“SKF extreme temperature bearings address the need for bearings that can perform in hot, dry environments on slow rotating machinery,” says Charlotte Enlund, SKF’s product manager for dry-lubricated bearings. “Grease-lubricated bearings often fail at temperatures exceeding 250°C because even special greases lose their ability to lubricate adequately above this temperature.”
Graphite-lubricated bearings can extend service lives dramatically in high-temperature applications. For example, in one cooling bed application used for sheet metal manufacture, the bearing service life was increased by a factor of three.
In such an application, each bearing can save up to 4.6kg of CO2 emissions and 1.5kg of grease per year. A cooling bed equipped with 5,000 bearings could therefore save 7.5 tonnes of grease and 23 tonnes of CO2 per year – equivalent to an 82% reduction in climate impact compared to grease-lubricated, deep-groove ball bearings.