Bespoke Bearings Can Pay Dividends

The apparent attractions of using standard bearings for a wide range of engineering applications may be hindering design freedom without necessarily offering economies. According to Roger Cornwell, Business development manager at Jesa UK: 'Standard bearings, of course, have a key role to play'. 'However, there are also many occasions where bespoke products, whether used stand-alone or as part of an integrated assembly offer real performance and commercial advantages'. Jesa makes its own range of standard bearings but also has developed a reputation for producing bespoke products to meet very specific design requirements. The company believes misconceptions about development costs and time spans are among the reasons why engineers sometimes choose to develop products 'around' readily available bearings rather than considering designing the bearings to meet individual product performance and space parameters. In practice, such concerns need rarely apply. Certainly, creating special bearings carries a development cost. However, particularly in higher volume applications, this will normally be more than offset by subsequent savings and may, in any event, be funded by the supplier. Similarly, where an integrated assembly is used, with the bearing manufactured as part of a larger component, a host of savings can ensue. Many of the products which Jesa supplies replace three or four components with just one unit, from a single manufacturer. This results in simplified logistics and administration, reduces overall assembly time and may also remove the need for some elements of production testing. Neither do development timescales represent any real barrier. For example, Jesa will typically be able to provide prototypes within four to five weeks and move to full production in as little as 12 weeks. A decision to use special bearing assemblies will tend to tie the manufacturer to a single supplier. However, at a time when 'partnership' approaches to business are common across many industry sectors this may be preferable to incurring the time and cost involved in dual sourcing and the associated approvals procedures. Concludes Cornwell: 'Taking the time to discuss the possible attractions of the specialist approach to bearing production at the outset of any new design project may offer completely new and relatively simple solutions to many problems which cannot readily be addressed purely by designing around standard bearing products'.