Tsubaki is one of the world’s leading chain manufacturers, with an extensive range of chain solutions for industries and applications across the globe. With over 100 year’s experience in solving issues for customers, Tsubaki has solutions for every application and recently helped a large scale bakery overcome recurring downtime and maintenance costs.

Producing high quality, consistent baked goods in a batch production requires precise and reliable processes and equipment. For one bakery, the industrial oven it used for producing bread rolls required a new conveyor chain every two years because of excessive wear. This was an expensive and time-consuming operation that affected the bakery’s production targets. Fortunately, Tsubaki’s expert engineers recommended a specialised chain product that more than doubled service life.

Bakery looking for efficiencies.
A large-scale bakery in Europe was reviewing its costs and production line and quickly identified that the tunnel oven was requiring a shut-down period for replacing the conveyor chain every 1½ to 2 years. This  replacement process required a complete de-mount of the machine, resulting in expensive maintenance bills.

Tsubaki evaluation.
Tsubaki engineers were asked to assess the application and found the average temperatures experienced by the chain throughout the oven cycle was 240°C (peaking at 300°C). This extreme heat was causing the inside of the rollers to wear and the chain to fail earlier than expected.

Tsubaki recommendations.
Tsubaki recommended an engineered solution from its large size Tsubaki conveyor chain range that featured heat treated rollers and bushes to ensure smooth interaction, even at high temperatures. The chain has been built for strength and performance to cope with regular loading and delivers stable performance.

Increased efficiencies and cost savings.
With the new chain installed, and the updated lubrication system in operation, the bakery’s maintenance staff noticed the difference in performance. Where the chain would usually show signs of wear in a few months, the new chain was visibly harder wearing than the incumbent. In fact, the chain proved to offer more than twice the reliability–eventually reaching a service life of over five years. The resulting reduction in periods of non-production has been a significant benefit to the Total Cost of Ownership of the chain, reflecting directly on the bakery’s bottom line!