As good as new - Lowering lifecycle costs and CO emiions rough reconditioning

2014-09-23 | 000-005-317 DE-EN

SCHAEFFLER AG, BERLIN/SCHWEINFURT

360 Lifecycle Management - Schaeffler at InnoTrans 2014

As good as new - Lowering lifecycle costs and CO2 emissions through reconditioning

Lifecycle costs are becoming a key factor in railway engineering, bringing solutions that help increase bearing service life more and more into focus. The expert and economical reconditioning of bearings is one such solution - and a service that Schaeffler performs at numerous locations throughout the world for bearings from all manufacturers. The professional reconditioning restores the maximum useful life of the wheel set bearings and can be performed up to seven times. Another significant advantage is the extremely low level of CO2 emissions compared with the emissions generated by fabrication of new bearings.

Calculations have shown that reconditioning yields about a 97% drop in CO2 emissions from newly producing bearings. The level is comparable with the emissions produced during a 2000-km drive in a VW Golf VII (85 PS), at 113 g of CO2 emissions per driven kilometer.

This value was yielded by Schaeffler in an in-house lifecycle assessment in which the complete product lifecycle for a standard axlebox bearing was analyzed using special lifecycle assessment software and compared with the results obtained in the case of bearing reconditioning. The various phases in the product lifecycle of a TAROL bearing, from the raw materials and energy production/recovery phase through the design and production, packaging and distribution, and use and maintenance phases to the disposal phase, were investigated.

The properties and the condition of roller bearings have a major impact on the operation of rail vehicles. With preventive or corrective maintenance, a consistently high availability can be achieved. Furthermore, maintenance costs are lowered through routine maintenance and qualified reconditioning.

Oftentimes, new roller bearings are installed despite the fact that the existing bearings could be restored to their original condition by proper reconditioning. Hence, reconditioning of old roller bearings with shorter delivery times is more economical in many cases.

The customer performs the maintenance activities as usual and sends the dismantled bearings in a bundle to Schaeffler for reconditioning. There, all parts are first thoroughly cleaned. Schaeffler has special cleaning facilities for TAROL units, which are used as axlebox bearings in rail vehicles. Up to ten bearings can be cleaned in a single cleaning operation. Any residues arising during the process are removed and disposed of in an environmentally-friendly manner. Thorough cleaning is necessary to facilitate proper inspection. In the subsequent inspection, the necessary work steps are defined and bearings that can no longer be used are segregated. Any nonconformities found (e.g., corrosion due to idle periods, passage of current, or indentations) are recorded in a report and saved in a database. Thus, a parts history is created for each roller bearing. Based on the nonconformance report, the necessary machining steps are determined. This results in predictable maintenance cycles for the customer, who receives detailed information on the assessment and on reconditioning measures for the products as well as extensive feedback regarding detected damage patterns and frequencies, making it easier to infer the operation and condition of the overall vehicle.

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