Sideshaft Remanufacturing – Part 2: The GKN Automotive process

One critical area to help achieve our target of net zero by 2045 is eliminating waste and maximising the resources we do use. Remanufacturing, and recycling products and materials to keep them in operation for as long as possible, reduces environmental impact and is a significant tool to be leveraged here. However, this is not a new initiative for us and we have been remanufacturing sideshafts since the 1980s. This currently takes place at our Carcastillo plant in Spain, where we remanufacture 300,000 sideshafts per year for the IAM, and at our Ribemont plant in France, where we remanufacture 25,000 sideshafts per year for OES customers, significantly contributing to our overall targets.

To better understand our remanufacturing process, Arne Berger, Chief Engineer Advanced Engineering Driveline breaks down every stage, as we work to further reduce material usage and emissions.

At its heart, remanufacturing sideshafts is a relatively straightforward process. First, a team sorts batches of reclaimed products and retrieves those that have a central core shaft that is suitable for a customer, before it is disassembled and inspected to ensure the quality and appropriate condition of each individual component.

If it passes inspection, the component is washed and shotblasted to remove any rust and prepare it for the next stage. The single component cores are then ground down to meet its new specifications and remove any lingering rust, damage or imperfections.

The sideshaft can then be reassembled using a mix of the original’s parts, replacements for worn down parts, and new parts to make the unit a proper fit for customer needs. After treatment, the reassembled sideshaft goes through critical quality control processes to make sure that it meets customer requirements.

For scaled operations, this process can save 80% of the steel within sideshaft cores and, in Carcastillo alone, this equates to 3,780 tonnes every year. In addition to savings in raw materials, the remanufacturing process in Carcastillo also saves 22,680 megawatt-hours of energy each year compared to an equivalent from new operation, preventing over 7,144 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

With many customers embedding sustainability into every decision, and as automakers increasingly take a total lifecycle assessment approach to new vehicles, the remanufacturing process is now considered at the earliest design phases of every new GKN Automotive product.

Find part one – sideshaft remanufacturing, at a glance – here