PROBLEM

Our customer uses a universal shaft assembly to drive his printing press rolls. The need to move the roll creates some high misalignment angles dictating a universal assembly. They found some objectionable vibration during operation.

SOLUTION

Upon review of their new operating requirements, it was found they were exceeding the angular acceleration capacity of the universal joints. With cardan (cross) style universals, a combination of high angle and high speed can result in unacceptable deflection of the yoke ears. This will result in vibration and extremely short life.

We reviewed the installation and attempted some minor adjustrments to minimize the misalignment and ensure that the driving and driven shafts were parallel. These changes reduced the vibration, but not to an acceptable level.

The final solution was a constant velocity Rzeppa style universal shaft. We were able to come up with a direct replacement. Though more expensive, it did what our customer needed it to do – without vibration.