It rivals some of the larger civil engineering projects known to mankind, including the Channel Tunnel.

It was envisioned to connect Milan with Zurich.

This is the longest tunnel that's ever been made like this.

They've got to drill through 95 miles of granite.

There's a tremendous amount of friction that takes place between that cutter and the rock wall that it's cutting into, and all that energy is transferred back through the bearings, and they're actually doing the work. It's a very hostile environment, a lot of pressure, a lot of chips, a lot of fragmented debris flying around.

All these things are not conducive to long bearing life.

The tunnel boarding machine itself is an impressive piece of equipment.

It is upwards of three city blocks long.

The cutter head itself is around nine and a half meters in diameter.

The face of this is just full of these cutter wheels where our bearings are installed that have bearings mounted at either end to allow them to rotate. As you press in to start cutting and turning, the loads come in at multiple angles.

That design inherently led itself to a tapered bearing.

On this particular piece of equipment, there are 130 bearings working at the cutter face.

We supplied a very high-performing product that we call P900.

So all total through the life of this project, we predicted around 25,000 bearings were used. When a project like this that is going to be running for many years, 24 hours a day, with bearings being critical to its success, very tight communication lines must be set up.

And this is where Timken was able to have a very personal relationship between our person and customer service and the customer.

We were able to see fluctuations in demand, and we always had the right amount of product and inventory to keep that machine running. Timken supplied the bearings over a seven- to eight-year time frame without any misdeliveries, without any returns, and without any quality issues.

As a result, among other things, the project was completed six months ahead of schedule.

Being involved in a project like this, this is where Timken shines.

This is exactly the type of customer we seek out and the ones we excel with.

They have the most challenging operating processes, the most challenging projects, the most demanding environmental conditions.

That's where we excel.