The FAG split spherical roller bearings available from Schaeffler Australia are engineered to radically simplify maintenance, cut downtime and reduce costs during bearing replacement in machinery and plant.

Schaeffler's FAG split bearings not only reduce downtime by 50 per cent or more but also save on costs by eliminating complicated bearing replacement procedures associated with solid bearings. The easily installed split roller bearings increase uptime and profitability for a wide variety of machinery and plant used by industries including mining, energy, oil and gas, construction, engineering, materials handling, lifting technology, manufacturing, metal working, HVAC, food and beverage, agribusiness processing, ports and cargo handling, heavy transport and rail, paper production and primary production.

Schaeffler Australia Industrial Sector and Product Manager Mr Martin Grosvenor explains that split spherical roller bearings are mainly used where the replacement of un-split spherical roller bearings would require costly additional work, involving the removal of gears or couplings, the dismounting of drives or the dismantling of shaft power trains.

Particularly useful on shafts supported at several points and locations that are difficult to access, FAG split spherical roller bearings are typically applied on worm, bucket and belt conveying equipment, materials processing plant, motors, bucket wheel excavators and reclaimers, elevators, winches and sheaves, mixing and stirring plant, mills and crushers, sintering plant, drum type kilns, fans and ventilators, dust extraction plant, drive and transmission shafts, ventilation plant, rolling mills, ships and paper machinery, and primary product and food and beverage processing.

According to Mr Grosvenor, FAG split spherical roller bearings help reduce mounting downtime by about 50 per cent compared to solid bearings by eliminating time-consuming procedures such as mounting of drive components, mounting of shaft assembly in housings and connection of drive components.

He added that maintenance downtime can be cut even further to about 33 per cent compared to solid bearings by further reducing the number of steps involved from ten to four, eliminating procedures such as disconnection of drive components, removal of shaft assemblies and removal of drive components from the shaft.

The premium quality FAG split spherical roller bearings from the global Schaeffler group assure ongoing reliability and are backed in Australia by product selection and packaging solutions, installation expertise, online condition monitoring, and lubrication technology for optimal performance.

Key features of FAG split spherical roller bearings include metric and imperial shaft sizes; no major modifications required to existing housings; comparable load capacity and misalignment capability to a solid bearing; quick and easy bearing replacement; single bearing design for fixed or floating arrangements; and pre-set radial internal clearance, eliminating need for feeler gauges.

Key benefits include reduced replacement costs; existing shaft centre height maintained; no decrease in bearing life; proven design able to accommodate high loads and misalignment; reduced downtime and number of maintenance tasks; lower inventory costs; and optimum clearance achieved by clamping the inner ring directly to the shaft with high tensile socket head screws.