Semicrystalline PET Bearings Maintain Tight Tolerance

A manufacturer of food processing machinery was experiencing problems with UHMW bearings expanding during use. The UHMW parts were exposed to moderately high temperatures and the parts were expanding beyond the allowable tolerance. This caused the machinery to jam, resulting in costly downtime.

Thermal expansion can lead to dimensional changes

Higher demands on equipment and higher operating temperatures can mean more dimensional change in traditional parts, causing mating parts to expand, buckle, or gap. Thermal expansion is an important design consideration when the end-use temperature will vary significantly, and especially when plastic and metal parts are used in the same assembly.

Semicrystalline PET material solution

Curbell supplied the machinery manufacturer with semicrystalline PET, which has a significantly lower rate of thermal expansion compared with UHMW. The PET parts were able to hold the required tolerances during operation and resulted in lower downtime of their equipment which lowered MTBR (Mean-Time-Between-Repairs) for the customer.