Wear-resistant plain bearings in PET bottle unscrambler in bottling plant

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• What was needed: iglidur plain bearing technology
• Requirements: The bearing technology must reliably perform 3840 double strokes within eight hours for up to 10,000 filled bottles per hour.
  Further requirements: High precision, low failure rate, high flexibility, universality, durability and stability.
• Industry: Beverage bottling
• Success for the customer: The plain bearings enable frequent sliding with low wear values under high forces. An initial conclusion after several months in operation shows: The performance of the components remains stable even under continuous operation of 12-24 hours.

This system from Zhengzhou Lichuang Equipment is used for the automated filling of beverages. For this purpose, the PET plastic bottles are placed in a row before they are subsequently fed into the filling process. A bottle aligner was developed for correct positioning, which places the bottles upright regardless of the bottle type. Bearing technology is used here which, based on a capacity of 10,000 filled bottles per hour, is designed to carry out up to 3840 double strokes per day within eight hours to align the bottles - and this continuously throughout the week.
Further demands on the storage technology arise from the high-performance bottling line: in the beverage industry, these are characterised by high precision, low failure rates, flexibility, universality, durability and stability. They must therefore always operate trouble-free and maintenance-free and function reliably even under frequent movements and periodic shocks. 
The failure rate is very high when using conventional linear bearings. Common linear roller bearings have steel balls that run on a smooth shaft with only a few points of contact. The high load means that the smooth shaft is susceptible to cracks. Other problems such as poor sliding behaviour occur as a result.

During initial tests of the bottle leveller with steel bearings, bearing problems led to failures of the automatically retractable module for alignment.
This is why igus plain bearing technology is used here today, which offers advantages such as freedom from maintenance, wear resistance and self-lubrication. Specifically, three iglidur J bearings (JSM-1416-20) are used, which support three steel shafts. Together with a steel plate at the end of the shafts, these form the extending module for aligning the bottles, whereby adaptation to different bottle types is possible.
In the application, the plain bearings enable frequent sliding under radial and axial force, achieve lower wear values and thus improve the overall performance and degree of automation of the system. An initial conclusion after several months in operation shows that The performance of the components remains stable even under continuous operation of 12-24 hours.