Design, Monitoring and Maintenance Guidelines for Yankee Dryer Bearings

This document is intended to provide general guidelines for Yankee dryer bearings regarding design, monitoring, maintenance, and operation.

Yankee dryer bearings are critical to the safe and reliable operation of the paper machine. The degree of time and expense spent on monitoring and maintenance of the bearings represents a fraction of the cost of a failure. Improved bearing designs as well as advanced techniques for inspection and maintenance have resulted in fewer bearing failures. These guidelines represent a compilation of information from various equipment suppliers and end users.

Since Yankee dryer bearings operate at different speeds, on a variety of different sized dryers (both diameter and width) and different dryer materials (cast iron vs. steel), universal procedures are not practical. The following guidelines for safe, reliable, and economical operations must be considered along with the mill’s experience, the age of the equipment, and the knowledge of the bearing design. Bearing monitoring criteria will evolve over time as the mill gains the experience.