Babbitt Bearing Repair and Services: Experience plus expertise
The interaction between over 100 years of repair experience with unexcelled engineering expertise sets us apart from most bearing repair services, particularly in the electric utility industry.
Pioneer operates one of the few bearing repair services in North America supported by leading rotordynamics and bearing engineers, in-house not by outside consultants or affiliated companies. This allows us to be extraordinarily responsive to customers who may realize their bearing damage indicates a more complex problem than initially assumed.
Our engineers are ready to collaborate with our service managers to provide the customer with advice and a refurbishment plan which may be augmented with an informal or formal bearing damage analysis. Engineering and technical assistance is full time, in-house, in our DNA. Our synergy creates value for customers.
StannuMAX®
There are applications of rotating equipment which require bearings with higher thermal resistance than the common standard ASTM-B23 alloy #2 optimal performance. For decades this babbitt material has been sold as Tegostar™. Unfortunately, this product has only been available from a single foreign source, resulting in higher costs with extended lead and delivery times. Pioneer is proud to offer StannuMAX® babbitt material as replacement for Tegostar™. We have worked with our partners to develop a chemically equivalent alloy that is available from multiple domestic suppliers, eliminating the delivery issues.
StannuMAX® babbitt is approved by Siemens Energy and meets the requirements of Siemens TLV997701_072017.
StannuMAX® is trademarked by Pioneer Motor Bearing Co.
Tegostar™ is trademarked by ECKA brand (SCM Metal Products, Inc.).
Pioneer is a pre-eminent rapid-response fluid film bearing service provider
In addition to our engineering capability, our reputation is based on:
Pioneer is the oldest continuing bearing repair service independent of OEMs in North America. We began offering service and repair the day we were founded in 1920.
Granted exclusive licenses
In 1989, Pioneer became the first-ever North American independent bearing company to be granted an exclusive license by an OEM (Westinghouse) in the power generation industry to use all of the OEM’s steam and gas turbine and generator bearing IP to perform repair services directly to its end-user customers. In 1993, ABB followed suit.
Learn more about our current and past special relationships with other companies that have trusted Pioneer as a support authority in the aftermarket.
Trusted and qualified by GE, Westinghouse and the U.S. Navy
We were qualified by GE (Schenectady) to centrifugally cast radial bearings for GE Service Shops In 1956, the same year we became a qualified supplier of new bearings for GE Marine. Today, we remain qualified by GE for both repair and new manufacture of bearings in the power generation industry, in addition to serving as GE’s exclusive licensee of ABB, Alstom and BBC bearing intellectual property to use in the aftermarket for repair customers.
Pioneer was first qualified to repair and manufacture new bearings for Westinghouse Electric’s Marine and Logistics Division in 1956.
We were first qualified by the U.S. Navy to provide repair services for naval warships in the early 1960’s as well to manufacture new bearings to U.S. Navy prints.
Pioneer is one of the oldest and most respected companies in our entire industry. We are under the same family ownership since its founding in 1920 in San Francisco. Over a century of bearing repair experience is unmatched in our industry because critical know-how has been handed down from one generation to the next in a culture of long-term dedicated people committed to striving to do their best.
As a manufacturer with renowned engineers, we know the significance of OEM design features. We understand what it takes to repair or completely restore a bearing to meet original design specifications and we do on a routine or emergency basis every day.