Understanding Rotary Drum Training – Part 2 – Important Drum Training Tips

Welcome back.  This is the second half of our series on rotary drum training and its importance.  You can see the full details in the previous article, but to summarize:

Rotary drum training is about ensuring the drum is properly positioned between the thrust rollers, to distribute the longitudinal forces equally.  If it gets out of balance, it will put too much pressure on some of the rollers, ultimately damaging these critical kiln parts, and potentially the rest of the system.  Training is accomplished by carefully tweaking the trunnion bearings in tiny increments until the drum is floating properly between the rollers again.

In this article, we’ll share some practical tips and considerations for properly training your rotary drum.  Be careful – improperly training your drum could lead to more damage!

Four Important Tips For Rotary Drum Training

1 – Train both ‘hot’ and ‘cold’

The way your rotary drum floats can change considerably depending on whether the drum is cold and empty, or hot and loaded.  Generally speaking, it’s best to do training under both circumstances, to ensure the drum is floating properly in all standard use cases.

In some cases, it isn’t possible to train the drum while hot.  In these cases, only training while cold should still be sufficient.

2 – Give ample testing time between tweaks

Rotary drum training takes time, and absolutely should not be rushed.  Make a tiny tweak to the trunnion bearings – only around 0.001” to 0.010” at a time – then run the kiln for a day or two to see how it performs.

Never try to make large adjustments.  If you guess wrong, you could throw the drum’s float further out of balance, making the problem worse.

3 – Triple-check the direction of bearing movement

If you accidentally move the bearings in the wrong direction, you could completely wreck the drum’s balance – and require a full professional rebalancing to fix.  Be absolutely certain of the direction of movement before making a change.

4 – Record every action taken, no matter how small

This is a good maintenance policy for rotary kilns in general, but it’s particularly important when training your drum.  Whenever you make a tweak to the trunnion bearings, be sure to log it for future reference.

Kiln Technology Company Has the Kiln Parts You Need

If you need more help or assistance training your rotary drum, Kiln Technology Company is here to help!  As a leading US supplier of replacement kiln parts, as well as on-site service, you can trust your kiln to us.  Contact us to learn more.