The maintenance manager at a potato chip maker went to check on the bearings in the fryer paddle wheels and realized that the graphite-metal alloy bushings, in stainless steel pillow block housings, had been running strong for 6 years! This is a notoriously tough application with close proximity to food and high temperatures, where grease is not a good option. So instead of using rolling element bearings, they installed these graphite-metal alloy bearings back in 2014. The application is running non-stop, so these maintenance-free bearings really made the grade and begged the question- where else could these be used? Read more here.
