“Sealed for Life Gearboxes Can Improve Reliability and Bottom-line Performance”

In today’s manufacturing environment, uptime and efficiency are measured on a tenuous scale. Users of power transmission products are especially sensitive to this due to the critical nature of equipment being applied and the impactit has throughout the system. Whether the application is a conveyor in a food processing plant or a tension roll on a paper machine, the gearbox must perform reliably and efficiently. To meet this expectation, gearbox designers must be innovative with robust designs to deliver superior performance in the customer’s environment, translating into uptime and profitability for the user.

One of the ways gearbox designers can accomplish this is to understand failure modes and develop systems or features that address these problems. Let’s take lubrication for example. Most end users of mechanical gearboxes are reluctant to change oil or service gearboxes for a variety of reasons, primarily the time and effort it takes to maintain equipment becomes secondary to other priorities going on within the facility. Along with the increasing demands for productivity enhancements and higher ROI, equipment and machinery cannot afford to be offline even for a short time. However, lubrication is the life blood of the rotating components inside a speed reducer, but it is one of the most overlooked, and typically misunderstood failure modes. One could argue that the oil is contaminated from the inside with “wear-in” particles floating around. While this is true, and could contribute to a failure, in most cases foreign matter (water, dust, chemicals, etc.) get into the oil from the outside, thus contaminating the oil and reducing its performance significantly. Emerging technologies such as Boston Gear’s PosiVentTM gear box offers resistance to outside contaminants getting into the housing and ultimately the oil sump by filtering these with a closed pressure equalization system. This patent pending technology is an improvement over earlier “bladders” whose design was prone to leakage and slow assembly.

By eliminating outside contamination from the equation, gearbox reliability is greater which translates into increased uptime for the end user.

Potential Annual Savings Using Sealed for Life Gearbox:

Assumptions:

  • 100 gearboxes in an average MRO plant
  • Boston Gear maintenance manual suggests changing the oil every 2,500 hrs or every 6 months
  • Hourly rate of maintenance associate is $65.00
  • Average gearbox contains 16 ounces of oil
  • Gearbox runs 10hours/day
  • 250 running days/year

Hours of Operation / Oil Changes Required / Labor Hours / Oil Expenses / Potential Annual Savings Using a Sealed for Life Gearbox
2,500 / 200 / 600 / $1,000 / $40,000

For Reference Only

Contact information:

Ralph Whitley

Director of Engineering

Boston Gear

704-688-7322

email:

Email: alph E. WhitleyPhone: 704-688-7322

701 North, I-85Service RoadFax: 704-688-7403

Charlotte, NC28216