BEARINGS ARE US!!
Visit to Cooper Bearings of Kings Lynn on Wednesday 8th July 2009

Think of Kings Lynn and you will probably think of the ancient port area, Vancouver Island, fishing and agriculture, certainly not engineering. Unless that is you are lucky enough to visit Cooper Roller Bearings, a long established well known engineering company who have had a significant presence in Kings Lynn since 1894.

Founded in 1874 and now owned by Kaydon, an American Company, Cooper Roller Bearings (CRB) started life manufacturing traction engines,some of which were fitted with enormously heavy ploughing attachments , primer mechanisms for bombs, [still in use today] and the Cooper car, of which only three were made, one of which is still in the Company workshop. But more of that later.

After coffee the eighteen members present were given an introduction to Coopers by Paul Leggatt, their Human Resources Manager, (PR in old money). CRB currently employ 250 engineering personnel on site, however despite taking on seventeen mechanical apprenticesand one electrical apprentice, a statement in itself in the current ecomomic climate, they still have a skill shortage. But CRB are not sitting on their hands, there are plans to build a training centre (similar to EAGIT in Norwich) as a way to address the problem. Most of the members present were I think impressed by their approach to what must be a significant ongoing problem. Let’s face it, in times of recession who takes the brunt of any cutbacks? Normally Reseach and Development and the training programme.

Then it was the turn of Garry Hellard, CRB’s Applications Engineer, to talk about the technical side of bearings, basically how they are constructed and where they are used. We discovered that they are in use on ships, a current contract is for icebreakers for the Canadian navy in fact in a myriad of places you tend to take for granted.

A typical roller bearing made by Coopers

After a brief overview of the principles of split bearing and their applications, Gary gave us the task of assembling the bearings laid out on the table in front of us. What we thought was a motley collection of components used for demonstration purposes, turned out to be split roller bearings in component form, plus the few tools ( hammers and allen keys) needed to put them together. A fairly easy exercise to perform, but in the few minutes it took to assemble the bearings we learnt a lot about the how split roller bearing are constructed. Which meant that the factory tour which followed Gary’s talk made much more sense.

Talking about making sense, CRB are not in the business of manufacturing bearings in large numbers, no point in trying to compete with Japan or China, rather stay in a specialist niche market which has a demand worldwide. If you want a self aligning easily maintained split roller bearing to support a 600mm/24in shaft and just about any diameter in between then CRB are the people to contact. They do of course have competition from other manufacturers but with a healthy order book, they are making all the right decisions in the market place.

We were split into three groups of six for our factory tour, my group was guided by Patrick Webster, whose father Keith is a NES Council member. In an extended tour we were able to see for ourselves some very advanced machinery used in the manufacturing process, the capital investment necessary to make this possible must be considerable. It was also interesting to note how all this hi-tech machinery has been fitted into some very old buildings, although it must be said that some of the machinery we saw in one area was somewhat archaic and would probably interest the Norfolk Industrial Archaeology Society. But things are about to change we were told.

CRB do not have a conventional assembly line as such, after much research they have adopted a cell system of grouping machinery into specific areas. It based on a concept pioneered by Toyota, the system works for CRB. There are a number of advantages, reduction of production costs, better Quality Assurance monitoring and so on.

Finally the Cooper car. Built in 1907, it was an experiment to produce what can only be described a supercharged two stroke engine. Very difficult to build, difficult to start and maintain, nevertheless an interesting vehicle which I’m pleased the Company have had the forethought to keep as a record of how things were at around the time CRB were founded.

                      The 1907 Coopers car                                                                                   An early digger produced by Coopers

Thanks to all involved at CooperRoller bearings for a fascinating tour, perhaps they will let us visit them again when they have another centenary, this year is the centenary of the split roller bearing .

M Vincent      July 2009