Fast and Stress-Free Maintenance: The Benefits of Johnson-Fluiten Replacement Kits

A Johnson-Fluiten rotary joint is characterized by reliability and durability, but it remains a component with moving parts. Even during routine maintenance, the company knows how to differentiate itself by providing solutions that minimize the impact of intervention for the customer. Marco Golla, sales manager at Johnson-Fluiten, tells us about it.

A Rotary joint is not going to last forever: no matter how robust and reliable the component is, it is a normal process for some of its parts to wear out with use.

What can be expected, however, is that the rotary joint will last for a long time and that wear parts can be replaced easily, quickly and without disruption to production operations.

Johnson-Fluiten, a leading designer and manufacturer of rotary joints for industry offers a combination of replacement kits and support services such that customers can be assured that the time and energy spent on maintenance is virtually eliminated.

We asked Marco Golla, the company's sales director, to describe the features of the kits and services.

What are the main spare parts you offer for rotary joints?   In fact, our proposal is more articulated than an extensive range of spare parts: in fact, we provide customers with a choice between two maintenance processes, either stand-alone or full-service In the first case, customers can order a kit from us and proceed with joint maintenance themselves: customers who use our R-RH rotary joints, for example, which can be maintained without the need to disassemble them, find this solution convenient; the customer takes care of the assembly of the components independently, which, with our kits, is very simple. With one-day shipment of kits for products available in the catalog, this solution ensures minimal downtime and business continuity for the customer.

The kits are appreciated by end users who can work freely without the need to call in the machine manufacturer's maintenance department, an activity that would likely be more time-consuming and costly than simply servicing the joint. This option is highly valued by customers who use our rotary joints equipped with the unique Quick Replacement Design (QRD) mounting system, a technology that allows the joint to be serviced in a matter of minutes and reassembled just as quickly, without disassembling it from the machine.

If the customer prefers the full-service option instead, he can send the joint back to us and receive it within a short time completely overhauled and refurbished.

In this case, the customer avoids the maintenance work altogether by delegating it to genuine joint experts such as our specialized technicians: this is the preferred option for machine manufacturers, who in this way ensure a workmanlike operation and can trust that the end customer will have no need to call them back to service that joint.

The final outcome of both processes, however, is the same: within a short time, the customer ends up with his perfectly functioning joint, remanufactured and guaranteed to be as good as new.

Can you describe the components included in the replacement kits for the mechanical seal? What materials are used and how do these materials ensure optimal performance?

We offer different spare parts for different types of rotary joints: the components included in the kits change depending on the joint; for R and RH rotary joints, versatile components suitable for almost any industry and generally used to handle water and oil in cylinder heating, we provide mechanical seal kits and bearing kits.

In R and RH joints, consisting of a static and a rotating part, the seals are the parts subject to the most wear, so our kit includes a rotating ring and its gasket, a static ring, also with a gasket, and springs.

Although it is the mechanical seals that wear most quickly, after a few years of continuous use it may be necessary to replace the bearings as well. Although bearings suitable for these joints are commercially available, the convenience of our kit lies in the fact that the bearings are, by our technicians, greased for life with a high-temperature resistant lubricant.

For our Z rotary joints we provide a kit that includes guides, seal, spring and possibly rotor.

For multi-pass rotary joints and steam joints manufactured by Kadant, our kits include gaskets for the seals between the passages made of “filled” PTFE (Teflon), which compared to pure PTFE provides greater strength and durability.

In general, the selection of all the materials that make up our parts, from Teflon to graphite, from polymers to lubricants, is never based on affordability or availability: we make sure that the composition and performance are such that they meet the standards of all the industries where our client companies operate, such as the FDA for the food and pharmaceutical sectors.

What are the advantages of using genuine Johnson-Fluiten replacement kits over generic alternatives?

There are no alternatives on the market that equal our lineup: we mass-produce the parts for our catalog unions and therefore produce very large quantities of them, with the consequent savings that you can easily imagine.

The design of our seals is the result of years of experience gained in all industrial markets, which is difficult to repeat. It is no coincidence that we have been on the market in a leading position in the segment for more than twenty years: we are good at what we do, and this also applies to spare parts.

What feedback have you received from customers about the efficiency of our spare parts?   Feedback from customers are excellent; the most enthusiastic are the customers who use our R and RH rotary joints: the possibility of receiving within one working day a spare part kit for joint maintenance and being able to carry it out with the joint mounted in a few minutes, instead of having to replace the joint, is a great advantage for customers. Think of users of oil-filled calenders: disassembling the joint for maintenance would involve emptying the cylinder first, whereas the possibility of changing the joint without disassembling it makes it possible to skip this step with a significant time saving and a much faster resumption of production.

Do you offer preventive maintenance programs or additional services to support the use of our spare parts?

With some of our larger customers, we have preventive maintenance agreements: in this case the customer receives at regular periods detailed schedules of the materials needed for fail-safe maintenance.

Often, however, it is the excellent relationship we have with our incumbent customers that empirically performs the function of a preventive maintenance program: during our courtesy visits to the customer, we check the stock of spare parts in the warehouse and suggest timelines for upcoming maintenance work. We could talk about preventive public relations: in essence we combine the useful with the pleasant and ensure a smooth production process for the customer.

In some cases then, our joints allow for a kind of quasi-predictive maintenance: in fact, several models have visual wear indicators that, when analyzed by an expert eye, allow us to see if there is a risk of a breakdown occurring soon. This allows us to intervene, rather than at set intervals and regardless of the actual risks of failure, only when it is really appropriate, zeroing in on unnecessary interventions.

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