Labour and other costs associated with replacing worn-out bearings often exceed the price of the actual bearing several times over. Especially when considering the lost production due to the service or repair stop. Multiply these costs 4-8 times, and you can calculate the potential for optimizing your production by replacing traditional bearings with CeramicSpeed Hybrid Bearings.

The actual cost is a fraction of the gains that come from increasing service intervals.

Disassembly and reassembly of machines, run-in, recalibrations, and startup procedures are a part of every service stop and since the bearings sit at the center of motion in machines, they become the target of these stops. So, you have to imagine the possibilities for increasing the output of the systems by adding longer-lasting components at the key points of motion inside your machine.

In frequency-controlled electrical motors with standard steel bearings, stray currents can severely threaten the motor’s running. Every time a current pass through the bearing, it finds the shortest way between the inner and outer ring through the steel ball.

This causes a micro weld, that is instantaneously broken and results in a small fracture on the steel ball and steel ring. This causes tell-tale signs of fluting or washboard patterns to develop in the raceway, which increases the noise and vibrations in the bearing. This condition will grow progressively worse until the motor stops working.

In contrast to steel balls, silicon nitride balls insulate against stray currents. The balls themselves form no conductive bridge between the stator and rotor of the motor, and silicon nitride has a very high insulating capacity. A hybrid bearing will effectively eliminate the issue of current damages in the bearing and extend the service life of the motor. As a bonus, the lower friction in the bearing also lowers the power consumption in the motor by ½ – 1 % due to the energy loss in the bearing being nearly 50 % lower.

Why are hybrid bearings capable of achieving up to 50% higher speed compared to all steel ball bearings? To answer that we must understand what is happening inside the bearing when you increase the rotation speed. When you increase the rotation speed of a bearing the centrifugal forces acting on the balls will increase and push the balls toward the outer raceway. The contact pressure between balls and the outer raceway rises and the generated friction and wear between the ball and raceway is increasing, and so is the operations temperature too. To minimize that effect, you need to reduce the mass of the balls.

Hybrid bearings from CeramicSpeed are more expensive than conventional steel bearings. No doubt about that. But calculating your ROI is about so much more than just the price of a ball bearing – which in any case is a minor fraction of the total cost of any production machine. It’s also necessary to take the costs of production downtime into account, which are often much higher than the actual maintenance costs. Downtime cost is an important factor when optimizing production efficiency.

Much longer between production stops

With a bearing life many, many times longer than conventional bearings, CeramicSpeed bearings extend the periods between planned maintenance stops by a factor of 4, 8, or in some cases more than 20. This means that if you are used to changing bearings every 3 months, you can now expect to do it once a year – or once every two or three years, depending on your production setup and production environment. Plus, with CeramicSpeed bearings, you are virtually guaranteed never to suffer unplanned production. 

The CeramicSpeed ROI calculator, can give an indication of the savings on maintenance that can be expected in your production setup.