Bearing steel is a key material for manufacturing bearings. Bearings are the core components of almost all rotating mechanical equipment and are widely used in automobiles, aircraft, high-speed rail, instrumentation and other equipment in real life. In these equipment, the working environment of the bearings is very severe and complex. They need to complete high-speed and stable rotation while withstanding strong extrusion, friction and ultra-high temperature.
Obviously, the quality of bearings is related to the safety and reliability of mechanical equipment, so bearings have extremely high requirements for the materials they are made of. Bearing steel is one of the few materials that can highly meet the conditions, and is even hailed as the "King of Steels" by the industry. Because of the particularity of bearing steel, each of its components needs to be specially designed using a unique process. Moreover, the production process of bearing steel requires high technical levels in steelmaking and chemical element refining.
With the improvement of my country's comprehensive national strength, the production of bearing steel and the manufacturing of bearings are gradually getting on the right track. However, it is still highly dependent on imports for high-end bearing steel. Data show that as early as 2014, my country's annual bearing output reached 19.6 billion sets, ranking third in the world. So far, the sales volume of domestic bearings has ranked first in the world, but there is still a big gap between the quality and the manufacturing of high-end bearing steel and overseas. This is mainly because our country has not yet mastered advanced core technology in the purification of bearing steel. Because qualified bearing steel cannot have any impurities, the factory needs to evenly distribute carbides during the production process of bearing steel to improve the quality of bearing steel.
In recent years, through research on steelmaking technology and heat treatment processes, our country has controlled the oxygen content of bearings to a level far less than 5 parts per million, the world's advanced level, and has mastered the core technology of its inherent quality control.
