Clean air supplied with help from SKF and Dickson Bearings

The SKF range of power transmission products, supplied by authorised distributor Dickson Bearings, has enabled Irish manufacturer Danann to build a series of bespoke air handling units in three Irish data centres. Dickson's product knowledge, service and swift access to parts was crucial to the timely and efficient execution of the work, while the wide range of SKF products available enabled Danann to build a compact, cost-effective system that offered high performance and consistent reliability.

Danann Clean Air Services Limited was established in 1997 to offer the design, manufacture and installation of custom-made air-handling units. These units are vital in protecting such environments as data centres where, without preventative measures, equipment would be at risk from malfunction as a result of contamination and overheating. Danann's air-handling units for data centres filter air, cool it evaporatively - which literally means spraying the air with water - and deliver the clean air back to the sub floor.

Irish distributor Dickson Bearings had recently taken on the SKF range of power transmission products for Ireland when Danann was asked to provide eight large air-handling units for each of three data centres. Dickson's first SKF sale in this product line came when Danann approached them to order the robust drives, belts, bushes and pulleys that would be required to run the motors and fans of the air handling units.

The challenge for Danann was to design units that could provide the required capacity for filtration without being oversized and, to do this, a good range of options for component parts was essential. Danann is committed to using the highest quality branded components but also requires access to a range of parts that can be supplied without long lead times. Having designed its air-handling units with computer-aided software, Danann was able to send the required sizes and specifications of each part to Dickson Bearings, who swiftly replied with a list of possible components. Danann were then able to order parts that were suited to the design, including SKF SPB Taper Lock Pulleys and SKF Taper Lock Bushes. Where other distributors' lead times would have been prohibitive, Dickson Bearings offered a range of components that could be supplied quickly, preventing the need to redesign; a factor that would have been an issue if high quality items of the correct size and specification could not be provided quickly enough.

Dickson Bearings also supports Danann with a machine inspector programme that is used to conduct vibration tests on the air-handling units before they leave the factory, thus ensuring the quality of the overall system. Michael Sweetman, Purchasing Manager at Danann, says: "Dickson Bearings provide a personal service, technical know-how and range of SKF components that are either already in stock or swift to supply. We tell them what we need and they give us the options. The combination of SKF's power transmission products and Dickson's service gave us everything we needed to design our machines to the right performance specifications and dimensions with no long lead times to delay production."

To find out more about SKF products, visit the website at www.skf.co.uk.