Bronze to steel bushings: Sibo’s wear and lubrication insights for mine engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Bronze bushings, long used in mining equipment for their conformability and sliding behaviour, are being critically re-evaluated by Sibo against steel bushings for applications subject to high loads and shock. The assessment focuses on wear mechanisms, contact pressures and lubrication regimes in components such as crusher shafts and mill trunnions, where impact loading and contamination rapidly degrade soft alloys. Sibo points to steel bushings with engineered surface treatments and tighter clearances as offering longer service intervals and more stable alignment, but requiring stricter shaft hardness and lubrication control.
Technical Brief
- Sibo’s evaluation focuses on bushings in crushers, mills and similar heavy-duty rotating mining equipment.
- Assessment considers contamination from fines, water and process slurries entering bushing–shaft interfaces.
- Wear analysis distinguishes between abrasive scoring, adhesive smearing and fatigue pitting under cyclic impact loads.
- Shaft surface hardness and finish are treated as controlled variables when comparing bushing material performance.
- Lubricant film thickness, viscosity selection and delivery reliability are explicitly evaluated for both bushing types.
- Sibo links bushing ovalisation and clearance growth to misalignment, vibration and elevated bearing temperatures.
- Safety discussion connects bushing degradation to unplanned shutdowns, hot bearing events and potential fire risk.
- Findings are framed as guidance for updating site maintenance standards and inspection intervals on rotating plant.
Our Take
Sibo appears in only a small subset of the 1082 Mining stories in our coverage, suggesting its steel bushing work is still a niche but recurring reference point for heavy mobile equipment reliability in Australia.
The related December 2025 piece on custom steel bushings for excavators and drill rigs indicates Sibo is targeting high-load, abrasive applications, which typically makes lifecycle cost and unplanned downtime reduction a stronger selling point than upfront component price for Australian fleets.
Within the 811 Product/Safety-tagged items, very few focus on bushings specifically, so this Australian Mining coverage positions Sibo’s offering more as a critical wear-part safety and availability upgrade than a generic maintenance consumable.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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