subject: Benefits Of Plastic Ball Bearings [print this page] Modern day businesses are always looking for innovative and affordable solutions for their engineering and design issues. Plastic bearings have emerged as a leading choice that suffices these requirements of innovation and cost effectiveness.
Industries and manufacturing units are turning to plastic bearings for a number of reasons. These bearings allow for a more efficient, unobtrusive and smoother working of a product and this has made them the leading choice of many manufacturers across the globe. Plastic bearings also require much less maintenance than the traditional steel bearings and are available in a number of sizes and shapes depending upon the usage requirements.
The biggest benefit that manufacturers would site for using plastic bearings is that they are corrosion resistant. This feature of plastic bearings comes in handy to beat the leading cause of bearing failures- corrosion. One can safely use plastic ball bearings in environments which have proven to be destructive to conventional bearings. They can be used without any hassles in sea water related equipment, swimming pool applications and film processing solutions. Plastic bearings are amazingly lightweight (around one fifth of the weight of steel bearings) and this makes them quite easy to move as desired. Also plastic bearings hardly require any lubrication. Traditional steel bearings are known to require regular lubrication, for important reasons like- reducing friction, distributing and dissipating the heat build-up and also to resist corrosion. These issues do not arise in the case of plastic bearings- firstly, because it is plastics nature to not corrode. And secondly when plastic bearings are used, there are no chances of metal to metal contact. With no contact between metals, there is no friction or heating up.
Another great benefit of these bearings is the design flexibility offered by them. Manufactures of plastic bearings can easily create custom designs for required industrial application. The variety of designs made from plastic can be made quite inexpensively and an experienced plastic bearing engineer will have no problem in designing the bearing according to the device. No more alterations of the devices will be needed because of the restricted range of standard plastic bearings. In fact the knowledge of important elements like the load, size and the speed of the equipment can help the makers of plastic bearings come up with the required bearings.
The manufacturers of plastic bearings also highlight one big benefit of their product as compared to traditional metal bearings. Plastic bearings are non- metallic and hence are non-magnetic. This makes plastic bearings an ideal choice for being fitted with glass, polymer and other settings where there is no room at all for magnetic distortion.
Plastic bearings find favor with manufacturers for another great reason- they are easy to maintain and clean. Due to the fact that plastic bearings are corrosion resistant and do not require lubrication- these bearings remain naturally clean. Maintaining them is a dream; and also industries and products where cleanliness is high priority, plastic bearings are ideal to be used (like in wash down applications). Apart from being naturally clean, these bearings are comparatively noiseless. As plastics have the ability to lower vibrations, they can become soundless with the use of a basic lubricant. The entire noisy process can be a thing of the past when you replace traditional metal bearings with plastic ones.
Industries also prefer plastic bearings because the plastics act as a great shock absorber. Plastic is quite elastic in nature and this allows them to absorb shock quite well.
