January 31, 2011

Stainless steel chain plating drum drive replaced by lube free gears

One of our customers, who use an aggressive liquid bath in a plating process for coating metal parts, was experiencing a frequent breaking of the stainless steel chain drive which was corroding in the highly aggressive environment.

The parts are loaded into a large plating drum with a mesh exterior, which is then lowered into a tank containing a highly corrosive solution and heated to high temperatures between 120°F – 150°F. After coating, a series of cleaning and coating cycles are repeated across a battery of baths. A motor engages the drum drive, which needs to rotate slowly and steadily while carrying a high load into each step of the cleaning and coating process. The heavy metal parts in the drum can shift suddenly as the drum rotates, causing heavy shock load to be absorbed on the drive. The stainless steel chain, weakened by corrosion would give up under the shock load.

Intech engineers designed a large lubrication free Intech Power-Core™ gear and included a circular series of 2” diameter cast in ports made of Inconel™ in order to securely attach the gear to the drum. They also integrated a Power-Core bearing block in the shaft.

The Intech gear is resistant to the corrosive environment and was designed to absorb the sudden shock load, and proved to offer substantial savings to the customer.

Plating drum gears

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