Zero-Max Expands Line of ETP Keyless Shaft Locking Devices
The latest model ETP Shaft Locking Devices from Zero-Max work via a self-contained hydraulic system and provide more key benefits than traditional mechanical wedge-style shaft locking devices, ensuring high performance, accuracy, and durability in today’s motion systems. They provide far superior timing, synchronization and adjustability features. Here’s how:
Zero-Max’s ETP keyless locking devices are designed to provide specific phasing and timing solutions to synchronize machine components. The hydraulic mounting principle of the ETP Keyless shaft bushings expands inward on the shaft and outward to the hub, eliminating any axial movement during installation. In contrast, mechanical shaft locking devices utilize a tapered wedge principle that can cause the mounted component to “walk” along the shaft as the wedge is drawn in during installation. This movement can complicate accurate positioning of the mounted component. Use of the ETP ensures that accurate phasing, timing, and positioning requirements are met throughout the machine, resulting in smooth machine operation and precise processes being performed.
ETP Keyless shaft bushings can be fastened, adjusted and removed with only a few actuating screws (or a single screw in some ETP models), and can be mounted/adjusted/removed hundreds to thousands of times (depending on size/model) making them ideal for applications where mountings and adjustments are frequent. Mechanical Shaft Locking Bushings are more limited in the number of mountings for the life of the bushing. The innovative hydraulic principle of the ETP results in high durability and long lifetime, with no loss of accuracy after repeated mountings.
The ETP’s hydraulic design establishes a concentric mounting of the machine component to the shaft, meaning it has ultra-low runout (as low as 0.0002” TIR in some models), and allows for higher accuracy, better balance, and operation at higher speeds. This hydraulic design also provides a thinner wall thickness (ID/OD) of the bushing, meaning hubs do not have to be oversized to fit the application.
The ETP is infinitely phase adjustable to time and synchronize machine components to one another and allows for timing adjustments between various processes or stations on a machine. The ETP bushing locks securely into position, making it a verifiable installation position for high product quality, and can also allow for higher machine operating speeds due to the accurate timing of components.
For the accurate mounting of the ETP, one mounting screw equals one torque value, and the hydraulic mounting principle means consistent mounting pressure throughout the bushing. By comparison, most mechanical bushings require torquing at multiple locations. With multiple screw mechanical bushings, torquing at one screw location easily changes the result at an adjacent location with a loss of concentricity and accuracy.
