This year National Robotics Week falls on April 6-14 and there are a wide range of activities and events intended to inspire students in STEM-related fields and to educate audiences of all ages about the cultural and economic impact of robotics – today and into the future.

One thing you may not be aware of is the importance of plastic bearings to the success of many innovative robotic applications. From precision surgical robot arms to pipeline oil-leak sniffing subseas, plastic bearings are a key component driving innovation in this field.

When discussing enhanced materials we often use terms like “hydrophilic/hydrophobic” and “oleophilic/oleophobic.” Just what do these terms mean exactly? Let’s take a quick look.

Finding the right bearing for your application can be challenging, to say the least. Given that there are literally hundreds of thousands of combinations of polymers and metals, with varying press fits and PVs (load and velocity property combined), different tribological properties and tensile strengths, making the final determination can be tricky.

There is usually a good correlation between bonding and wetting. Wettability can be defined as “the ability of a solid surface to reduce the surface tension of a liquid in contact with it such that it spreads over the surface and wets it.”

So, it seems intuitive that good wetting would automatically result in strong bonds. However, this is not always the case. Two different cases where this correlation can break down are:

We recently had a customer ask us for some tips on annealing cast acrylic. There are definitely some potential pitfalls when working with acrylic in both sheet and finished part form, but following the guidelines outlined below should yield excellent results.

We had a longtime customer contact us recently to ask if we had a replacement for the Nylon 6 bearings they were using in their application. The bearings, which were occasionally exposed to moisture, were failing prematurely.

First, a definition: fluoropolymers are a family of plastic resins which are based on fluorine/carbon bonding. The family of products is varied through a manipulation of that bond by adding or subtracting fluorine through other bonds such as chlorine, ethylenes and other chemical agents.

Slide plate bearings provide support and a low coefficient of friction while allowing an object to move (or slide) freely along a supporting surface. They consist of an upper and lower component and can be used in both guided and free-moving applications.

Ultracomp is a family of laminate wound bearing materials with migratory lubricants added to the resin system. All Ultracomp bearing materials are high load, low speed materials designed to operate in extreme conditions without additional lubrication.