Needle Roller Bearings Co. Ltd. (NRB; http://www.nrb.com.tw/) announced it has rolled out a new coating for its needle roller bearing cages (aka retainers).

The company has begun using Vicote coatings [website: http://www.vicote.com/], produced by Victrex plc (UK), across its full needle bearing product line.

Use of Vicote is notable because the coatings are polymer-based and are designed to directly replace traditional layers of copper and silver plating, and are 50% thinner than plating.

Louis Hsueh, NRB Taiwan's Plant Manager, said: "We are excited about Vicote coatings as a new solution to enhance the design and performance of our needle roller bearings; it not only provides higher performance and increases the life cycle of the needle roller bearings, but it also reduces the overall systems cost."

Mr. Hsueh went on to note: "a further advantage of the Vicote coating is that the process for applying the coating is simpler and less damaging to the bearing cage than applying the traditional copper/silver plating -- as the process for applying copper/silver plating to the bearing cage can cause hydrogen embrittlement, which can lead to premature, catastrophic, bearing failure."

Victrex' Vicote line also now includes Vicote 804 Blk, which NRB chose for its needle roller bearings. 804 Blk was formulated to solve the problem of flash rusting which can occur when many of the newer aqueous coatings are applied directly to mild steel cages.

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