Ceramic Super Ball Bearing-Indian Scenario

Abstract

Ceramic ball bearings are in practice since the last three decades. Ceramics has many advantages over standard steel ball-bearing in respect of the applications (shown in table I, fig. 1). Initially, dense alumina was tried for application in bearings followed by zirconia because of easier fabrication of the spheres being oxide compounds and cheaper. In a later period, silicon nitride has come up, as it has all the good properties compared to other structural oxide ceramic materials although costly because of involvement of precious non-oxide processing route. Both ‘ceramic-hybrid’ and ‘all ceramic’ ball bearings are produced by some of the foreign manufacturers like, SKF, Timken, Kyocera, St. Gobains, NGK, NSK, Ceradyne and some others in the advanced countries, In India, such capability has not been developed and is a non-player in the world market.