ABSTRACT

SKF INDUSTRIAL BEARINGS REMANUFACTURING RESETS BEARINGS’ ORIGINAL LIFE POTENTIAL!

Field experience on bearings remanufactured by SKF is very positive in terms of service and performance. SKF has more than 20 years of experience with extremely good customer feedback. To further demonstrate the high performance of industrial bearings remanufactured by SKF, we launched an innovative R&D programme to study the full SKF Remanufacturing chain from the decision made at the customer side, the inspection and selection made at the SKF ReMan centers and through the actual remanufacturing processes and towards the performance of SKF Remanufactured bearings.

Beyond the clear benefits in terms of sustainability (up to 90% CO2 savings) and cost (more than 50% cost reduction) with respect to new bearings, a key driver to enable remanufacturing with the SKF circular offer is to demonstrate the high performance of such bearings. We then studied the relevant type of damage for the core applications in the remanufacturing business, the proportion that can be eligible for an efficient remanufacturing from the life modelling point of view. Then, an extensive test campaign has been achieved to compare new and remanufactured bearings. The test campaign has been designed to generate damage consistent with field one, on a sample set large enough to generate accurate life estimation. Then all tested bearings were sent to a SKF Remanufacturing center to be processed (inspection, selection, repair) the same way as bearings coming from customers. Then, all eligible bearings were remanufactured and tested again under the same operating conditions. Final statistical analysis of the results from both tests showed equivalent life for the two populations (new and remanufactured bearings). Therefore we can state that SKF Industrial Bearing Remanufacturing resets bearings’ original life potential!