How to ensure long life of CSB-EPB® plastic plain bearings without lubrication? Solving this problem is the core work of CSB material development engineers. Taking advantage of material modification technology to optimize basic plastics and accumulating decades of wear-resistant material modification testing data, CSB material development engineers can quickly select the correct bearing materials for various special application requirements.
The most critical moment is the start-up phase for all sliding bearings. The most common situation at this time is that the lubricating film has not yet formed while the bearing has started to operate. The bearing will wear slightly as long as the bearing works under load. In the start-up phase, these fine wear particles will fill the outer surface of the shaft when the wear is sufficient. After testing, it was found that the optimal lubricating film can be produced when the bearing is in low-wear operation. After start-up, the slight wear of the bearing quickly declined, and these changes had very little effect on the size of the bearing. The wear rate of the bearing is small and remains stable in the continuous work later on. We require the roughness of the surface of the matching shaft to be between Ra0.2-Ra0.6. Although it seems very smooth, but in fact, there are still many tiny pits on the surface under the microcosm. This is a necessary condition for the rapid formation of a hard lubricating film on the surface of the grinding shaft at the initial stage of bearing wear. Why do we have a certain range of requirements for shaft surface roughness? The reasons are as follows: the lubricant cannot be adsorbed on the surface of the shaft to form a lubricating film if the surface is too smooth, which shortens the life of the bearing; If the surface of the shaft is too rough will repeatedly scratch the inner surface of the bearing and lead to the lubrication film cannot be formed because of scratches and wear. These conditions will affect the actual service life of the bearing.