Supplied to a leading manufacturer of steel plate, the worm shaft is nearly two meters long and together with the wheel the assembly weighs in at a colossal 4.850 tonne, the approximate weight of three average sized family cars.
The screw-down worm gears have been designed and manufactured to drive two large rollers for rolling steel slabs to the required plate thickness on a quarto reversing mill. The steel slabs could initially be up to 300 mm thick and are rolled precisely to reduce thickness. During the rolling process, the worm gears auto-adjust by sliding on a special spline, which is incorporated in the worm-wheel hub.
The original manufacturer of the mill press was no longer in business and the steel company was finding it impossible to obtain spares. A breakdown would have halted production, so Renold Gears was approached because of its unique ability to manufacture large worm gear sets of this size and specifications. Also, as only minimal technical drawings were available of the mill, it was necessary to reverse engineer the old worm gears to accurately and precisely reproduce the original design specifications.
The steel company is a leading supplier of steel plate and produces around 200,000 tonnes annually for a wide range of uses, including buildings, bridges, yellow goods, industrial machinery, wind turbines and general construction.
