Visit to SKF in Germany, November 2009

Harry Bhadeshia, Pedro Rivera and John Beswick visited the SKF factory in Germany for technical information.




The airport in Nuremburg, Germany


The airport was built on the occasion of the World Cup in football when held in Germany




Waiting for John Beswick and Pedro Rivera to arrive from Holland


The flight from Britain came earlier then expected, but that from Holland was late


John and Pedro arrive. From Nuremburg, John drove us to Schwienfurt. The bearings illustrated below are on display in the Mercure hotel in that city, where there are three major bearing manufacturers.


This is a spherical roller bearing. Roller bearings use cylinders instead of balls and have a greater load bearing capacity because of the greater contact between the rolling element and the rings. A spherical--roller bearing uses barrelled cylinders as the rolling elements, with two sets of rollers enclosed by the rings. This allows the bearing to accommodated a misaligned load.


Free wireless in this French chain of hotels


At breakfast


This is a tapered roller bearing. Taper roller bearings take this concept of increasing contact area further by making the rings and rollers tapered, to increase the contact area, permitting large radial and thrust loads.


Notice that the ring sections are tapered






In a deep groove roller bearing, the spherical balls sit within a somewhat matching groove


The Mercure Hotel


Schwienfurt symbol


The city as viewed from the 12th floor of the SKF laboratory in Germany


Synchrotron Mathematical Models Stainless welds Nuclear Performance
Residual stress Fine grains Hexagonal Hot-strength ab initio
δ-TRIP Metallography Texture review Topology Microalloyed

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