Improvements in or Relating to Locking Devices for Rotary Bearings

This invention relates to locking devices, especially devices that can be operated to lock a wheel or other rotary member against further rotation. It relates particularly to safety devices to lock a wheel or roller when its bearings overheat through failure, and one useful application of the invention is to the idler rollers of underground coal conveyors in collieries. Many dangerous fires have been caused by the bearings of such rollers overheating. Since the usual coal conveyor has many rollers, close monitoring of them all by colliery personnel or by instrumentation has proved either impractical or prohibitively expensive.

One known method of reducing the fire hazard when a roller bearing has overheated has been simply to lock the roller concerned. Once this is done heat will be generated by friction between the moving belt and the stationary roller barrel surface, but the temperatures reached are low enough to make ignition of coal dust unlikely and the performance of the whole conveyor, with its many rollers, is little impaired by the stopping of only one or two rollers.

The present invention relates to stopping rollers automatically when their bearings overheat. It is defined by the claims at the end of this specification and will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is an axial section through a roller having two devices according to the invention;

FIG. 2 is a cross section through one such device when ready to operate, and

FIG. 3 is a cross section through the same device when it has operated to arrest rotation of the roller.

FIG. 1 shows a driveless roller, such as is used to support belt conveyors in collieries. It comprises a barrel 1 supported from a fixed shaft 2 by bearings 3. The balls 4 of these bearings run between the bearing inner halves 5, mounted on shaft 2, and the outer halves 6 which are carried by the end wall structures 7 of barrel 1. Each bearing 3 is protected by a seal 8.

A locking device according to this invention is fitted close to each bearing, and is shown in greater detail in FIGS. 2 and 3. Each device comprises a stepped hole 10 formed diametrically through shaft 2, close to one of the bearings 3. A catch member or locking pin 11 is slidably mounted in the narrower end of hole 10, and a securing plug 12 locks the wider end and acts as a stop for one end of a spring 13, the other end of which bears against pin 11. Under normal conditions spring 13 is compressed between pin 11 and plug 12, and the pin is restrained from emerging from hole 10 by a fusible plug or bush 14, of low melting point alloy, which is interposed between the step 15 in hole 10 and an integral collar 16 on the inner end of pin 11. Slots 17, with their length lying parallel to the axis 18 of hole 10, are formed at intervals around the edge of collar 16.

FIG. 2 shows the device with pin 11 in its normal, retracted position. If the nearby bearing 3 overheats, heat is conducted through shaft 2 to bush 14, which melts and is then forced as a fluid under the action of spring 13 through slots 17. This allows the forward end of pin 11 to project from the shaft as shown in FIG. 3, and to engage the abutment provided by one of two recesses 19 formed in a collar 20 integral with barrel 1, thus halting the rotation of the barrel about the shaft. Once this rotation is stopped, the bearing will cool and conduction of heat from the bearing to hole 10 along shaft 2 will cease. Melted bush 14 will therefore solidify in the region 21 in which it is shown in FIG. 3, thus preventing pin 11 from being forcibly pushed back again into its retracted position and so releasing the barrel 1 for further rotation.

It will be noted that a locking device is associated with each of the two bearings 3 of the rotary member, that is to say the roller, shown in the drawings, Where the rotary member has many bearings and it cannot be predicted which, if any, will fail first, it is important for safety to protect each bearing with a locking device separately. Where however it is known that certain bearings tend to fail preferentially there may of course be some argument for protecting these bearings only.

The invention of course includes converse arrangements in which an equivalent of the pin 11 is mounted on the barrel, when heat from a hot bearing will be conducted to it through the outer bearing half, and the corresponding recess is mounted on the shaft.