Linear guide life boosts

A UK-based man­u­fac­tur­er of hygien­ic wipes (wet wipes) is enjoy­ing the ben­e­fits of replac­ing stan­dard lin­ear guides with those man­u­fac­tured by NSK. After expe­ri­enc­ing per­sis­tent and expen­sive break­down sit­u­a­tions, the com­pa­ny opt­ed to upgrade by fit­ting NSK lin­ear guides, which thanks to their stain­less steel slid­ers and spe­cial­ly coat­ed rails, have deliv­ered a near­ly nine-fold increase in work­ing life. Installed with­in the frame­work of an NSK Added Val­ue Pro­gramme AIP, the move has result­ed in improved machine per­for­mance, as well as reduced main­te­nance and down­time costs.

The com­pa­ny makes wet wipes for domes­tic and cos­met­ic use. How­ev­er, the plant was hav­ing an issue with its con­vert­ing, cut­ting and stack­ing line, which sec­tions and com­press­es the wet wipes ready for pack­ag­ing. Here, fre­quent fail­ures were occur­ring of the lin­ear guide found on the ‘stack­er feet’ section.

The ‘stack­er feet’ sec­tion uses a lin­ear guide with the slid­er held sta­tion­ary, while the rail with a foot mount­ing is dri­ven up and down in quick suc­ces­sion to com­press the wet wipes. It could be observed that the mate­r­i­al used to man­u­fac­ture both the rail and slid­er ele­ments of the lin­ear guide was high-car­bon bear­ing steel, with stan­dard seals attached to the slider.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the impact of lin­ear guide fail­ure was prov­ing cost­ly for the plant, with increased main­te­nance and unplanned down­time. Each fail­ure, which on aver­age occurred every two weeks (26 times a year), would result in down­time costs of around €410 per hour. For every fail­ure event, an engi­neer would require 30 min­utes to replace the guide.

Under­stand­ably, the com­pa­ny want­ed to find a solu­tion to improve machine per­for­mance and extend lin­ear guide life. NSK’s engi­neer­ing team was duly invit­ed to vis­it the site and review the appli­ca­tion. This process revealed that the exist­ing lin­ear guides were fre­quent­ly fail­ing due to cor­ro­sion and the ingress of chem­i­cal flu­id, caus­ing seizure from grease washout.

Fol­low­ing the review, the engi­neers rec­om­mend­ed replac­ing the stan­dard lin­ear guides with NSK lin­ear guides fea­tur­ing stain­less steel slid­ers and spe­cial­ly coat­ed rails. Since imple­men­ta­tion, break­down events have been reduced sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Where­as the plant was pre­vi­ous­ly expe­ri­enc­ing 26 break­downs a year, the com­pa­ny has wit­nessed just three in 12 months using the NSK lin­ear guides – an impres­sive 88% decrease. In turn, the com­pa­ny has achieved sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings in lin­ear guide, down­time and repair costs.