Breaking foreign monopoly, the high-end materials of bearings are overcome by China

[China Machine Tool Business Network Column] Originally, Xiwang Special Steel's first batch of high-end rare earth bearing steel was successfully produced offline, and its technical performance has reached the international advanced level. The product quality has exceeded the relevant standards of the United States and Europe. The high-end rare earth bearing steel jointly built by Xiwang Special Steel and the Institute of Metals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences can solve the problem of “card neck” of high-end bearing steel technology. Another short board in the manufacturing industry was filled.

"In this world, except for the earth, all bearings that need to be rotated need bearings."

Bearings exist almost everywhere in our lives. From the shared bicycles on the ground to the civil aviation aircraft passing over the head, from the shallow submarine of Yuxiang to the space station overlooking the sky, to the vibration motor in the refrigerator, washing machine, computer cooling fan, range hood, mobile phone ... bearings are always everywhere.

Although the bearing is important, it has always been a pain in the hearts of Chinese people.

For many years, although China has a shaft-making process close to the world's top level, it has not been able to produce high-end bearings. The reason is that China has not been able to produce high-end bearing steel for bearing production. The high-end steel required for China's bearings is almost entirely imported.

Wang Dongsheng, executive deputy director of the Shandong Technology Transformation Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, once said that the country has: "High-end bearings rely on imports. Why can't we make them ourselves? Without good steel, we can never create high-end bearings."

How important is high-end steel in bearings?

Take the engine bearing of a car as an example. Engine bearings have always worked in "Purgatory" - it not only has to run at high speeds for tens of thousands of revolutions per minute, but also with various forms of stress extrusion, friction and ultra-high temperatures. This puts very high demands on the accuracy, performance, life and reliability of the bearing, and the key factor in determining these four points lies in its material. Good bearing steel can solve these problems very well, but there is no good steel, even if it has a good bearing manufacturing process, it can not make a good bearing.

What is good steel? "PPM" is a unit of oxygen content in steelmaking, meaning parts per million or parts per million. In general, in the steel industry, 8 PPM steels belong to good steel; 5 PPM steels belong to top steel, which is what high-end bearings need.

To refine the steel, it is necessary to add rare earth to the steel, but how to add it can make the original high-quality steel become more "strong", which is the core secret of the world's bearing giants.

Therefore, China's bearing industry has been the neck. Foreign bearing giants set up bases in Yantai and Jinan, Shandong, sourcing Chinese low-end materials, using their core technology to make high-end bearings, and then selling them to the Chinese market at ten times the price.

Today, this problem has finally been overcome by China.

On July 8, the first batch of high-end rare earth bearing steel of Xiwang Special Steel was successfully produced and the technical performance reached the international advanced level. The product quality exceeded the relevant standards of the United States and Europe. The high-end rare earth bearing steel jointly built by Xiwang Special Steel and the Institute of Metals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences can solve the problem of “card neck” of high-end bearing steel technology.

The new technology of rare earth steelmaking was developed by the Institute of Metals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. After more than 10 years of technical research, they finally achieved a breakthrough.

It is reported that the material processing simulation research team of the Institute of Metals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found that the impurities are the main source of non-uniformity of the components through the physical anatomy and calculation of single-ton 100-ton steel ingots. Based on this, a new mechanism of defect formation in steel is proposed. Since then, the team has developed the purification preparation technology of commercial rare earth alloys and the special addition technology of rare earths in steel, which has broken through the technical bottleneck of industrial application of rare earth in steel, and realized the process of adding rare earth in steel. Stable performance.

Afterwards, in order to realize the industrialization of high-end bearing steel, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Xiwang Special Steel jointly set up an industrialization research team to jointly build a high-end domestically produced rare earth bearing steel pilot and industrialization base.

On June 6, Xiwang Special Steel and the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly held a high-end localized rare earth bearing steel industrialization kick-off meeting to make concrete deployments for the high-end domestically produced rare earth bearing steel industrialization promotion work: the Chinese Academy of Sciences is responsible for smelting technology, die casting technology, and even Many doctors in casting technology, heat treatment technology, and thermal simulation technology entered the work of Xiwang Special Steel. Xiwang Special Steel established a leading group, and specially set up a bearing steel research room in the technical center to quickly undertake and transform the Chinese Academy of Sciences. High-end domestically produced rare earth bearing steel innovation technology.

In just one month, the first batch of high-end rare earth bearing steels will be smoothly produced.

During this period, Xiwang Special Steel and the Institute of Metals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the downstream high-end customers of rare earth bearing steel localization also held the localization cooperation promotion meeting of rare earth bearing steel in Xiwang Special Steel, determined the research and development direction of rare earth bearing steel localization, and established The supply and demand cooperation relationship, jointly develop high-end domestically produced rare earth bearing steel production line. At present, the first batch of high-end domestically produced rare earth bearing steels that have been off-line have fully met the quality requirements of high-end customers and have started to supply according to the technical agreement.