The problem
Our customer is a worldwide renowned manufacturer of hot-dip galvanizing equipment for strip metal. Deloro Stellite manufactures investment cast bearing bushings for this customer.

The bushings up to this point made of Deloro Stellite’s Stellite® 6 alloy are used as counter bearings of the guiding roll system in the molten metal pot, which assures the fixed vertical pass-up line of the metal strip in the hot-dip galvanizing process. This means the bushings are exposed to high friction, and hence high temperatures, from approximately 460˚-500˚C (860˚-932˚F). Moreover, and most difficult to resist, is the highly corrosive molten metal bath of zinc or zinc and aluminum where the metal strip is coated.

Usually those bushings have to be changed during the galvanizing of a metal strip, which means downtime and doubled costs for the cast bushings.

The Stellite solution
With the expertise of our sales and engineering departments, Deloro Stellite developed an optimum solution for our customer: instead of the Stellite® 6 alloy, an even more wear resistant alloy was used to extend lifetime. The bushings were cast of Deloro Stellite’s Tribaloy® T-800 alloy to guarantee the desired lifetime despite this very complex wear situation.

The result
With the optimum lifetime of the bushings, our customer is able to save downtime and costs. Many years of experience in the field of wear-resistance have given us the core competence to develop, in partnership with our customers, optimal solutions for their wear problems.