Here’s a clever way to greatly increase the bearing life of your pump and its application.

July 29, 2019|Tip Ninja|

Bearing life is typically expressed in B10 or B50 and is a value of hours. This is simply an estimate on how many operating hours at a given load a bearing will last prior to failure.

In working with our checkball pumps, Dynex Sales and Engineering are constantly reviewing bearing life with applications to evaluate what product will be the best fit. A simple scenario is provided in the following paragraphs.

Scenario:

Customer A wants to provide a Dynex hydraulic pump for their system that is critical to operation within a plant. This plant needs to operate a hydraulic press at pressures up to 10,000 psi and the duty cycle is continuous since the press runs all day and night.

After reviewing the options in the catalog, the customer selects the following option:

Proposal:

Dynex understands from the customer that this application is constant duty and will see continuous operation throughout the day. The customer also wants to avoid downtime as much as possible since the plant has tight schedules.

After considering the options, the next possible solution is to go to the following pump:

This pump uses half of the eight pistons in the pump for active pumping. This is referenced by the number “4” in the model code. By reducing the load on the bearing by 50%, we increase the life of the bearing exponentially.

This pump will deliver the same amount of output, but due to the reduced load on the bearing, the B10 life increases by a factor of 6 times!

After consideration, the small increase in price for the next larger pump is worth the benefit of prolonged operating life in the system.

Conclusion:

It may be worth considering a larger pump product with fewer active pistons to increase the bearing life. The return on this is not linear but exponential.

If you would like to look at some further explanations of how bearing calculations are accomplished, some links to major suppliers of rolling element bearings are listed below:

Do you have to consider life of the product in a tough application? Talk with one of our team members to determine the best solution.

Tip Ninja

Applying his legendary skills toward answering tough questions, defeating difficult hydraulic related problems, and sharing his vast knowledge of Dynex hydraulic products with the world.