Reconditioning extends life of support rollers

Paturle, a French steelmaker, has reduced lead times and costs by reconditioning support rollers.

Paturle specialises in the production of cold-rolled steel strip.

Its range of products includes surface-finished strip steel and quenched and drawn steels.

The company operates four rolling stands of different configurations in two mills.

There are 48 or 32 bearings per rolling stand.

The support rollers are reconditioned on a regular basis by Schaeffler UK's reconditioning centre in Llanelli, South Wales.

The outside diameters of the support rollers are critical because they determine the surface of the finished strip material produced.

Six to eight support rollers form a cluster.

Typical steps in the reconditioning process include disassembling, washing and then measuring all the components.

The amount of material to be removed by regrinding is then defined.

Once this has been determined, the raceway (outside diameter) is reground.

The outer rings and inner rings are then assembled and the unit greased.

The section height is measured and the rollers are mounted onto their shafts, with a total section height tolerance of +/- 2.5um.

The support rollers are then packed and shipped back to Paturle.

Brian Fox, engineering manager at Schaeffler UK's reconditioning centre, said: 'The support rollers' service lives are extended significantly, in some cases up to double their original service life.

'We have the machines here at Llanelli to regrind the outer rings to extreme precision while removing a minimal amount of material.

'Compared to purchasing a new bearing, the quality of the reconditioned bearing is not impaired by the grinding process at all.

'Average costs are around 50 per cent of buying new, depending on the size of the bearing of course and lead times for the customer are also reduced by around 50 per cent.'.

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