Customer Requirements
Tufcot are very proud to work with Blue Ocean Industries who are our Key Customer in Australia, meaning they have the exclusive rights to sell Tufcot® throughout Australia.
Blue Ocean Industries were contacted by a customer on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland involved in commercial and government construction projects in the marine industry.
The customer required replacement upper and lower guide bearings as well as thrust bearings for a lock gate structure that required maintenance.
The customer needed to find a suitable substitution for the original bearing material and was having issues with sourcing, logistics and long lead times. They began investigating alternatives to the original bearing material and came across Tufcot®.
The customer also specified that time was a highly critical factor in this project because the lock gate serviced a residential canal community and, during installation, would need to be closed thus preventing access to local waterways to thousands of residents.
A lot of heavy machinery would also have to be used to coordinate the entire operation making it an expensive process.
The Tufcot Solution
It was clear that the lock gate bearings would need to be able to withstand extreme conditions because they would spend the majority of their service life in and around saltwater environments.
The lower guide and thrust bearings spend 100% of the time completely submerged in saltwater with the upper bearings also getting a lot of salt spray during poor weather conditions.
By using Tufcot® T100MP in this application, it would ensure that the service life of the bearings was not adversely affected by these changing conditions.
Tufcot® T100MP performs equally well in dry and wet conditions due to its self-lubricating characteristics. This ensures effectiveness in operation whenever they are put into use and provides a maintenance-free solution.
Blue Ocean Industries’ close relationship with Tufcot Engineering helped to ensure that the raw materials were sourced and on hand to accommodate the tight maintenance turnaround required.
Blue Ocean Industries’ state-of-the-art CNC machine shop enabled them to machine the finely toleranced bearings, including longitudinal water grooves, and they were able to press fit the bearings into the housings to provide a full turnaround service to the customer.
