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Hollow Shaft Weight Savings

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The CPS team developed a hollow shaft design for our static shafts in order to further reduce weight across all CPS rollers. By applying the same philosophy employed in rotating shafts, CPS also used this to reduce mass whilst achieving the same stiffness at the bearings in our static shafts. As such, roller weight has been reduced by up to 25% without diminishing functionality and performance. In 2020 CPS manufactured and supplied 23,982 Hollow shaft rollers.

The Challenge

Roller shafts are required to be stiff to properly support the bearings, and strong enough to hold the roller in place. These requirements have typically been met by having a large diameter solid between the bearings which adds significant weight to the rollers. With the goal of reducing roller weight, implementing a hollow shaft design is a option however engineered suitability and manufacturing repeatability has to be considered.

The Solution

With our relentless pursuit for innovation, CPS has developed our hollow shaft offering—in an effort to further reduce roller weight across all rollers in our range. It is common in rotating shafts to use a tube rather than a solid bar to reduce rotating mass and inertia, and CPS has applied the same philosophy to our static shafts to reduce mass whilst achieving the same stiffness at the bearings—meaning the rollers function identically but are up to 25% lighter, depending on specification.

CPS hollow shafts use a solid stub on each end to ensure suitable support of the bearing and roller slot or attachment, this stub is then fixed to a central tube, engineered to ensure equivalent stiffness to a solid bar.

CPS recently completed our longest hollow shaft rollers yet, with a face width of 2248mm and a shaft overall length of 2310mm. Due to the equivalent design described, CPS identified a potential weight saving on the site’s overland conveyor turnover rollers, along with an upgrade to our PU sleeve material for improved roller life. With CPS’s hollow shaft design, we were able to save 16kg off these rollers.