Heat Treating Technologies

Heat treating increases steel's resistance to wear, providing greater bearing life. This wear resistance helps prolong bearing life under adverse conditions. Advanced heat treatment technologies can significantly extend surface fatigue characteristics beyond industry standard conventional heat treating methods, particularly in harshly contaminated environments (see Figure 6).

Figure 6. SAE 52100 advanced heat treating doubles life

High purity homogeneous steel coupled with advanced heat treatment creates a material foundation for wear resistance and rolling fatigue life far beyond conventional calculated life. Figure 7 shows the enhanced durability and performance that high wear resistant bearings can provide.

Figure 7. Pump bearing wear resistance in H20 and oil conditions

Advanced Geometry

Advanced geometric ring and rolling element designs deliver stable, smooth operation; minimize potential for ball skidding under transient/alternating or no load conditions; and provide axial stiffness and strength. External geometric features can improve bearing installation and mounted bearing stability.

Figure 8. Typical angular contact ball bearing and double row ball bearing

Bearing Surface Finishes

Rolling element bearing surface finishes and precision reduce friction and extend life while providing, smooth operation. Newly developed processes improve the topography of bearing raceways and balls, increase the load bearing area of the surfaces separated by the oil film and reduce the micro hertzian pressures in the contact area.

Advanced Cage Design for Improved Lubrication and Strength

Machined Brass

The mechanical construction of advanced machined brass cage designs provides the rigidity and strength to handle heavy and transient load conditions. Improved lubrication under thin oil film conditions and superior load distribution is realized with machined brass cage ball pockets designed to deliver contact interface through precise pocket contour.

Figure 9. Typical Machined Brass Cage Design

Figure 10. Robust Machined Brass Design

Precision Formed Steel

Improved lubrication is realized with contoured ball pockets. Cage manufacturing and forming lends itself to increased rigidity and strength. An advanced cage design will handle harsh and adverse conditions, heavy alternating loads and contaminated or thin film lubrication conditions.

Figure 11. Typical formed cage design

Figure 12. Superior formed cage design

Conclusion

Bearing application engineers can review an application beyond typical means of bearing life and fit calculations by providing advice on bearing configuration optimization, using finite element modeling and simulation analysis techniques when needed. They can also support pump design enhancements to ensure bearings perform as intended for motion and control of a pump's rotating assembly. Effective bearing application support provides a full array of services and technologies to increase pump bearing life and improve reliability.

Technical collaboration with a bearing partner that can provide solutions and troubleshooting, advanced bearing technologies, services, application understanding and bearing service recommendations is valuable.

As maintenance and reliability techniques improve, bearing material technology will provide improved reliability for difficult applications, extend pump life dramatically and ensure confidence for mission critical applications.

Tags: Bearings , July 2009 Issue , Maintenance Minders

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