If you are a bearing manufacturer, one of the common comments you might receive from your customers is that machining plastic is simply different from the machining metal.
Well, this is a common scenario among individuals who are looking out for custom ball bearings manufacturers. Among the challenges involved in melting and expansion, the machine plastic will need various skills as well as experience for providing the best results.
Now if you are planning to outsource your plastic machining, then you need to select the one who has good experience in manufacturing the best roller original bearings.
Tips To Follow In Selecting A Good Bearing Manufacturer
There is a basic principle in machining metal. It is that you should not apply machining plastic. There are various variables in plastic. Also, most of the metal shops are not adept to machining plastic. However, getting a vendor having excellent knowledge about the plastic tooling and properties is not that much impossible. It is easy if you follow the below steps –
• Tour Of Machine Shop
Do you think the custom ball bearings manufacturer have the advanced and latest tooling equipment? Are they responsive to your queries? Would you be able to get some samples? Will they show or start some testing? Is the company investing in training their employees? Do they have the required certification?
All these are the questions you need to ask and if you have the answer, then you can easily evaluate the caliber of the machine shop just in the first visit itself.
• Get A Full Review Of Specs And Operating Environment
Just before the plastic hits the machine shop, your design specs will be reviewed by the best roller bearing custom manufacturers. This is to make sure that you have chosen the best material option matching your environment. Keep in mind that plastic can be a bit costly. So, you must make sure that you have chosen the correct material wisely for making a good save on your costs.
In addition, you need to consider how heat, stress, mating hardware, and other basic factors will affect the geometry of your part. Plus, you need to look for methods to reduce the loss of the scrap. Most experts in roller bearings feel that the material selected must be an investment for the value of your product. So, it is better if you give the specs first itself.
• Take Into Account Size Of In-House Inventory As Well As Delivery Timelines
In most of the cases, the delivery timeline of ball bearings is tight. Custom parts are required for meeting one’s production deadlines. Also, manufacturers having a huge in-house inventory containing raw materials like tubes, full sheets, etc will be able to minimize the lead time. At times checking out the website of bearing manufacturers like http://newton-sdbe.uk/ will give you some insights on the inventory they use.
• Evaluation Of The Part Inspection Procedures
There are still various shops who are depending on the manual inspection of the finished parts. Of course, there are still merits present in this method, using new software can be great. It will even assist in automating the whole process as well as produce the inspection reports online.
The best part is that software using optical character recognition will make sure that the finished parts are the best as well as the perfect match for the design specs. Using automatic inspection, it can easily be assured that none of the inspection procedures will be missed. Also, the roller bearings part will just perform as you wanted.
• Providing Service Beyond Sales
Now ideally, a custom bearing manufacturer will be the extension of your in-house shop. Here you must look out for one who can provide references that verifies the quality as well as the delivery. In addition, the post-sale follows up as well as going on technical education are significant for evaluation.
• Fulfilling Order
Some of the ball bearings manufacturers do not take the order fulfilment as the top priority. That is why in some of the cases, they take about 2 to 3 years for getting your bearings. In short, you need to check out the history of their order and make sure that you are not paying for the time shipment cost. Sometimes this might be a bit expensive compared to the one quoted originally.
Choosing The Best Option
Always keep in mind that you take the required time as well as effort for exploring the various options at your disposal. Of course, selecting the best roller bearings might not be difficult if you have the required details at your disposal. So, go ahead and make the correct decision.