GRAPHALLOY ^® Bearings

Increase Condensate Pump MTBR to Over Seven Years

A large pump repair shop, with many years of experience upgrading problem pumps with GRAPHALLOY wear parts, was tasked by their customer to find a replacement for the metal bearings in their Condensate Return pumps. The metal bearings were wearing out quickly and the customer was constantly replacing the bearings and repairing the damage they caused to the pump.

He showed his customer a similar condensate pump they were refurbishing, including replacing the GRAPHALLOY bushings. He told the customer that this pump ran for over 7 years before needing to be rebuilt. After all this time, the GRAPHALLOY bushings showed minimal wear and there was no damage to the pump but the shop’s directive was to always replace the bearings during a re-build.

Most of the shop’s work is on commercial pumps for universities and businesses and they typically use GRAPHALLOY on vertical sewage ejector pumps and condensate pumps.

The shop has several customers with these types of condensate pumps and have been replacing the OEM provided bearing (which is a bronze bearing) with a GRAPHALLOY bushing, for many years. They did this due to the temperature of the water, 212°F, improper greasing, and occasional dry run conditions which caused the metal bearings to fail.

The pump OEM’s operating instructions state “Prevent excessive heating and wear of bearings by proper lubrication at regular intervals. Avoid over-lubrication, which also causes bearings to heat up and produce excessive wear. When bearings are worn and unit is noisy, replace immediately with new bearings so as not to injure the other rotating parts.”

The shop manager pointed out to his customer that with self-lubricating, non-galling, GRAPHALLOY bushings installed instead of greased bearings, they would not have to worry about dry-running, greasing or damage to rotating parts.

Even small pumps can benefit from Graphalloy upgrades.

2 April 2019