Maintenance issues during shutdowns, or even routine maintenance and repairs, can create labor shortages for your mill. To help ease this labor crunch, Anthony-Ross Company offers a refurbish and upgrade program for our automatic port cleaners and port dampers, which minimizes the work that must be done during the outage.

This program allows our customers to ship Anthony-Ross port cleaner or port damper units that need repairs to be rebuilt at the Anthony-Ross factory. Exchange an entire wall or just a few units at a time, as your schedule and budget allow. We tear it down, repaint it and replace any worn parts, returning a factory-built refurbished/upgraded unit to you with a one-year warranty. Refurbishment extends the life of these key system components for many years and provides units that are difficult to distinguish from new ones.

A refurbish and upgrade program is also available for A-R air cylinders and drive units.

Automatic Port Cleaning System Upgrade

Refurbished Automatic Port Cleaners (APCs) are engineered specifically for each system, taking into account the specific application and design. Most upgrades can be performed on site. However, if you send your equipment to our facility, we can address any worn-out parts that may be discovered once the equipment is dismantled. Refurbished APCs typically contain the following new parts:

• Rod Extension Bar
• 4" Air Cylinder
• Input Plunger
• Fulcrum tube bushings
• Quick Disconnect Couplings
• Individual Lubricator (per 2 APC’s)
• Cylinder Mounting Hardware
• Eccentric Assembly
• Center Fulcrum Tube (3-Rod)
• Air Hose
• Air seals
• Adjustable Eccentrics
   

Terms:

All options listed above will be covered by our standard one-year warranty from date of installation. These upgrades include all the necessary engineering and revised OEM manuals to reflect the changes. Customers pay for shipping of old APC units to the Anthony-Ross factory in Beaverton, Oregon (U.S.A.), as well as shipping of new units. Initial delivery is 12 weeks from receipt of purchase order.
 
These are some of the improvements that are included on your existing upgraded unit that is now on your boiler.  These same improvements would also be included in future refurbished/upgraded APC units:

1. Anthony Ross Company 4-inch Diameter Air Cylinder
The typical APC (3 or more cleaning rods) is now fitted with a 4-inch cylinder that provides 80% more cleaning force than the original 3” cylinder.  This allows more cleaning force in times of greater cleaning challenge, as well as a reduction in cleaning frequency and a corresponding decrease in wear and tear on the entire APC unit.  Our new air cylinder has been designed specifically for our equipment on recovery boilers where heat and dirt can destroy a standard cylinder quickly.  Each cylinder is fitted with new seal technology, superior bearings and a shaft excluder that prevents unwanted contaminants from entering the cylinder providing for superior operating life. 

2. Self-aligning Cylinder Mounts
The addition of spherical bearing at each end of the cylinder eliminates unwanted side loads and the resulting cylinder wear that can occur due to misalignment.

3. Reverse Cylinder Mounting
The air cylinder is mounted in the reverse of the original orientation, with the body of the cylinder attached to the APC faceplate.  This reduces the exposure of the cylinder rod and nose to the heat of the boiler.  This orientation also minimizes the overhung weight as well as cylinder and air hose movement, further reducing wear and tear on the APC.

4. Indexing Drive
The indexing drive is a sealed and lubricated unit that replaces the indexing clutch.  The internals of the drive are considerably more robust than the clutch and provide roughly double the output torque, as well as improved life.

5. Input Plunger
We have replaced the cam roller assembly at the front of the air cylinder with an input plunger that actuates the drive from the rod extension bar.  This improvement eliminates the associated side loading and wear at the air cylinder.

6. New fulcrum tubes with fixed pivot bearings and front bushing
We now provide fulcrum tubes that no longer use a single pivot pin as the pivot bushings and rod bushing.  Our new fulcrum tubes use individual, fixed bearing caps, and an internal fulcrum tube bushing.  This eliminates the need to replace the entire pivot pin due to breakage, or wear at a single point.  The pivot bearing caps can be replaced without removing the cleaning rod from the fulcrum tube.

7. Individual Lubricators
With our new systems, we now install individual lubricators that serve up to two APC units.  Single system lubricators have proven ineffective in providing oil to an entire system.  The local lubricators effectively prolong the life of the pneumatic components of the equipment.

8. Adjustable Eccentrics
We now have the ability to adjust the total cleaned port height with our adjustable eccentric without changing out any parts.  This gives maximum flexibility to any changes in port sizes from unit to unit.