Custom Union for Semi-Conductors market

A continuous caster at a U.S. steel mill produced a wide steel slab that required drive rolls of certain segments to be driven from each end.

A U.S. OEM designing and manufacturing semi-conductor machinery required a two-passage rotary union that had to fit into a 3” (76 mm) space on one of its new machines.

The rotary union needed to be mounted with a clam shell clamp on the nipple and it needed to be capable of transmitting drive torque to another device that was mounted on the end of the rotor.

The material going through the rotary union is deionized (DI) water at 86°F (30°C), 90 psig (6 bar), and rotating 90° within 0.3 seconds every 7-30 seconds.

Our Solution:

This application was outside the operating parameters of standard, off-the-shelf rotary unions and required a custom union solution. Because the two-pass union was going on a new product, the machine design changes occurred often also impacting the design of the rotary union. The final solution was a custom union to handle the DI water, and included Kadant Johnson’s DuraSeal™ sealing technology.

Results:

Despite the frequent changes in design, Kadant Johnson met the tight delivery requirement and one month later received positive feedback that the custom rotary unions work great and have met expectations.

Benefits in a nutshell:

• Custom unions can be designed for tight spaces and strict deliveries.

• Custom unions can be ideal for applications of nontraditional media types.

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Have an application that requires a specialized solution? Kadant Johnson’s product innovation team focuses on making the best solution in the shortest time possible. Kadant Johnson’s engineering team is committed to providing technology that meets customers’ application demands. Our goal is to work closely with our customers to develop reliable, efficient, and technically advanced products that add value by improving the process and the quality of the end product.