GKN Hardy Spicer Machine Tool Coolant

Notes

GKN (the UK blue chip axle manufacturer) was experiencing repeated bearing failures in Nova high frequency grinder machines.  They approached us to see if Magnom™ units might help. 

We realised quickly that the bearings in the system were failing through overheating; clearly the cooling system was not working. In fact the cooling jackets around the spindles were blocking due to contaminant (predominantly rust from the steel parts of the system).

As and when these jackets were blocking they needed to be soaked in chemicals for 3 to 4 days. In the worst cases the jackets themselves had to be scrapped and replaced at £700 each. Clearly the failed bearing also needed to be replaced.

In the best case the repair per failure was therefore £1000 and in the worst case it was £1700. The failure rate in the 64 unit operation was 2 per month!

We specified a Magnom™ Clear 5 on the cooling water loops on all of the high frequency spindles to overcome this problem (64 machines).

Initially a single grinding machine was used to trial the technology – amazingly the Magnom™ was full of contaminant within 3 hours!

The Magnom™ was cleaned by the engineers and reinstalled, with time the Magnom’s cleaning intervals extended dramatically as the coolant was progressively cleaned.

The debris was analysed and found to be predominantly rust particles, ranging in size from less than a micron up to 900 microns!

Since then Magnom™ Clear 5 Units have been installed on all machines on site - to date GKN has not experienced a single failure!

Benefits

• Bearing failure due to inadequate cooling eliminated
• Water jacket cleaning requirements (soak in chemical) reduced
• Water Jacket replacements reduced
• Cooling system efficiency improved
• Downtime reduced

Installation notes

This unit was fitted inline within the coolant loop.