediate replacement available, by multiplying the cost of lost production by the lead time required to obtain a new part, and dividing this figure by the cost of keeping a replacement part in inventory. These ROI calculations allow the company to prioritise its expenditure on insurance parts. It may, for example, decide to stock only parts above a certain a level of ROI, or it may allocate a fixed budget to insurance parts, starting with the highest ROI items and working down the list until the budget is exhausted.

A basis for continuous improvement
Getting spare parts inventory levels right usually delivers significant improvements in both cost and asset availability.  For the best companies, that is only the start, however. They monitor part consumption on an on-going basis to identify exceptions that may indicate an underlying issue with assets or operating practices. If a particular machine starts to experience an unexpectedly high number of early-life bearing failures, that might suggest an issue with improper assembly or lubrication. Spotting these trends in parts consumption allows the company to launch root-cause analysis efforts to understand and rectify the source of the problem.

A similar approach can be used to prioritise reliability improvement efforts. If a particular machine or category of parts is contributing disproportionately to consumable or operational part costs, the company may choose to launch a kaizen, or improvement, effort to tackle that machine’s performance and reliability. Alternatively it may consider the installation of condition monitoring technology to aid the early identification of problems, or could choose to invest in alternative technologies that offer greater reliability.

These efforts lead to a virtuous circle. As machine reliability improves and spares consumption falls, companies can alter their inventory parameters accordingly, freeing up further capital and reducing carrying costs.  And as overall usage patterns change, it becomes easier to spot the remaining outliers, helping to focus future improvement efforts.

Help from the experts
While the payback from better management of spare parts is usually large, the journey to world-class performance can be daunting. To help companies on their way, SKF has developed the Spares Inventory Management and Optimization (SIMO) service. Built on more than 100 years of deep experience in rotating equipment performance and asset management, bearing lifetime management   and supply chain management, SIMO provides a structured process designed to guide and support companies through every step of that journey.

SIMO is a four phase process, encompassing both the demand and supply aspects of spare parts management. It comprises spares identification and cataloguing, consumption forecasting, inventory rationalisation and on-going inventory optimisation.

As well as a rigorous, proven process, SKF brings important technical knowhow to the SIMO service. Clients can make use of standard spares templates for many common asset types, for example, aiding the development of a robust parts database. SKF has also built up a detailed benchmarking database of equipment performance across a range of industries, helping companies to pick the right forecasting models and to identify areas where their own equipment reliability or typical part service life falls outside of industry norms.

SIMO also integrates seamlessly with other SKF services designed to help companies minimize the total cost of ownership of their assets. Rather than buying individual bearings, for example, customers can use SKF’s “Bearings for Life” concept, in which they agree a price based on the total lifetime of an asset. SKF then supplies replacement components as required during that time, with SIMO calculations helping to determine appropriate on-site inventories. Likewise, SKF Logistics Services can use the same data to manage customer spares inventories on a consignment basis. And for every customer, SKF’s global distribution network ensures that huge number of spares are always available from stock or with short lead times, reducing the number of partsthey need to hold on site.

Every journey must start with the right first steps. To help companies to estimate the potential value of a shift to world-class practices, SKF has also developed CNA-SIMO (Customer Needs Analysis – SIMO), a simple but detailed needs analysis tool, allowing them to understand the current maturity of their spare parts management processes, and the principal opportunities for improvement.

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Le Bourget Paris Air Show 19-25 June 2017

Category : Announcements

The Paris Air Show is the world’s oldest and largest air show, gathering major industry’s players across the globe for the 52nd time this year.

JTEKT Corporation, as an important supplier of state-of-the-art components for this demanding industry will be showcasing Koyo products at the exhibition in Hall 6/stand B12.

Please join us in Paris – Le Bourget from Monday, June 19 until Sunday, June 25.

This event will be a unique opportunity to learn about the latest Koyo products for this demanding segment, as well as interact with JTEKT staff.

HALL 6/STAND B12

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