With over 80 years of experience and close to 1,000 installations, FLSmidth is the world’s leading supplier of rotary kilns and dryers to the minerals industry. We supply rotary kilns and dryers for processing alumina, bauxite, copper concentrate, lightweight aggregate, lime sludge, limestone, and phosphate.
Kiln and dryer shells are rolled to exacting tolerances and are strong enough to accept reasonable misalignment, overloads, and thermal stresses. All shop joints are automatically welded. Riding rings are of full floating design and are machined on all surfaces. The roller supports are the two roller type, made of either cast or forged steel rollers shrunk onto shafts of medium carbon forgings. At least one support mechanism in each kiln is normally equipped with a pair of thrust rollers with bearings to prevent the kiln from moving uphill or downhill. Various types of air seals have been devised for both the feed and discharge ends of the rotary kilns or dryers.
Proper design of the drive train is essential to long drive life and vibration-free power transmission. The drive train consists of a main gear as well as a motor, gear reducer, and pinion. This main gear is attached with tangent spring plate mounts which allow expansion or contraction of the shell without affecting gear alignment or "goose necking" the shell. This method of attachment also absorbs vibration and creates smooth power transmission as kilns and dryers are normally driven at speeds between 0.4 and 3.5 rpm.