Our customer is one of the biggest steel producing companies in Vietnam. They also have a flat steel plant with capacity of over 500,000 tonnes anually. The flat steel plant has modern technology with major manufacturing equipment from European OEM.
After the rolling section, a flat steel coin in its desired thickness is led into a finish rolling station. To keep the steel sheet straight in guiding position, a huge compensation pulley named looper was installed by Tenova. The wire rope was not lubricated because the lubricant might drip on the finished product, causing contamination and affecting the quality of the entire process. As the load is high, there is too much friction in between the wire-rope and pulley, causing a lot of noise and wear.
We stepped in with the objectives to reduce friction and wearing of the wire rope so as to prolong its life, reduce noise, avoid lubricant dropping on the finished product. Our product had to work in a dusty environment as well in order to beat competition.
We targeted the application on the looper or the vertical compensation pulley. It had to be protective and easy to inspect the wire rope on regular basis.
Since Tenova recommended no lubrication is needed, Klüber Lubrication South East Asia introduced Klüberplus S 01-004 as a dry lubricant. When the customer stopped their production for maintenance, they applied the dry lubrication by brush and waited for 20 to 30 minutes for it to dry.
We are glad that the performance of our lubrication turned out as desired by the customer. There was no dripping, no rush, less noise and a longer re-lubrication cycle. The customer is confident that the wire ropes would make it over two years.
