Don’t let washdowns be the cause of ever decreasing circles regarding re-lubrication

This is happening in the industry: potential risks from contamination translate into ever increasing regulations and standards for cleanliness and safety.

In response, you rely on rigorous washdowns to sanitize your plant, repeating the process weekly or even every day if you handle highly contamination-prone products. Yet, your commitment to a more hygienic environment isn’t eliminating all your risks—it’s creating more.

The trouble is, when you use standard bearings in your processing equipment, you need to relubricate them after each washdown. Perception is that water might have entered into the bearings through this process and needs to be purged – until you see the grease coming out past the seals. Grease that can drip onto food. And grease that can accumulate on floors and cause slip-and-fall injuries – before it is washed away into the plant’s wastewater stream.

But this is not all of the risks you may encounter. With manual relubrication there is always the possibility of unplanned downtime as sometimes hidden or hard-to-access bearings are missed during this process and later become points of failure. This can well happen with automatic relubrication as well – if grease clogs form within the pipes and prevent lubricant getting to the bearings.

Let’s not forget about costs though because all the lubricant used costs money and all the time maintenance staff spends on re-lubrication adds up to the overall cost of ownership.

These are issues that SKF engineers knew they could address. By applying their expertise in sealing systems and knowledge of food industry processing and regulations, they developed innovative SKF Food Line Y-bearing technology.

Through an effective bearing seal design, lubricant stays sealed inside the bearing, and the caustic cleaning agents and water prevented from entering the bearing.

For you, this technology can put an end to all the time and effort involved in manual relubrication. It can help you save costs through reduced grease consumption, cleaning water usage (less effort to clean-off bearings from excess grease) and the ongoing replacement of corroded bearings. And it can give you greater confidence that you’re maintaining a safe and compliant environment for your workers and the food or beverages you’re producing.

And under these conditions, there’s less impact from washdowns.

Stephen White - SKF Food & Beverage Industry Portfolio Manager