Fast pinion shaft repair for Renk reduction gearbox

Our customer is a leading international energy company involved in all aspects of power generation and supply.

Conventional generating resources such as coal-fired power plants, waste incineration plants, wind energy and biomass are used to provide millions of households and industrial companies with electricity, gas and heating.

A representative of Stork Gears & Services was invited to inspect the Renk gearbox in order to detect and analyze the root cause of increasing noise levels. The reduction gearbox, type Renk, was located between the turbine and generator set.

Our inspection engineer inspected the gearbox while it was still in operation and our optimization tools revealed a broken input pinion tooth. The gearbox was dismantled and the damaged pinion shaft was transported  to our workshop in Rotterdam.

Back in Rotterdam our engineering department made drawings of the pinion shaft and cleanly removed the broken tooth with our Höfler Mega 1600 machine. We then sent the pinion shaft back to the customer in order to resume operation, this time at a reduced power level of 80%.

Based on the drawings which were made by our engineering department, Stork Gears & Services was able to manufacture a brandnew shaft within 6 weeks. It took another 4 days to replace the damaged shaft with our brandnew one. After that, operation could be resumed at a 100 % power level.

Further optimization involved:

• trimming of the SSS clutch holes and conical shaft
• properly cleaning the white metal bearings

Market segment: Power