Kingsbury Bearing Design Configurators

Since 2010, Kingsbury's Engineering Department has embarked on a project to create or update standard designs for all major bearing lines. Although certain products, such as equalized thrust bearings, have had standard dimensions for many decades, other important aspects such as instrumentation have not been addressed. As a result of the wide array of temperature sensors, not to mention modifications such as grooves for lead wire exits, non-standard collar bores, special pad base materials, and the option of retaining pads inside their carriers, Kingsbury's library of assembly and manufacturing drawings has grown dramatically over the past 25 years with the use of CAD design tools. This minimal lack of standardization has led to longer lead times in both the design and manufacturing phases for common optional features, so in an effort to remedy this problem, we have begun developing configurators to encourage our sales staff and customers to consider using standard modifications whenever practical. For example, our engineers have carefully reviewed our database to determine which temperature sensors would be stocked, where they would be mounted on the bearing pads, and how wide a groove would need to be to accommodate the lead wires.

Many of the design configurators have already been completed and are in active use for equalized flooded and direct-lube thrust bearings. The configurator for custom tilting-pad journal bearings is rapidly nearing full implementation, and work is well-advanced for non-equalized thrust bearings, both flooded and direct-lube. The configurators are beneficial not only to Kingsbury, but more importantly to our customers, who will enjoy the following advantages:

• A greatly reduced lead time for new drawings: usually just a matter of several hours as opposed to days or weeks.
• The promotion of standardized instrumentation packages developed around components that are cost effective and generally stocked.
• An optimized bearing design that assures the proper flow of oil throughout the bearing, identifying sources of excessive pressure drops and giving the designer valuable feedback to enhance the bearing's performance.

We encourage both established and prospective customers to contact us in the bid process with any questions about bearing design options, and to see firsthand how quickly a complete assembly drawing can be issued with the new configurators.