Minimal wear, maximum hygiene: Plain and linear bearings in filling lines

• What was needed: drylin® -trapezoidal thread, igubal ® clips spherical plain bearing , drylin® R flange bearing, Tribo-Tape sliding foils, drylin® T-railguides , iglidur ® flange bearing
• Requirements: All rotary and linear bearings must be easy to clean and achieve a long service life. For hygiene reasons, they must not require any external lubricants, and the materials must be FDA-compliant for parts that come into contact with the product.
• Industry: Packaging, beverage industry
• Success for the customer: The bearing portfolio offers components for all requirements: The bearings made from high-performance polymers are lubricant-free, virtually wear-free and FDA-compliant. This means that users of Küppersbusch systems only need a minimum of service.

It is often smaller companies in the beverage industry that set important trends and initially produce smaller quantities. When they invest in a partially or fully automated filling line, they often turn to Küppersbusch GmbH in Velbert. Typical of Küppersbusch's approach is that there are no prefabricated solutions or series. As most customers want flexible systems in smaller quantities, the solution often consists of semi-automatic, linear filling, labelling and capping machines.
For all system components in these systems, it is important that both the rotary and linear bearings are easy to clean and have a long service life. For hygiene reasons, they must not require any external lubricants, and the materials used for parts that come into contact with the product must be FDA-compliant.
The example of a bottling plant for spirits, which is currently undergoing its final test runs in Velbert before delivery, is a good example of how many and which different plain bearings from the igus® construction kit are used here.
The designers benefit from the constantly growing variety of the selection of the iglidur® material. Instead of the material iglidur® A180, the new FDA variants iglidur® A181 (blue) and the likewise FDA-compliant high-temperature bearing iglidur® A500 are mostly used today.

Height and format adjustments: For
 various height adjustments, drylin® -trapezoidal thread in Kombinatino with flange nuts made of high-performance polymers are used (see image 1 below). Some of the format adjustments are made using drylin® R flange bearings (Fig.

2). Electric motor bracket:
igubal ® clip spherical plain bearings are installed on the mount of an electric motor to ensure easy assembly (Fig. 3).

Vertical linear axis:
On another (vertical) linear axis, Küppersbusch has been using a combination of drylin® R flange bearings with aluminium adapters in which anodised aluminium shafts travel for many years (Fig. 4). It requires no lubricant and is virtually wear-free.

Rotary table outlet and bottle feed:
The outlet of the rotary table, where the bottles are fed in, was originally made of stainless steel. To dampen the noise of the bottles hitting the metal, the Tribo-Tape made of iglidur® B160 is now used (Fig. 5). The sliding film is resistant to cleaning agents and is characterised by a very good sliding/coefficient of friction, even against glass. Filling

and dosing stations:
At the valves and pumps of the filling and dosing stations, the bottles are lifted via drylin® T-rail guides and connected to the filler. On the centring bridges of the filling tubes, the company installs iglidur ® flanged bearings (Fig. 6), which are not only FDA-compliant and chemically resistant, but also have an extremely long service life.