SKF South Africa (Pty) Ltd was approached to supply new sealing arrangements for custom designed, SKF tube mill housing assemblies used at a local mining group's re-opened plants.
SKF's scope of supply included a complete set of sealing arrangements for a mill trunnion application as well as a specialised tapered tube mill sleeves, with oil injection features for ease of mounting and dismounting, to suit SKF 248/1500 CAK30FA/W20 spherical roller bearings.
The original locally designed and manufactured SKF tube mill housing assemblies were supplied to the plant over 15 years ago, and have been operating successfully since installation. "The specialised sealing arrangement supplied, which is unique to SKF, is designed for grease lubrication and together with regular relubrication has proved to provided effective sealing in the mineral processing industry where a high contamination risk is prevalent", explains SKF Project Engineer, Simphiwe Malawana.
According to Malawana, the project did present a few challenges. He explains, "The position of the holding down bolt holes on the existing mill support structure did not correspond with the holding down bolt holes on the Tube Mill Housing due to a variance in the length of the mill, but our Project Engineering Department met the challenge head-on. They conducted a thorough design review and performed strength calculations to ascertain whether the reduced diameter of the holding down bolts was sufficient to accommodate the housing loads during application. When the design review was concluded, we modified the pre-stressing holding down bolts to accommodate the holes of the existing steel structure/base plate, at no additional cost to the customer".
"SKF's Project Engineering Department handled the entire project and this is undoubtedly one of the most important customer benefits - a one stop supplier and solutions provider," states Malawana and adds that the sealing arrangement was delivered well within the customer's specified time frame. "This was a team project with our Project Engineering providing professional services and our Mechanical Field Service Department taking responsibility for the on-site assembly of the bearing, housing, tapered sleeve and sealing arrangements. The SKF Mechanical Field Service department also conducts scheduled bearing assessment services on the mill pinion and trunnion bearings at the plant to assess wear levels and minimise the risk of bearing failures. This forms part of a Proactive Reliability Maintenance Programme at the plant to prevent catastrophic bearing failures and the high costs incurred when there is mill downtime and damaged mill components need to be repaired or replaced.
In addition to strengthening SKF's long term relationship with this leading mining group, the success of this project has also opened doors for the supply of other SKF technology products, services and solutions to the plant," concludes Malawana.
The mining group acknowledges SKF as bearing and rotating equipment specialists and as the leading solutions provider and preferred OEM supplier for SKF Tube Mill housings at their plants nationwide.
SKF's solutions approach delivers added value to customers and the company's Solution Factory integrates over a century of knowledge, experience and technical capabilities as well as SKF's core technologies - bearings and units, power transmission, seals, lubrication, mechatronics and services - under one roof. Three of SKF's core technologies, bearings, seals and services, were utilised in the custom designed sealing solution for the gold mine.
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