Company type | Privately Held |
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Industry | Industrial Equipment Manufacturing |
Founded | Auburn, New York 1898 |
Headquarters | |
Area served | International |
Key people | Peter J. Schroth Owner & General Manager |
Products |
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Services |
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Website | www.auburnbearing.com |
Auburn Bearing & Manufacturing is a designer and manufacturer of ball and roller thrust bearings and custom machined components and is owned and operated in the small town of Macedon in Upstate New York. Founded in 1898, Auburn Bearing is one of the oldest continuously operating thrust ball bearing manufacturers in the United States. Auburn Bearing & Manufacturing is most known for its line of thrust bearings that incorporate a "V" groove raceway, historically known as the "Auburn Groove," which is specifically designed to reduce rolling friction by containing the ball bearings with four points of contact.
In 1860, Mark Dean Knowlton founded a Chicago-based paper box manufacturing business. The business, operating under the name M.D. Knowlton & Company, lasted until the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. [1] Knowlton rebuilt the business and resumed his paper box manufacturing operation within the same year. In March 1892, he sold his interest in the paper box manufacturing portion of his business in order to concentrate on inventing production machinery for the paper box manufacturing industry. In 1888, Knowlton moved his machinery business to Rochester, New York, where he then formed a partnership with Fred H. Beach, and the two business men began operating under the new business name Knowlton & Beach.
In 1893, Knowlton & Beach introduced a near frictionless ball bearing to the market, presumably the first such bearing of its time, and in 1900, the company's bearing business was incorporated as the Rochester Ball Bearing Company and became a division of Knowlton & Beach. A year later in 1901, Knowlton & Beach further expanded their bearing business with the acquisition of the Auburn Ball Bearing Company, a manufacturer of ball and roller thrust bearings established in 1898 in Auburn, New York. Auburn Ball Bearing became the second division of Knowlton & Beach and was relocated to Rochester, New York to continue its operations. [2] Auburn Ball Bearing's primary product, their Auburn Four-Point-Cone-Contact Ball Thrust Bearings, incorporates an exclusive "V" groove raceway, designed to distribute the load evenly over the balls as they travel on four points of contact, creating a straight line rolling effect and decreasing the amount of friction created by a full contact round groove design. [3] Auburn Ball Bearing Company manufactured various sizes and configurations of their "V" groove thrust bearings for applications in industries including paper box manufacturing, railroad jacks, U.S. submarines, and U.S. Government Light Houses. Early company documentation illustrates Auburn Ball Bearings were used to support revolving lenses in the Carysfort Reef Light, Jupiter Inlet Light, and the St. Simons Island Light in the early twentieth century. [3]
In 1904, Fred Beach retired and withdrew his interest in the Knowlton & Beach co-partnership. [4] Knowlton subsequently took over the entire interest of the company, and later that year, he incorporated the company in New York under the name M.D. Knowlton Company. [5] Knowlton served as president of the M.D. Knowlton Co. and the Auburn Ball Bearing Co. until his death in 1906. Knowlton was succeeded by his son, Colonel Frederick K. Knowlton, who served as president of the company until his death in 1939. During his time as president, the Auburn Ball Bearing Division of M.D. Knowlton Company was able to patent a number of new and useful improvements in the design of bearings, particularly in the design of ball thrust bearings, under inventor Francis A. Collins, Jr.
The business continued through the war years and post-war period under family direction. In 1969 and 1970, M.D. Knowlton Company moved operations to Victor, New York, where the Knowlton Building then served as the company's headquarters. [2]
On August 18, 2006, Fairport Products, a designer and manufacturer of power transmission parts, acquired the Auburn Ball Bearing Division of M.D. Knowlton Company, and its operations were then moved to the small town of Macedon, New York. The businesses continued to operate as two separate business entities until June 10, 2013, when the two companies became one under the new name Auburn Bearing & Manufacturing. [6] Auburn Bearing & Manufacturing continues to manufacture the original Auburn Groove Thrust Bearing which features a V-groove raceway with four contact points to reduce rolling friction, enabling larger radial loads. [7] The company also manufactures round groove industry standard bearings, particularly custom, obsolete bearings in low- to mid- production volume. Their products are distributed by industrial distributors such as Motion Industries, Kaman Industrial Technologies, Applied Industrial Technologies and BDI.
AB SKF is a Swedish bearing and seal manufacturing company founded in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1907. The company manufactures and supplies bearings, seals, lubrication and lubrication systems, maintenance products, mechatronics products, power transmission products, condition monitoring systems and related services globally.
A ball bearing is a type of rolling-element bearing that uses balls to maintain the separation between the bearing races.
Fluid bearings are bearings in which the load is supported by a thin layer of rapidly moving pressurized liquid or gas between the bearing surfaces. Since there is no contact between the moving parts, there is no sliding friction, allowing fluid bearings to have lower friction, wear and vibration than many other types of bearings. Thus, it is possible for some fluid bearings to have near-zero wear if operated correctly.
A bearing is a machine element that constrains relative motion to only the desired motion and reduces friction between moving parts. The design of the bearing may, for example, provide for free linear movement of the moving part or for free rotation around a fixed axis; or, it may prevent a motion by controlling the vectors of normal forces that bear on the moving parts. Most bearings facilitate the desired motion by minimizing friction. Bearings are classified broadly according to the type of operation, the motions allowed, or the directions of the loads (forces) applied to the parts.
A plain bearing, or more commonly sliding contact bearing and slide bearing, is the simplest type of bearing, comprising just a bearing surface and no rolling elements. Therefore, the part of the shaft in contact with the bearing slides over the bearing surface. The simplest example of a plain bearing is a shaft rotating in a hole. A simple linear bearing can be a pair of flat surfaces designed to allow motion; e.g., a drawer and the slides it rests on or the ways on the bed of a lathe.
In mechanical engineering, a rolling-element bearing, also known as a rolling bearing, is a bearing which carries a load by placing rolling elements between two concentric, grooved rings called races. The relative motion of the races causes the rolling elements to roll with very little rolling resistance and with little sliding.
A thrust bearing is a particular type of rotary bearing. Like other bearings they permanently rotate between parts, but they are designed to support a predominantly axial load.
Tapered roller bearings are rolling element bearings that can support axial forces as well as radial forces.
A linear-motion bearing or linear slide is a bearing designed to provide free motion in one direction. There are many different types of linear motion bearings.
A ball screw is a mechanical linear actuator that translates rotational motion to linear motion with little friction. A threaded shaft provides a helical raceway for ball bearings which act as a precision screw. As well as being able to apply or withstand high thrust loads, they can do so with minimum internal friction. They are made to close tolerances and are therefore suitable for high-precision applications. The ball assembly acts as the nut while the threaded shaft is the screw.
Brinelling is the permanent indentation of a hard surface. It is named after the Brinell scale of hardness, in which a small ball is pushed against a hard surface at a preset level of force, and the depth and diameter of the mark indicates the Brinell hardness of the surface. Brinelling is permanent plastic deformation of a surface, and usually occurs while two surfaces in contact are stationary and the material yield strength has been exceeded.
A cam follower, also known as a track follower, is a specialized type of roller or needle bearing designed to follow cam lobe profiles. Cam followers come in a vast array of different configurations, however the most defining characteristic is how the cam follower mounts to its mating part; stud style cam followers use a stud while the yoke style has a hole through the middle.
The Frantz Manufacturing Company located in Sterling, Illinois, is a manufacturer and marketer of conveyor system components and steel ball products used in a variety of applications.
A roller screw, also known as a planetary roller screw or satellite roller screw, is a low-friction precision screw-type actuator, a mechanical device for converting rotational motion to linear motion, or vice versa. Planetary roller screws are used as the actuating mechanism in many electromechanical linear actuators. Due to its complexity, the roller screw is a relatively expensive actuator, but may be suitable for high-precision, high-speed, heavy-load, long-life, and heavy-use applications.
Barden Corporation is a ball bearing manufacturer based in Danbury, Connecticut, USA with factories in Danbury, Winsted, Connecticut and in Plymouth, England. It previously had factories in Bridgeport, Connecticut and Haverhill, Massachusetts.
NTN Corporation is one of the most prominent manufacturers of bearings in Japan, second domestically only to NSK Ltd. The company is one of the largest exporters worldwide of friction-reducing products, such as constant-velocity joints.
Spiral groove bearings are self-acting, or hydrodynamic bearings used to reduce friction and wear without the use of pressurized lubricants. They have this ability due to special patterns of grooves. Spiral groove bearings are self-acting because their own rotation builds up the pressure needed to separate the bearing surfaces. For this reason, they are also contactless bearings.
A spherical roller bearing is a rolling-element bearing that permits rotation with low friction, and permits angular misalignment. Typically these bearings support a rotating shaft in the bore of the inner ring that may be misaligned in respect to the outer ring. The misalignment is possible due to the spherical internal shape of the outer ring and spherical rollers. Despite what their name may imply, spherical roller bearings are not truly spherical in shape. The rolling elements of spherical roller bearings are mainly cylindrical in shape, but have a profile that makes them appear like cylinders that have been slightly over-inflated.
NBC Bearings is the brand of National Engineering Industries Limited (NEIL), a part of CK Birla Group. National Engineering Industries (NEIL) was founded in 1946 and is engaged in the manufacturing of bearings for the automotive, railway, industrial, and aerospace industries. It sells bearings under the brand name NBC Bearings and exports them to at least 30+ countries, including the United States, Germany, Brazil, Japan, and Australia.
A spherical roller thrust bearing is a rolling-element bearing of thrust type that permits rotation with low friction, and permits angular misalignment. The bearing is designed to take radial loads, and heavy axial loads in one direction. Typically these bearings support a rotating shaft in the bore of the shaft washer that may be misaligned in respect to the housing washer. The misalignment is possible due to the spherical internal shape of the house washer.