Thompson Couplings TCAE-5 refurbish coupling for use in Bluescope Steel Plant.

Bluescope Steel Case Study

TCAE-5 Coupling Bluescope Steel

After 3 years in the one of the most hostile working environments imaginable, this pair of TCAE-5 (see below) couplings arrived back at Thompson Couplings Australia, they were replaced by two more identical TCAE-5 couplings for another 3 years work at Bluescope Steel.

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Working 2 weeks out of three, these couplings drove one of the furnace hot cars at Blue Scope's coke oven battery in Unanderra. The 24 x 7 working conditions. In essence the hot car receives a 1000 degree charge of coke from the ovens 66 times in every 24 hour period; the car is then driven to the quenching area where 6000 litres of water are used to cool the entire car -bogies and all. The car then delivers the load to the load end point and starts over.

As with all Thompson Couplings, these couplings are non-user serviceable, so, since being installed 3 years ago, these couplings have neither required nor been given, any regreasing or other servicing or downtime.

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Installed originally as an evaluation test, these couplings have exceeded Blue Scope's expectation, that the other hot car in the battery is being changed over to this same system of drive. Even with the (eventual) failure of the protective boot on one coupling, the coupling continued to function so that replacement could be planned for when the maintenance period that month was reached for other elements of the car. There was no catastrophic failure, even in the face of gross amounts of caustic and abrasive ingress, the coupling continued to function, developing some small increasing degree of backlash.

The Thompson Couplings range of couplings really has improved the reliability of plant and machinery breakdown due to coupling failure has been eliminated. www.thompsoncouplings.com please email [email protected] for more information.