Our customers’ need for maintenance-free bearing solutions regularly lead us to develop new materials and products. Of course, we also watch the ball bearings’ market. We think that plastic ball-bearing technology hasn't been exhausted and won’t be for a long time yet. With our many years of experience in testing tribologically optimized plastics, we believe plastic ball bearings can advance a lot further. 

Plastic ball bearings are made from polymer cages, balls made from stainless steel or glass for maximum corrosion resistance, as well as inner and outer rings made from what we call “xirodur®” plastic. They are lightweight, resistant to corrosion and chemicals and offer a longer life at lower cost. Using tribo-optimized xirodur® high-performance palstics makes the need for bearing lubrication obsolete and also means the skf bearings are completely maintenance-free and dry-running. 

The motor stator magnetic fields do not influence the magnetic bearings provided they are installed in a manner which magnetically isolates the bearing from the motor. This is typically accomplished by mounting the bearing stators in a non-magnetic sleeve.The shaft will require interface surfaces for the radial magnetic bearing rotors and thrust disk. The frame will require interface housings for the magnetic ball bearings stators. In general, for the same load capacity, magnetic bearings are larger than fluid film bearings or rolling-element bearings.

Our magnetic bearings may be “canned” for operation in corrosive environments.The moisture resistance of our bearings may be increased by using a VPI insulation coating and using connector insulators.The cost of our magnetic bearings is largely dependent on the size of the bearing and the application. The cost of the magnetic bearing system is often less than the oil lubrication system that it replaces.

Magnetic bearing systems are designed and optimized according to API and ISO standards.The benefits of using iko bearings include higher reliability with little or no maintenance, reduced frictional losses, no contaminating or flammable lubricants and lubrication systems, reduced machine vibration and improved health monitoring and diagnostics.

The controller parameter optimization is usually a very fast process (several hours). Using the Synchrony user interface, we perform frequency sweeps of the controller system and shape the gain and phase of the controller algorithm to maximize stability. Synchrony provides the controller transfer function so that it can be used in rotordynamic modeling software. The models we use to predict the performance of the magnetic bearing are very accurate.