Pumps UK were approached by Barclays bank to investigate their main Armstrong chilled water pumps that were making irregular mechanical sounds.
The pumps themselves feed the cooling fans for the banks servers, therefore it was critical that they do not fail. We carried out an initial site visit where we were shown to a large inline Armstrong pump. The motor on the pump itself was 55kW and weighed approximately 500kg.
Due to the importance of the pump’s job it is running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This had caused the internal bearing grease to overheat and disperse. We decided the best option with this type of pump was to replace both sets of bearings.
We used a specialized hydraulic bearing puller to remove the old bearings and a hot plate to expand the new set onto the shaft. We regreased the new bearings with a high temperature grease, rebuilt them, and reinstalled back onto the pump.
We used a specialized hydraulic bearing puller to remove the old bearings and a hot plate to expand the new set onto the shaft. We regreased the new bearings with a high temperature grease, rebuilt them, and reinstalled back onto the pump.
After installing the new bearings we carried out a full test on the pump and managed to alter the parameters of its inverter so the motor was running more efficiently and would prevent the grease to overheat in the future.
We kept the down time on the pump to a minimum by carrying out the works on a weekend. All was completed in a day with minimum disruption to the sites services.
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