At our paper mill we are currently using Rotojet pitot pumps to supply our high pressure shower water on our paper machines. These pumps are belt driven at between 3400-3800 rpm. We are experiencing premature bearing failures at the cylindrical roller bearing at the drive end of the pump. The bearing arrangement is one cylindrical bearing and one deep groove ball bearing at the drive end and one deep groove ball bearing at the rotor end. I was wondering if anybody else has experienced this problem. Any tips to make our units more reliable would be appreciated

WHat is the bearing failure? Is it corrosion? Any water ingress?

You might something in Heinz Blochs failure analysis book or the TapRoot system that has bearing and pump trouble shooting guides built in as part of their RCFA process

David,
Like mentioned before the info on the failure mode would be helpful. If you use roller type bearing check if it's rated for this specific type of lubrication (I presume oil) to run at this speed.

David it sounds like you have a similar setup as I do. I have a 375 a 525 a 1000 and a 175 belt driven rotojet pump each running around 40 hz. Rarely have any type of bearing failure usually its a seal or broken line or somethinglike that. We use the white PM grease Mobil i think, and we grease them every month. I have one smaler trimjet pump that uses oil.

Mike

Thanks to all for your replies. The typical mode of failure is a broken cage in the cylindrical roller bearing at the drive end. The deep groove ball bearing continues to carry the radial load. The bearings are grease lubricated as per manufactures instructions. This style of pump uses a rotating casing and pitot tube arrangement to develop approx 600 psi at the pump discharge. Is anyone else out there using this style of pump?