Industrial News

The Original Site
In 1997, when this site was first operational, the Internet was only a few years old with less than 1,000,000 websites. This was among these early websites. (Cnn.com reports that in 2005, there were over 100,000,000 domain names). Over the years, the website became more and more popular among process plant people and it remains the only website operated by a manufacturer whose only product is bearing isolators.

Result Of Research
According to David C. Orlowski, inventor of the bearing isolator and CEO of Inpro/Seal Company, "At the end of 2005, we completed an extensive two year research project into the use of bearing isolators. The results of this market-by-market, application-by-application analysis showed that people wanted to know more about bearing isolators. Whether they used bearing isolators or not, whether or not they read our literature or advertising messages, the majority of the respondents stated that they wanted to know more about the unique basics of the product."

The Upgrade
With this as a background, the company decided to invest heavily in an "educate and inform" marketing approach, that included a major overhaul of their website. The first step the company took was a decision to find an experienced Webmaster and make all web related activities an in-house operation. They found the Webmaster in Jason Putnam, an experienced web designer, who now heads these (and other) operations.

Need For Speed
Putnam states, "It used to be that when information was needed, the end user would read a trade magazine and circle a bingo card number. But, now when the information they need is time sensitive, they will turn to the Internet where they have instant access to information."

Putnam continued, "This site has been redesigned from the ground up. Frequent visitors will immediately notice the new, more readable design, fresh graphics, and will really appreciate the quick access of its improved navigation menus. Although it looks complete for now, it will always be a work in progress. Because our website is designed and maintained in-house, we plan to constantly monitor it to make changes and additions as needed."

Valuable Tool And Unique Reference
The new look incorporates illustrations, charts, diagrams, installations, product photography, documentation, product literature, feature articles, FAQ's, guarantees and much more into a product rich website designed to educate, inform and simplify the selection process.

The site includes important and useful information on the evolution of the bearing isolator, including: how and why it was invented; how it works; how and why contact seals fail in a short period of time; how to eliminate catastrophic failure and how to reduce power consumption in rotating equipment; costs; maintenance; designs and configurations and much more.

It should prove to be of value to anyone involved in the management, maintenance, repair and operations (mro) of motors, machine tool spindles, turbines, fans, gear boxes, paper machine rolls, pumps, conveyors, shafts, vfds and other types of rotating equipment used in industrial/process plants.

The Product
The bearing isolator is a non-contact, non-wearing, permanent bearing protection device. It has a rotor and a stator, and the two are unitized so that they don't separate from one another while in use. Typically, the rotor turns with the rotating shaft, while the stator is pressed into a bearing housing. The two components interact to keep contamination out of the bearing enclosure and the lubricant in. While a lip seal or contact seal operates with contact, the bearing isolator makes no contact, never wears out and can be used over and over for many years. Contact seals, on the other hand, have a 100% failure rate.

Our Schedule Is Your Schedule
Orlowski continued, "Unscheduled downtime is expensive. In the process industries, downtime can run as high as $87,000 per hour. At $200,000 per hour, downtime in the aerospace and automotive industries is significantly higher. When it comes to vital parts or downtime, there are very few plants that can wait until next week. For this reason, we have maintained a same day shipping option from day one, backed by a data bank over of 58,000 engineered designs."
Orlowski concluded, "Sure, there are other pretenders to the bearing isolator business and there are other kinds of bearing protection. The problem is that these pretenders offer life cycles measurable in months and may not even ship their products the same month, let alone the same day. Other bearing protection devices may or may not ship the same day, but with a finite life and a 100% failure rate, it simply does not make sense to lose time and money trying to make a contacting seal work."

About Inpro/Seal
Inpro/Seal Company is the originator and the world's number one manufacturer of bearing isolators, used to protect motor and pump bearings, machine tool spindles, turbines, fans, gear boxes, paper machine rolls and many other types of rotating equipment. Additional applications include the sealing, handling, processing, packing and storage of dry particulates, powders and bulk solids.

Of the 2 ½ million bearing isolators installed, most all of them continue to be in operation in process plants worldwide, where end users continue to report significantly reduced operating costs with increased productivity and reliability. Protected bearings have proven to run 150,000 hours (17 years) or more, eliminating the need for constant maintenance and repair. Documented cases show that a plant can more than double the mean-time-between failure (Mtbf) and reduce maintenance costs by at least half, with users reporting an extremely high Roi.

Signoff
For more information on bearing protection and/or Inpro/Seal Bearing Isolators visit: www.inpro-seal.com. Contact information: Jason Putnam at: Inpro/Seal Company, P.O. Box 3940, Rock Island, Illinois 61204. Phone numbers are: (800) 447-0524 or (309) 787-4971. Fax number is: (309) 787-6114.

Inpro/Seal®, the Inpro/Seal logo and other Inpro/Seal marks are registered® names owned by Inpro/Seal. Air Mizer™- PS; Air Mizer™- PS; Articulating Air Mizer™- PS; Motor Grounding Seal (MGS) ™: OM 32™; STS™; VBX™; VBXX ™; VBXX-D™; VBX-S™; VBX-H™; VBXX-D™ and other trademarks are the property of Inpro/Seal. For more information about Inpro/Seal and its products, visit the Company's web site at www.inpro-seal.com or its companion site www.bearingisolators.com