News from Westin Drives

Welcome to the first edition of the Westin Drives newsletter. We hope you enjoy reading about our major investment in a new service centre in Huddersfield, some changes to our team, our new CNC precision engineering department – and the many way we hope we can help your business.

Our precision engineering department came to the rescue of a customer in Wakefield who urgently needed some motor terminal boxes.

Working initially from photographs, a design drawing was created by our principal precision engineer, Matt Phillips, to meet the customer’s requirements.

He then manufactured a batch of 15 boxes from aluminium in our CNC milling machine. The task was completed in just one week from enquiry to delivery and the finished parts cost less than off-the-shelf items.

​When a pump at a chicken factory failed, our precision engineering department responded rapidly to the breakdown.
This was the work required: 

• Metal spray all bearing positions and turn to correct tolerances on main shaft
• Metal spray and turn to correct tolerance the sleeve shaft 
• Manufacture new compression clamp 
• Make new sleeve bush and repair seal pump housing

 
​The customer was pleased to be up and running again in under 24 hours with the new repaired and manufactured parts.

Thousands of counterfeit bearings, weighing a total of about 1.5 tonnes, have been seized by officers from West Yorkshire Trading Standards.

They confiscated industrial and automotive bearings in 170 types and sizes in the raid on a distributor in the county, reports drivesncontrols.com

Members of the SKF brand protection team were present to identify counterfeit versions of some of their company’s products. Bearings carrying other manufacturers’ names were also seized and these are also suspected of being fakes.

SKF takes part in more than 100 raids a year against retailers, distributors and manufacturers of counterfeit products around the world.

Engineering manager Paul Dysiewicz said: “Customers who accidentally purchase counterfeit products are being cheated financially, risk damage to their machinery and incur expensive downtime as a result. They may also be liable to third-party damages."

If you believe you may have been sold counterfeit SKF products, there's a free smartphone app – SKF Authenticate – that can be used to send photos to SKF for verification. It's available from the Apple App Store or Google Play. Pictures of the bearings can also be emailed to genuine@skf.com 
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SKF and other bearings manufacturers have launched a counterfeit awareness campaign through the World Bearing Association (WBA).