Ball Screws are custom-made in lengths to 64 ft.
Press Release Summary:
Extra-long, custom ball screws are available in several syles: hollow, with specialty plating and stainless materials, combined right- and left-hand thread, and with specialized drive methods such as splined journals, or gear-driven, rotating-nut designs. With available sizes in inch or metric, products can be supplied with internal or external ball returns, and special flanges and wipers are available.
Original Press Release:
Large, Special Ball Screws Now Available from RBC
(Fairfield, CT) Extra-long, custom ball screws are available from Linear Precision Products (Walterboro, SC), a division of RBC Bearings. "We recently completed a 64-footer for a company that needed to lift loads in excess of 125,000 lbs. over 55 feet in a unique testing facility," explains product manager, John Kinney. "It was a successful project and we can now offer this increased capability to others. With that experience behind us, we can probably go even longer. We've always published that our capability was 36 feet long and 6 inches in diameter, but we've pushed through that parameter many times over the last few years."
Other large projects recently completed at RBC include a 45-foot screw and another featuring an 8-inch diameter - the largest diameter the company has ever made. That big diameter project was for a 10-foot long hollow ball screw with a 4-inch lead. The application was for a machine tool that is producing the largest compressor rotors on the market. RBC produced the ball screw with a double nut preloaded design in 15 weeks.
The design included special ball yoke deflectors to provide positive ball re-circulation and eliminated fragile pick-up fingers on the return tubes. The primary ball nut included a 17-inch diameter mounting flange and involved removing 800 pounds of material to reach the final size. The finished ball screw weighed more than 1300 pounds.
RBC manufactures ball screws with other specialized requirements including hollow ball screws for weight reduction or cooling purposes, ball screws with specialty plating and stainless materials for corrosive and hostile environments, combined right and left hand thread ball screws, ball screws with specialized drive methods such as splined journals, or gear driven rotating nut designs. Depending on the application, RBC will supply a ball screw with either internal or external ball returns. Special flanges and wipers are available. Customers can choose sizes in either inch or metric. RBC Linear Precision Products also stocks many standard series ball screws for quick delivery.
RBC Bearings is an industry leader in the development of precision bearing products for a diverse group of applications, including: aerospace, construction, mining and material handling equipment, mobile hydraulics systems, farm machinery, transportation equipment, automation and robotics, machine tool and semi-conductor industries, and a host of other industrial applications.
