Beside the Yangtze River, the bearing steel shipped to the port of Shanghai, and then by sea to Europe. They are usually unloaded from the ports of Venice or La Spezia, Italy, and then transferred to a bearing processing plant in France; sometimes they are also transferred to the port of Antwerp, Belgium, and then shipped to a bearing manufacturing plant in Germany.
At present, the world's top bearing manufacturers are using bearing steel produced by the Chinese special steel company, JYXC Special Steel Group.
Bearing steel produced by JYXC Special Steel supplies the world's top bearing manufacturers
Bearing steel is the steel used to make balls, rollers and bearing rings, and is called the "king of steel". It is used to manufacture the most core parts in machinery and equipment. The service conditions are harsh. In addition to long-term high-speed operation and various extrusion stresses, it also needs to be resistant to friction and ultra-high temperature. This requires bearing steel to have high and uniform hardness and wear resistance, as well as high elastic limit. Good bearings are inseparable from good bearing steel, bearing manufacturing and the production capacity and quality of bearing steel, which directly affects the development level of a country's manufacturing and industrialization.
China has become a major producer of bearing steel. Statistics from 36 special steel associations show that the crude steel output of bearing steel in China's major special steel enterprises was 3.0114 million tons in 2017. XC Special Steel, XY Steel, and BX Special Steel ranked first in bearing steel production. Three, accounting for 51% of the total domestic production of bearing steel. Mr. Xu, chief engineer of XC Special Steel, told the Science and Technology Daily that China has not only made high-end bearing steel, but has also made a name for itself in the international market. "We produced 965,000 tons of bearing steel last year, and 630,000 tons were supplied to world-renowned bearing companies such as Sweden's SKF, Germany's SCHAEFFLER, Japan's NSK, NTN." He said that XC Special Steel's bearing steel has been ranked for eight consecutive years The world's bearing steel production and sales ranked first.
Bearing steel is one of the most demanding steel types in steel production. "The requirements for the uniformity of chemical composition, the content and distribution of non-metallic inclusions, and the distribution of carbides are very high." Huang Zhen of XC Special Steel Research Institute introduced that the key indicator of the quality of bearing steel is the purity of the material. And uniformity, purity affects the bearing's fatigue life, uniformity affects the deformation and uniformity of the bearing after heat treatment.
The lower the oxygen content, the fewer the oxide inclusions, the higher the purity, the longer the fatigue life of the bearing steel, so the oxygen content in the steel should be reduced; harmful elements form multi-angular inclusions in the steel, which easily cause local stress Concentration and fatigue cracks occur, so it is necessary to strictly control the inclusions generated by harmful elements. At present, the oxygen content of XC bearing steel is controlled at the world advanced level of ≤5ppm, and it has mastered the core technology of internal quality control. "Quality is produced by process control, not selected by inspection." XC Special Steel has always maintained this concept, and has made great efforts in production process control.
During the pouring process, XC uses a unique tundish induction heating system. "The molten steel in the tundish is cast at low temperature and has small fluctuations, which greatly avoids the uneven distribution of the constituent elements in the steel during crystallization. We have mastered the core technology of this type of bearing steel casting." Huang Zhen said.
In the rolling stage, surface flame cleaning can be used to clean the surface of the slab, just like planing cucumbers to clean the surface of the slab. This core technology of removing defects and ensuring the surface quality of steel is also in the hands of XC.
"We have advanced equipment and world-leading metallurgical concepts and methods." Xu Xiaohong said that since he was sent to Europe to learn steelmaking technology by XC 20 years ago, his vision has been focused on the international level. World-class peers are "competitive."
He took out a long-term tracking chart of the fatigue life of XC bearing steel compared with his peers. The reporter saw that the fatigue life of Xingcheng bearing steel in 2009 was at the same level as the representative steel plant in Japan; the level of Xingcheng now exceeds Japan Business. He said that Japanese users have done similar follow-up evaluations and concluded that the level of XC's high-end bearing steel exceeds that of Japanese steel mills.
"We cooperated with German users to develop pure bearing steel. We provided samples in 2016. After two years of testing and fatigue life testing, the fatigue life of XC continuous casting bearing steel reached 1150 hours, which is 2.5 times that of European bearing steel. "Xu Xiaohong believes that for bearings, material testing is only one aspect, and bearing fatigue testing is the key. XC pays special attention to research and development cooperation with international industry leaders, and continuously improves fatigue life to develop bearing steel for high-end applications.
Well-known research institutes at home and abroad such as Cambridge University, Central Iron and Steel Research Institute, Beijing University of Science and Technology, Luoyang Bearing Research Institute are all XC's partners. Xu Xiaohong said that she is willing to cooperate with more scientific research institutes to take advantage of XC's existing market influence to accelerate the transformation and application of scientific research results.