Since the end of the 1980s, Europe and the United States implemented the embargo on military technology and manufacturing equipment on China, although some Western companies have exported some equipment and technology to us in the name of civilian trade, in fact, the rise of Chinese manufacturing is not like Japan and South Korea, which can get Western assistance smoothly, and we can only obtain either low-end transfer technology or with additional conditions. This issue introduces a small part on China's Long March rocket, the fifth-generation aircraft J-20, and even the C919 and other heavy equipment - self-lubricating spherical bearings.
When it comes to high-end self-lubricating spherical bearings, Europe and the United States have carried out a long-term tight seal on our country, and we may not have felt the importance of this thing before, that is because at that time, aerospace and mechanical technology had not yet moved towards the trend of advanced and cutting-edge, and most countries were as simple and crude as the Soviet Union.
Now, for example, the production of a large C919 aircraft, small spherical bearings can affect the reliability, life and performance of the aircraft. It should be known that a piece of "plastic sheet" on the self-lubricating spherical bearing was as high as 100,000 yuan in the 90s of the last century, which is equivalent to a suite in the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
It can be seen that this kind of high-end bearing, the West will certainly not sell to us, and the breakthrough of Chinese manufacturing can only rely on itself. During the summer vacation of 2021, a documentary such as "Made in Fujian of China Light" was broadcast, and the true face of Fujian Longxi Bearing slowly surfaced.
The bearings processed and produced by this enterprise are the first in the world in terms of both varieties and sales, and its self-lubricating spherical bearings are also exported to the United States in reverse, because Longxi bearings have passed the certification of the US Naval Air Command Laboratory, and are the most authoritative and strict A-standard bearing certification in the industry.
Some people may have only seen traditional bearings and think that there is no difficulty in bearing manufacturing, but in fact, it is very wrong. From rockets to large aircraft rely on the spherical bearings, similar to the joints of the human body, can be rotated in any direction, and the core lies in the three words of "self-lubrication", because self-lubricating spherical bearings do not need to add lubricating oil like traditional bearings, so it can maintain free performance in high-cutting fields and extreme environments, and it is precisely this that determines the technical difficulty of self-lubricating spherical bearings.
The first country to engage in self-lubricating spherical bearings is the United Kingdom, when in order to ensure the high bearing load, impact resistance and wear resistance of the bearing, a large amount of lubricating oil needs to be added to the bearing, but high-end mechanical equipment needs the bearing to have good sealing performance, so the British have made oil-free bearings, since then the lubricated spherical bearings began to enter the cutting-edge fields such as aerospace. Up to now, the high-end self-lubricating spherical bearing industry has formed a solid monopoly system, the United States GGB bearings, the French Saint-Gobain Group, the Japanese OILES Industry and other basic control of the bearing core manufacturing technology.
Here also to mention the aforementioned "plastic sheet", the most critical place of self-lubricating spherical bearings is here, the bearing is actually impossible to achieve self-lubrication, if you do not use lubricating oil can only be oil-free bearings, instead of adding lubricating oil, you must have another thing that can play a lubricating role, which is self-lubricating fabrics. For a long time, China can not lubricate the spherical bearings, is stuck by this piece of plastic sheet, all the bearing companies in China have no experience in developing the technology, we have enterprises to go abroad for reference, but even the processing workshop does not let you look in, they do not let you look.
He Liangjia, a R&D personnel of Longxi Bearing, in the case of poor enterprises, only by finding a large number of books and materials, observed in weaving mills around the world, and finally gradually contacted the core of self-lubricating fabrics through relevant knowledge such as manufacturing processes, adhesives, surface modification treatment technology and tribology. In the end, He Liangjia led the team to win the manufacturing technology of self-lubricating fabrics in one fell swoop, and slowly gave Longxi Bearing the ability to mass-produce.
Longxi Bearing's products are now also exported to more than 40 countries and regions, and the international market share was once as high as 12%. Shenzhou spacecraft, Chang'e lunar exploration, Long March rocket, and even mars probe Tianwen-1, more than 14,000 spherical bearings on tianyan are bearings produced by Longxi.
Because European and American enterprises started early and have a mature and complete bearing industrial system, there is still a big gap between China and foreign countries when it first started, and there are many types of high-end bearings, but at least for now we have conquered self-lubricating spherical bearings. Here is also a very strong bearing company - Changsheng Bearing, which is a company that domestic and foreign manufacturers have rushed to place bearing orders, such as luxury car brands BMW, Audi, Jaguar, etc. also use Changsheng bearings in large quantities.
Changsheng has not only helped China transform from a large bearing importer to a bearing exporter, but also is the first enterprise to overcome self-lubricating spherical bearings. At present, longxi and Changsheng's self-lubricating spherical bearings have freed China from the embarrassment of relying on imported bearings, which can be described as indispensable.
China's high-end bearing breakthrough has just begun, the achievements have been very eye-catching, but in contrast, the international bearing market situation is still very severe, the scale of the self-lubricating bearing market alone has reached 30 billion yuan, and the monopoly situation of Western giants will continue, but as Chinese bearing companies gradually march into the international market, with their own core technology, the situation of Western blockade monopoly will slowly loosen!