Smart Tooth sprocket solution by Tsubaki predicts maintenance and wear

Tsubaki's Smart Tooth sprockets have a special Wear Indicator technology.

Tsubaki of Canada makes more than chains. The company’s talents include the manufacture of sprockets, from double-pitch conveyor ones to made-to-order ones. Tsubaki’s experts have developed the unique Smart Tooth sprocket solution – an innovative sprocket that allows users to prevent wear and schedule drive-system maintenance.

The patented Wear Indicator technology on Tsubaki’s Smart Tooth sprocket solution helps to stop critical component failure and predict necessary maintenance.

Extended chain life, lower costs

Smart Tooth sprockets each have strategically placed Wear Indicator pins on one or more teeth; the pins offer visual indications of whether the sprocket is within allowable wear tolerance or requires replacement. The Wear Indicator technology is ideal for applications that involve capital equipment and in which downtime from equipment shutdown is unacceptable, particularly in light of the cost of critical drive-system components.

The tooth profile areas of components are typically diminished from induced loads created by chain rollers as businesses use sprockets over time. Reducing the sprocket tooth profile area increases wear on the drive chain roller, resulting in poor fitting, misalignment, and chain wrap as it relates to the tooth profile. Acceleration of chain wear increases exponentially, which leads to lower tension, jumped chains, and drive slipping. But by working with Tsubaki’s patented Wear Indicator technology, users can detect sprocket failure ahead of time and avoid it.

This inimitable sprocket solution offers many other advantages, such as longer chain life (because of predictable maintenance), elimination of guesswork as to sprockets’ wear levels, reduced overall costs of equipment ownership, advance warning of drive failure, and the ability to schedule maintenance according to sprocket wear rates.

Tsubaki offers Smart Tooth with several models of sprockets, including ANSI 80 to 240 sprockets, engineering-class sprockets, carbon steel sprockets, and British Standard and double-pitch sprockets with pitches of at least one inch. In addition, the Wear Indicator function is available for both hardened and non-hardened teeth and for sprockets with no hub or with one-sided or two-sided hub extensions.

Smart Tooth is yet another reason why Tsubaki remains one of Canada’s most innovative manufacturers for industrial clients.

To learn more, contact Tsubaki.

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