The first batch of three slewing bearings can not be installed properly in the machines because the customer made a mistake when checking the slewing bearing drawing.
In their original drawing, the bearing's inner ring thickness was not included, and when we made the UIPI drawing, we included the bearing's inner ring thickness, but the customer missed it.
The inner ring of our bearing is 4.659 inches thick, whereas the customer's previous bearing was 4.00 inches thick.
As a result, there is insufficient clearance for the bolt head & washer on the inner ring.
We can imagine how concerned and worried the customer would be if these slewing ring bearings couldn't be used any longer.
As soon as we got this news, we immediately checked with our facility about the order status; in case there was an opportunity to put a hold on any additional bearings.
Sadly, the rest of the 17 pieces of slewing ring bearings have been completed, but we can't leave them as they are.
To help the customer use the bearings that have been made, we had an internal discussion with our engineering team.
We aim to make the slewing bearings useful without significantly increasing their cost while still making the bearings easy to assemble.
We came up with two options, as the sketch shows:
1. We provide a mounting ring (thickness 15mm) with the same holes as the outer ring. It will help to get enough space for the inner ring bolt heads. The mounting ring material is low-alloy steel, which is easy for the customer to weld.
2. We drill a countersunk hole on the present inner ring hole. Then the customer can use a countersunk bolt for mounting to avoid the clearance/space issue.
Finally, the customer chose Option 1.
Because their installation does not provide access from above, they need to build with spacers on the outer race to provide clearance for hex bolts.
The problem was solved peacefully.
No matter what happens, we'll try our best to help the customer.
Spare no effort to exceed customer expectations - that's how we build relationships with customers.