Ok I try to buy north american, first Canada then USA...getting harder and harder. a little over a year ago I needed some bearings, I used to buy timken bearings, the last north american manufacturer of bearings. I found out when I went to buy these bearings last year that Timken moved the last manufacturing plant to China...Thats it for us in North America no more bearing manufacturers at all , you will find some who claim to but its bs, they all come from China now, only corporate head offices here.
So I had them bring out there stock and I opened the packages up and checked....they had 5 bearings from old stock that were made in the usa and the rest were from China. I wanted 6 and the guy swore to me that the quallity was the same even manufactured on the same equipment. I bought the 5 from usa manufacture and took one from chinese manufacture.
These bearings havent been in service for 11 months and I could hear a funny sound. I pulled the assembly apart and these two bearings were 4 inches from each other, packed in the same grease and subjected to the exact same conditions.
one the left is the USA bearing, and on the right is the Chinese one. The left one looks like new, on the right the rollers are heavely scored, discloured and the inner raceway shows signs of spinning, so I suspect it wasnt manufactured to the proper tolerance. for some reason the pic doesnt show clearly just how bad it is but its bad for a 11 month old bearing.
Thats it for me...I wont buy again from them.. I have used Japanese bearings, and German..always got a first rate product and that is what I will buy from now on...even if its twice the cost..I am not slaging the Chinese they absolutly can build first rate bearings, and you can bet thats what there space program and military get...we get shipped crap, and I am not saying this because of this one bearing, I have experience with many other products I have had to pull their bearings out of and replace with good ones.
Think about this...we cant even build a bearing on this continient anymore...I quess so long as the hello kitty crap keeps coming all is well
Give a man a gun, and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob the world.
amen, brother
A hunting buddy of mine works for this company in Stratford. He is in the aerospace side. They also have an automotive plant there as well. Not sure if they do the bearings you use.
http://www.schaeffler.ca/content.schaeffler.us/en/index.jsp
They are a distributer for german bearings. They had a history of bearing section on that web site...interesting, even a clever design for a pivot bearing from leonardo divinchie,
Give a man a gun, and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob the world.
Next time I see him, I will ask about what they manufacture in house. I know the last decade or so has been very busy for them. Apparently desert sand is very hard on helicopter bearings 😀 Also great source for slingshot ammo.