Bearing Replacement Work Saves Production

Bearing Replacement Work Saves Production The Corus Group's steelmaking plant in Scunthorpe underwent major bearing replacement work. Corus Northern Engineering Services (CNES) worked closely with F'IS to save at least five weeks of production. The Scunthorpe plant uses three Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) plant vessels, which convert molten iron from the blast furnaces into steel. Each vessel weighs 1,300 tonnes, supported on two, 1.75m diameter spherical roller bearings from FAG.Each vessel is able to tilt to various angles up to 150deg from the vertical during the process for charging and discharging purposes.The arduous duty generates high local contact loads, which over time, generates high residual stresses in the tilt bearings. As Ian Taylor, business development engineer plant condition monitoring at CNES says: 'The delivery lead time for bearings of this magnitude can be as long as 12 to 18 months, with plant downtime for a planned bearing change requiring three weeks. The relatively high cost of the bearing becomes almost insignificant compared to the overall production outage costs.By working closely with engineers from F'IS, we removed the existing bearings and fitted the new bearings. This took just four days of the three-week planned outage, before the panels and screens were refitted, the supporting frame removed and the plant recommissioned.' Potential applications for split spherical roller bearings range from shafts supported by several bearings to bearing locations of restricted access, for example, on conveyor plants, belt drives, ships, rolling mills, ventilation systems and paper mills. F'IS range of services includes helping customers mount and operate machines; install and run condition monitoring systems; repair rolling bearings and conduct analyses and study the causes of machine damage and faults; and the early detection of problems and failures on rotating plant and machinery