Compact bearings - very fast and precise

NSK is expanding its product and engineering offering in rolling bearings to include fully assembled units with high-precision deep groove ball bearings as core components. The offering is aimed at manufacturers of machinery and equipment that require compact bearings for high-speed and high-precision operation. Applications are broad, ranging from handheld vacuum cleaners to encoders, medical equipment and optical instruments.

Each bearing unit is designed and manufactured to the customer's specifications. NSK assembles the individual components, which are manufactured to tolerances in the micrometer range, according to reproducible standards, thus taking work and responsibility away from customers who want to concentrate on their core competencies. And because the manufacture of bearing units has been a core competence of NSK for decades, users can expect the highest precision and efficiency as well as the use of state-of-the-art machinery and assembly equipment.

The achievable accuracy classes of these bearing units range from IT4 to IT5 for fits, IT1 to IT2 for runout and IT1/2 to IT2/2 for form tolerance. This high level of accuracy creates the prerequisite for optimum bearing operation even with high requirements. In addition, the risk of typical bearing damage such as fatigue, cage fractures and seizure is avoided.

The bearing units are basically maintenance-free and suitable for use at very high speeds (even above 100,000 rpm, depending on requirements). One of the special features of the production process is that the bores for both bearing seats in the one-piece housing are machined in a single operation. This is an important feature to achieve the highest accuracy and to ensure that the housing has absolutely right-angled bearing seats to accommodate the outer rings. In addition, the shafts are usually manufactured using through-grinding, i.e. also in a single operation.

NSK's experts are happy to introduce this new offering to any OEM planning a new development project in which high-precision rolling bearings are to achieve a long service life and be integrated into the surrounding design in the best possible way.