NSK Ltd. (NSK; Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan; President and CEO: Toshihiro Uchiyama) has developed a new high sealing performance low-friction seal for deep groove ball bearings. NSK is targeting 2.5 billion Yen sales of bearings with this seal by 2021.
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Press Release
NSK develops high sealing performance low-friction seal
Successfully combines hitherto mutually exclusive features of high sealing performance and low friction
Development Background
Bearings are employed in a diverse range of environments, often under arduous conditions. If contaminants like water or dust, or foreign matter like metal chips get into the bearing, the mechanical operation and lubrication state can drastically deteriorate. Accordingly, it is necessary to protect bearings from contamination in order to make full use of their potential service life. This is where bearing seals come in handy.
Key considerations when choosing a bearing seal are 1) sealing performance, and 2) amount of friction increase. Conventional seal design generally positioned these properties as mutually exclusive. High sealing performance seals cause a relatively greater increase in friction, and low-friction seals have lower sealing performance. It follows that until now NSK has provided two separate types of seal for customers to choose from based on their needs: contact seals with high sealing performance, and contact seals with low friction.
Today, the new high sealing performance low-friction seal developed by NSK puts this dichotomy to rest by providing both high sealing performance and low friction without compromise. This allows customers to have the best of both worlds.
Product Benefits
An optimized seal structure and contact portion enable high sealing performance with low friction operation.
- 1) The new seal has equivalent sealing performance to our conventional high sealing performance seals. Optimized contact portion shape enables high sealing performance.
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- 2) The new seal offers significantly reduced friction compared to our conventional low-friction seals. Friction has been reduced by reducing the force with which the seal lip contacts the bearing ring.
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Product Benefits
Bearing products including this seal will contribute to:
- 1) Improved reliability
- 2) Significantly improved energy saving properties compared to our conventional seals (due to a reduction in energy loss)