It's A Goldmine!
Money isn’t everything, and in these case studies we do our best to explain how our top-quality products have benefited a business, or showcase the way our service can solve a perennial problem. That being said, if you saved someone more than four and a half million Euros, wouldn’t you want to shout about it? Well, that’s exactly what NSK did with one quarrying and mining customer…
The company in question was experiencing regular bearing failures due to contamination on each side of its conveyor head pulley. Though ingress like this has to be expected in a quarry, with such abrasive conditions and such an abundance of water and grit, the contamination was drastically reducing the lifespan of the bearings in question. As a result, every eighteen months the company was experiencing significant downtime and increased maintenance costs. Understandably unhappy with the situation, they called in NSK’s team of highly trained experts to help…
After performing a comprehensive Bearing Analysis, which identified the ingress of water and grit as the main cause of the problem’s the company was facing, our engineers recommended that they adopt bearings made of NSK’s High Tough Steel (HTF).
NSK offers bearings made from a range of different types of steel, specifically developed and manufactured to cope with different applications and environments. In the case of HTF steel, the steel was designed for bearings that needed to demonstrate outstanding toughness under the very harshest conditions. Quarries, for instance.
"No matter what [the] issue might be...we will do everything we can to rise to the challenge"
Andy Kemble, NSK Europe’s Product Manager for Super Precision Bearings.
Compared to the bearings that the company had been relying on before, the new HTF steel options offered vastly longer service life as well as superior resistance against wear, seizure and heat. Manufactured using NSK’s proprietary and innovative heat treatment technology, they were far better able to cope with contaminated lubrication than conventional alternatives, in fact bearings made of HTF steel offer up to seven times the service life that ‘standard’ bearing do if the lubrication ends up contaminated. HTF material can also be used for cylindrical, tapered and spherical roller bearings.
After the new bearings were put into service they lasted an incredible six years without issue, a fourfold increase on the 18 months the previous models were managing. When you factor in engineering costs as well as, far more significantly, the savings the company made from avoiding downtime and lost production, something as simple as adopting bearings made from a tougher variety of steel ended up saving this customer an astonishing €4,538,304 per annum. We’d call that a worthwhile investment.
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Andy Kemble, NSK Europe’s Product Manager for Super Precision Bearings, believes that snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in this manner perfectly showcases NSK’s attitude to problem solving and customer service. ‘We work with a huge range of different customers, both generally and specifically in the Machine Tools sector,’ he says. ‘Every single one of them is facing different challenges, some of them very unique. No matter what their issue might be, however, we will do everything we can to rise to the challenge and provide both a product which meets their needs and the ongoing support to make sure that product is as long lasting and reliable as possible.
‘NSK is a comprehensive manufacturer of components for machine tools, and we are uniquely able to meet the increasingly sophisticated needs of this most demanding of sectors.’
View our comprehensive collection of products including bearings, linear and automotive components. Stay in motion whilst maintaining control with NSK today.
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