Brewery and Beverage: central lubrication for KRONES machines

Lincoln, Dropsa and Bekamax lubrication systems

Due having much experience in the Hungarian and Slovakian brewery companies we make much diagnostics on Beer Companies' automatic lubricaiton systems. Collecting faults and experiences we focused a bit on the OEM lubrication systems built onto Krones machines.

Most of Krones machine equipped OEM Lincoln progressive systems which are controlled by PLC.

By error explorations we found that operation of lubrication pumps - beside right refilling - mostly correct after decades only have problems with pumping elements delivery.

When using stainless steel tubing and connections the distribution system also has right operation against the high-pressure chemical cleaning.

In some cases when manufacturer installed standard tubing or connectors the cossorion made problems.

In brewery Heineken Sopron we agreed to local Maintenance Management starting a long-term cooperation and developed the EuroScale Warranty Plus+ service.

This special service is Customer customized maintenance service where our staff continously monitors of the operation of the lubrication equipments. In each wuarter-year we visit the brewery and check all the lube-systems (doing immediate repair if necessary) and keep all system in operation. The cost side it is very economical for the customer due havign a fix monthly fee and so they have a reliable and proper lubrication without any problem or to do.

First development was when the separated greasing systems (on the Krones machines: e.g. bottle washer, ticketer, Pastour, etc.) are connected into one sectionized progressive system. This system covered all the transport conveyors' bearings and machine's bearings with over 1.200 lubrication points.

Years later the cooperation step onto one level higher with connecting all the rest of lubricaiton points into this central lubrication system extending the number of lubepoints upto 1700.

Now this system is managed by EuroScale Technical Staff.

System main components are:

Pump Station: pneumatic driven high-delivery (10kg/min) industrial grease pump in 200L grease barrel (with reverse valve, manometers and electric valves)
PLC and control:
- Local Heineken PLC connected to 7 of lubrication subsystem
- ESM_VIP control&monitoring units for the rest of the subsystems
21 progressive subsystems with individual section valve operation
stainless steel and plastic tubing connecting elements

Due to systematic checking and reliable components Heineken does not have an hours stop on mechanical issue coming from greasing since 2012!