Renold Chain celebrates 140 years of innovation

It was in 1879 when the company's Swiss founder, Hans Renold, who had moved to the UK in 1873, bought the James Slater Company in Salford, near Manchester, a small company manufacturing textile pin chain. Little did he know what was about to unfold as his new firm, the Hans Renold Company, was set to revolutionise power transmission engineering and become one of the largest and most innovative chain manufacturers in history.

In 1880 Hans Renold patented the bush-roller chain, a precision steel chain for transmitting mechanical power that was designed to last significantly longer than the textile chains that were all that were available at the time. The basic design of the bush roller chain comprised of a series of journal bearings, held in precise positional relationship to each other by constraining link plates.

Each bearing consists of a bearing pin and bush on which the steel roller revolves as the chain moves around steel sprockets during operation. This was a highly advanced design for chain at the time with impressive wear resistance and load bearing capabilities. It was so successful that it remains the same basic design of bush-roller chain to this day.

Just two years before the Hans Renold Company was founded, John Kemp Starley, another great innovator, had just formed a company with William Sutton, in Coventry, to design and manufacture bicycles that would be safer and easier to ride than the Penny Farthing. The Starley & Sutton Company initially began manufacturing tricycles that by 1883 were being sold under the Rover brand.

In 1885 Starley launched the Rover Safety Bicycle that was designed with two wheels of a similar size on a diamond-shaped frame and a seat that was low enough for the rider's feet to touch the ground. The bicycle was driven with pedals, connected by gears and chain to the wheel at the back. This was to keep the pedals, and the rider's feet away from the front wheel for safety reasons, for a better ride and for ease of use.

Renold's bush-roller chain was the perfect solution for the Rover Safety Bicycle as the simple textile pin chain, previously all that was available, would have worn out too quickly on the bicycle's gears and sprockets. As a result the Rover Safety Bicycle was a huge success and it remains the basic design of bicycles to this day.

Quality precision engineering and innovation

After inventing the bush-roller chain the Hans Renold Company grew rapidly, changed its name to Hans Renold Limited and moved to new premises, but the philosophy of quality, precision engineering and innovation continued. In 1885 Renold applied for a patent for block chain but then gave his idea to cycle manufacturers to be used freely, a generous act that won great respect and many friends in the industry.

Throughout its history Renold has maintained innovation and quality at the core of its values and continues to do so to this day. Many early innovations involved improving methods of manufacturing such as in 1888 when the company began riveting the bearing pins on assembled chain. Some of the early innovations were groundbreaking in manufacturing techniques and required the design and manufacture of Renold's own machinery.

Of the many examples two of note occurred in 1889 when the company designed and manufactured a plate-hole punching machine and a machine for the Dry Tumbling (Jingling) of chain components. Further product enhancements were made through improved materials technology, such as in 1893 when the company began using hardened components.

Renold went on to develop more machinery and processes to improve manufacturing techniques and pioneered many new ideas such as in 1906 when the company developed a machine for the centreless grinding of bearing pins. This was long before centreless grinders became the factor in machine shop practice that they are today.

Renold is famous for a long list of innovations and continuous product improvements that increased in pace as chain found more applications on a wider range of new industrial machinery, and demand increased from the bicycle, automotive and motorcycle industries.

Many of the company's original products are still part of the range today, but with continuous improvement and the changing requirements of customers, over many decades, these products have evolved into modern super chains when compared with their early counterparts.

For example, Renold Synergy is an advanced, high-performance variant of the original bush-roller chain that offers incredible fatigue and wear resistance on the most demanding modern applications. Its performance remains unrivalled. Independent tests show that Synergy's wear resistance is up to six times better than the highest quality competitor's chain and its fatigue resistance is, on average, 30 per cent better under repeated shock loading and continuous heavy loads.

Proper lubrication has always been the most important factor in achieving long chain life. Standard steel transmission chain should last 15,000 hours when lubricated correctly, but poorly lubricated chain is certain to suffer from premature wear and early failure.

Lubrication-free chain

It was Renold's ambition from the outset to produce a lubrication-free chain and experiments with this idea began in the very earliest days of innovation. In the 1950s the company's design team succeeded and was able to produce a lubrication-free chain for some industrial applications on a customer-specific basis using sintered bush technology.

The way this works is so clever that it's almost like having a chain that thinks for itself. A crude analogy of the sintered bush is to liken it to a metal sponge, full of little holes, that are impregnated with lubricant. During operation the lubricant is released onto the bearing surfaces and the faster the chain runs, generally, the more the lubricant is released.

When the chain is not operating it returns to the sintered bush, a bit like water being soaked up by a sponge. Not only is it as if the chain is lubricating itself but the lubricant is contained within the chain on the bearing surfaces avoiding the possibility of it dripping onto manufactured product.

Over the years this technology has been improved upon, taking advantage of new materials, lubricant technology, and enhanced manufacturing techniques. A boxed, off-the-shelf version of the product was launched in the 1960s and today, the most advanced lubrication-free chain ever, Renold Syno, is available for a wide range of applications where lubrication is not possible, undesirable, or not practical.

There are even three options in the Syno range that extend the types of applications on which customers can benefit from this technology. Previously, only certain applications and operating conditions were suitable for lubrication-free chain, but now most applications can benefit. Syno NP is for hygiene-sensitive applications, such as in the food industry, Syno PC is for wet conditions, even if the chain is operating under water, and Syno PB is for heavy-duty applications.

So successful was Hans Renold's bush-roller chain that he became known not only as the father of the modern chain industry but also one of the fathers of the bicycle industry. In fact, after his death in 1943, Professor Dempster Smyth wrote a eulogy in the Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, stating: "Few realise how extensive is the influence of Renold's inventiveness on both civil and industrial life throughout the world."

Underlining his opinion is the little known fact that the Starley & Sutton Company, that invented the Rover Safety Bicycle, went on to become the Rover Cycle Company. Shortly after Starley's death in 1901 the Rover company began manufacturing motorbikes and later cars. Without Renold's bush-roller chain the history of modern day bicycles, motorbikes, and Rover Cars could have been very different.

Renold's 140th year anniversary promises to be an exciting one for customers according to the UK Chain Centre manager, Alec Annand. Renold plans to launch more new products and innovations that will further benefit chain users across a variety of industries.

Renold's Chain Centre is the largest in the UK and offers the widest range of attachments for both conveyor and transmission chain, custom chain design, such as specialist surface treatments, and a 24 hour service for urgent requirements. The five engineers that form the management team at the Chain Centre have amassed over 200 years of experience between them - over 60 more than Renold's anniversary!

Learn more at www.renold.com.