The field service engineer Americans like to give nicknames to their states Arizona s is the The Copper State due to its ample copper deposits Michael Wernke is one of the people who help mine the precious metal About four times a year the Schaeffler field service engineer roams the remote Martian like landscape of the region in order to provide crucial assistance to his customer Freeport McMoRan in Morenci Arizona s largest copper mine Morenci is home to the world s biggest high pressure grind roller for ore To enhance the mine s productivity Schaeffler developed the first sealed pendulum type rolling bearing of this dimension a solid unit with an outer diameter of nearly two meters 6 5 feet This behemoth is part of Wernke s scope of responsibilities The day in his outdoor office begins with a one hour metric tons 127 000 short tons of copper ore per day are ground at the Morenci site heavy duty dumpers each with a load rating of 236 metric tons 260 short tons supply the grinding mills with ore The buckets of the laden excavators have a capacity of up to 57 m3 2 013 ft3 115 000 126 Tiny dust particles huge bearings drive into the dusty mine region where a whole army of humongous machines is untiringly doing its work The impressive grind roller with the no less impressive Schaeffler bearing is one of them The huge component which is sealed due to its extremely dusty work environment initially posed an intriguing challenge to Wernke how can you measure the clearance of a bearing whose rollers are the size of soccer balls and each of them weigh 50 kilos 110 lb This component is a lot bigger than anything I ve ever worked on before says mechanical engineer Wernke almost with awe His gift for technical things was obvious at an early age just three years old he dismantled the family s vacuum cleaner Now the man who s 1 93 meters 6 3 ft tall dismantles bearings that are as big as he is In spite of his height of 1 93 meters 6 3 ft Schaeffler engineer Michael Wernke looks small next to the high pressure grinding roller and inside the Schaeffler bearing which is sealed due to the dusty work environment 20

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