Feature

Clean and ultra-clean steel for linear motion bearings

Specialty steel alloys are essential for components in linear motion bearings. Steel cleanness and heat treatment are important, while packaging and soft machining can improve efficiency for bearing manufacturers. Mikael Ostman, Key Account Manager for bearings at Ovako, explains why.

02/11/2021 11:42:13

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Linear motion bearings are essential for guiding, driving and positioning equipment. The challenge for typical linear motion applications is that the bearing components need to provide high reliability over many cycles. They have
two main components: shafts that act as a track to guide the linear movement, and nuts that grip and slide along the shaft.

Clean steel

To ensure that bearings deliver long life and high
reliability, both the shafts and the balls or rollers in the nut are often made from clean steel. Clean steels are chemically identical to standard steels and have the same yield strength.

However, their
fatigue strength is significantly higher, as they are produced under careful conditions which control the size, frequency and distribution of non-metallic particles called inclusions.

When forces are applied to a steel component, these tiny
imperfections raise the stress in the material around them. These sites can become initiation points for cracks, which may propagate and ultimately lead to fatigue failure after many thousands of loading cycles...

Read the full article in DPA's November issue

Written By Sophia Bell

Sophia Bell is the Group Editor of DPA, Connectivity, and PBSI. She joined the team in 2020 as Assistant Editor after achieving a First-Class Honours BA in English Literature and Film Studies from the University of East Anglia. In her current role, she leads the editorial strategy, driving digital growth and ensuring each title continues to deliver trusted, relevant insight for engineering and manufacturing professionals.