CARB toroidal roller bearings double service life in continuous caster

Metals industry

Continuous slab caster strand

Guide rolls

Full complement CARB toroidal roller bearings

CARB toroidal roller bearings double service life in continuous caster

NEWORLD engineers develop a customized bearing arrangement to help one Russian steel plant to improve the productivity by reducing unplanned downtime in the casting machine.

Capable of producing up to 5.9 million tonnes of steel a year, the steel plant is an integrated steel-making plant located in Ural Industrial Zone, Russia. The factory produces top-quality material for the automotive industry, as well as tinplate and steels for the packaging industry with two slab casting machines.

The challenge

Recurring bearing failures on the continuous slab caster strand guide rolls had been negatively impacting caster maintenance and production for some time. The spherical roller bearing used in the continuous slab caster failed as a result of bearing damage.

NEWORLD engineers develop a customized bearing arrangement to help the steel plant to improve the productivity by reducing unplanned downtime in the casting machine.

The solution

Working with the steel plant to determine the cause of the failures, NEWORLD and steel plant engineers concluded that the bearing arrangement of the strand guide rolls was inadequate for the application.

NEWORLD suggested installing CARB toroidal roller bearings instead, as they have a higher load-bearing capacity than spherical roller bearings and furthermore combine the self-aligning capability of spherical roller bearings with the axial displacement ability of cylindrical roller bearings.

The steel plant engineers also designed a new caster roll with three roll bodies, the centre roll supporting two full complement

CARB toroidal roller bearings. The new arrangement provided maximum load carrying capacity combined with a dynamic, self-aligning capability.

After installing the CARB toroidal roller bearings in the caster rolls, they reported a marked improvement in service life. Additionally, modifying the re-lubrication quantity resulted in improved roll line service life performance. To achieve further performance improvements.

The results

The customized caster roll arrangement with CARB toroidal roller bearings doubled the service life of the previous, spherical roller bearing arrangement. Subsequent maintenance and lubrication procedure improvements enabled the steel plant to achieve a stable service life of 3.5 million tonnes in the caster bow segments and straightening zone as well as 5 million tonnes in the withdrawal area already over several years.

Application

• Continuous slab caster No 1 strandguide rolls

• Segments 1–8 casting bow 9–10 Straightening section 11–18 withdrawal area

Solution

• CARB toroidal roller bearings in the centre positions of a two-split roll design

• Customized caster roll redesign

Customer Benefits

• Increased productivity

• Reduced planned and unplanned downtime

• Extended service life

• Lower maintenance cost