Specifying a Bearing Made Easy

Have you checked out the Orion Performance Direct Calculator? This convenient and unique online tool helps you specify the correct PSJ bearing for your application. The Performance Direct Calculator provides dimensional and performance data to aid in the selection of the appropriate PSJ bearing.

Just click HERE to visit the Orion website, then click on Performance Direct Bearing Calculator. Of course, if you would like to talk to one of our engineers to help you with your application give us a call at 262-377-2210.

Toshiba and Orion Partner on Major Bearing Study

Toshiba is a worldwide leader in a diverse group of industries, including electronics, telecommunications, household products and power systems. When Toshiba wanted to conduct a study of bearings, it´s no surprise that they teamed with a leader in that industry, Orion Corp.

Tilt pad journal bearings are recognized for their high degree of stability and self-alignment capability. However, few studies have been conducted on the performance characteristics of large-sized bearings. Orion supplied a 580 mm directed lubrication Advantage™ tilt pad bearing to Toshiba for the study. Toshiba chose the Orion Advantage bearing from several competing products because they felt it offered the most advanced design. While all of the candidates offered oil lubrication directed onto the pad, the Advantage bearing was the only one that featured direction of the lubricating oil as it exits the pad.

Toshiba conducted a full load, full speed test of the bearing to validate the analytically predicted results of the static and dynamic characteristics. The increased load capability of the directed lube bearing was verified by conducting a test to the limit of 2.94 Mpa, which exceeded the load capacity of a standard tilt pad bearing tested to 1.6 Mpa. The maximum pad temperature of the directed lube bearing was 87° C at 1.5 Mpa, 41° lower than the 128° C recorded for the same load with a standard tilt pad bearing.

The results of the study were presented at joint conference of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and The Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE) in October of 2004. The paper was authored by K. Ikeda, T. Hirano, T. Yamashita, M. Mikami and H. Sakakida of Toshiba Corp. The paper, TRIB2004-64064 is available through ASME (www.asme.org).