Much longer lifetime

A plant owned by the world's largest beverage can manufacturer experienced frequent unexpected production stoppages due to the failure of rolling bearings on coating equipment spray heads. After an on-site analysis, NSK recommended replacing the existing bearings with VV Series deep groove ball bearings with non-contact seals. The result: bearing life increased many times over, and the plant is achieving annual savings of around €240,000.

The food and beverage industry places high demands on the reliability of its production facilities because production is largely interlinked and operates at very high capacity. If just one machine stops, this affects the entire line and the loss of production is high. This also applies to the production of beverage cans for soft drinks as well as for isotonic and alcoholic beverages - especially when it comes to the world's largest manufacturer of beverage cans.

At one of this manufacturer's plants, repeated failures of the roller bearings on the spray heads of a coating line were repeatedly causing production interruptions and costly downtime. The company then approached NSK with a request to increase bearing life.

NSK engineers with application expertise first assessed the environmental conditions on site. In the NSK laboratory, both defective bearings and the grease were analyzed extensively. From this, it could be deduced that the compressed air required for the spraying process was literally blowing the bearing grease out of the rolling bearings. The bearing seals used were unable to prevent this undesirable effect.

NSK then recommended replacing the existing bearings with deep groove ball bearings with non-contact VV series seals and C3 bearings. This bearing configuration ensures high performance even in dirty environments - without the risk of increasing torque or operating temperature. The non-contact seal lips also cause no discernible additional friction to the bearing - a real advantage when power loss is a critical factor.

This recommendation was implemented directly. The result: although guiding the high-pressure air flow through the bearing is part of the machine's operating process, the grease retention level is acceptable. And, crucially, the average service life of the bearings increased many times over, from 7 operating days to 110 days - which is the rhythm according to which the entire system is serviced on a rotational basis.

The beverage can manufacturer now benefits from the extended bearing life, increased productivity and reduced maintenance costs. For these factors, NSK has calculated an annual saving of around €240,000.