Large bearings available on short lead times

Bearing manufacturers Revolvo Ltd are bucking the current trend of limited availability in large bearing sizes by offering both standard and bespoke bearings on reduced lead times. The new service is already helping to extend the operational life of older plant and equipment, as well as reduce downtime with shorter maintenance periods for other production- critical machines. 

The service is available for bearings of up to 1,500mm outside diameter, including deep groove and angular contact ball bearings, cylindrical rollers and thrust and split roller bearings. Thanks to a recent investment of nearly £1 million in new CNC grinding machines, Revolvo say that their lead times for large-sized bearings has been reduced to as little as 18 weeks, a significant cut compared to the industry average of over 18 months.

A large bearing failure is a costly problem to solve; this is especially true when the bearing type is no longer manufactured and re-engineering is necessary to accommodate a more readily available replacement. In today's cost-down, efficiency-driven environment, these costs can prove to be prohibitive, especially when production disruption costs are taken into consideration. 

Revolvo are able to manufacture replacement bearings that meet or even exceed the original design and performance envelope of virtually all existing and obsolete bearing designs that fall within their core product range.

‘Our ability to provide replacements for obsolete bearings across the size range, including, crucially, larger sizes up to 1,500mm outside diameter, in relatively short delivery times, means that we can often provide a solution in heavily capitalized continuous process industries which are faced with potentially crippling costs as a result of bearing-related equipment failure,’ said Adrian Menzies, sales and marketing director for Revolvo. 

The company manufactures many types of bearings that have been made obsolete by the original manufacturer. These bearings are manufactured either from original drawings or from drawings that Revolvo produce by reverse engineering samples of obsolete bearings provided by the customer. In addition, the company carries out refurbishment work on larger-size bearings, both solid and split, where it is economically viable as an alternative to manufacturing new products.

Replacement bearings manufactured by Revolvo can be either metric or imperial variants. They can be tailor-made equivalents of obsolete bearings, subtly modified through improvements to overcome problems of reduced running life due to factors such as inadequate load capacity, sealing and poor lubrication.