Eriks repairs bakery's sealed motor gearbox unit

Northern Foods was kept running during the worst of the recent snowy weather thanks to a repair by Eriks on an unusual sealed motor gearbox unit at its Gunstones bakery in Sheffield.

Northern Foods produces branded household name products such as Fox's biscuits and Goodfella's pizza alongside retailer own-label ready meals, sandwiches and salads, pizza, biscuits and puddings.

When a vital piece of machinery required urgent servicing, Eriks was asked to repair and return an obsolete gearbox as soon as possible.

The Northern Foods onsite maintenance team identified a potential problem on the gearbox before it developed into a breakdown and took advantage of a tight production window to make a repair.

The gearbox turned out to be a sealed enclosure with a bevel/helical gear reducer and an AC 3 phase motor inside.

The unit was sealed for ingress protection due to the frequent wash-downs on the premises required by the strict hygiene standards adhered to on the site.

Eriks had previously performed a full survey of all the rotating machines on site and the engineers on shift at the Eriks Sheffield workshop that day were able to look up the unusual gearbox to find the specification, performance and usage data, enabling them to diagnose the fault and identify the correct replacement parts for the food production area correctly.

Once the repair was complete, they could also match its test performance.

Upon inspection, Eriks engineers found that water ingress had caused internal fretting corrosion of the main output shaft-bearing unit; while posing no threat of contamination, prolonged operation would have resulted in raised temperatures and eventually the seizure of the unit.

The gearbox was stripped, cleaned, inspected and then repaired.

This included a bearing change, including a re-bore and bush applied to the bearing housing.

The gears were inspected and passed.

The motor stator was placed in the stoving oven, usually used to cure rewound electric motor stators, to ensure that no moisture was left and that the supply leads were repaired.

New seals were applied and the unit lubed and reassembled.

Two engineers transported the repainted and fully tested unit back to the site on the same day.

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