As the latest result of a customer-orientated feasibility study, a few days ago shim specialist MARTIN presented an unusually large steel ring with a diameter of 630 mm for compensating tolerance during the installation of wind turbine gear units. It is a heavy-duty compound solution consisting of a solid M-Tech®S support ring onto which two semicircular shim ring segments of the type M-Tech®L are glued.
While the thickness of the support ring is 6 mm, the peelable segments have a total thickness of 3.2 mm and can be peeled off 64 times in thicknesses of five hundredths of a millimetre. With a total thickness of 9.2 mm, the so-called thickness deviation in the ring is only a maximum of 0.03 mm over the entire ring surface! With 630 mm, the diameter is far greater than that of the one-piece rings used up to now for tolerance compensation.
The new adjustable steel ring from MARTIN can be mounted as a compact unit and is attached inside the housing with pins or countersunk head screws. The laminated sheet metal side of the ring with its M-Tech®L shims is mounted securely between the solid support ring on the one side and the gear unit housing on the other. The function of the solid support ring is to provide permanent protection against abrasion and anti-friction bearing movements. In this way, this shim ring is ideally suited as a flexible and economical fine adjustment element for wind turbine gear units.
MARTIN specializes in the manufacture of high-precision laminated shims for tolerance compensation in mechanical components and sub-assemblies. With its own development department and modern machinery, the company can manufacture the compensation elements in numerous material combinations and any desired shape and size. The ready-to-install shims reduce assembly times and simplify maintenance, because they dispense with the necessity for mechanical adjustment work such as planning. Thanks to the new M-Tech®L ring from MARTIN, the technical effort required for the maintenance of wind turbines is also reduced considerably. The new compound solution represents considerable progress for offshore systems in particular!