AGEING WORM GEARS REPLACED BY PLANETARY GEARS IN SEWAGE PLANT

Welsh Water wanted to replace the drives with a solution that would offer high efficiency and long life, without the costly downtime of remanufacturing the gearboxes or bridge structures. Brevini has supplied planetary gearboxes that fit in the footprint of the original boxes.

"This project was a little trickier than some, as the worm gearboxes were set well back and there was a foot mounted housing containing the bearing assembly to support the bridge,” said Dave Brown, Brevini UK sales manager."However, we were able to provide a planetary solution that utilises taper roller bearings in the output assembly to support the bridge directly by fitting the wheel onto the gearbox shaft.”

Software analysis verified that the gearbox lifetime would exceed the design life of the equipment – in the case of continuously operating equipment in the water industry this can often be in excess of 100,000 hours.