Sales of NTN Corporation‘s “Hydrodynamic BEARPHITE”, the company’s oil-impregnated sintered bearing featuring a hydrodynamic groove formed on the inside bore surface, have now exceeded a total of one billion units worldwide. Its high level of reliability, states the company, has lent itself to a wide variety of applications such as spindle motors for hard disk drives and cooling fan motors for electronic devices.

To meet the increasing demand for greater capacity HDDs in recent years, NTN has focused on technical development aimed at improving the precision of bearings, developing new materials and achieving further miniaturisation. As a result, the company has developed the “Thin Type Hydrodynamic BEARPHITE” that delivers a high level of reliability and silence for thin fan motor applications used in ultra-thin notebook PCs such as Ultrabooks.

While there has been increased demand for thinner bearings for fan motors used in Ultrabooks, the same cooling characteristics as conventional fan motors were also required. To achieve this, the impellers (blades) installed on fan motors were increased in size over conventional units, which in turn placed a greater load on the bearing.

With Ultrabooks designed for their light weight and portability, the bearings were subjected to a range of different usage environments and rotation conditions, which ultimately called for a high level of reliability under tougher operating conditions.

Sales of Ultrabooks remain strong, and demand for thin fan motors is expected to increase as more advanced mobile devices such as tablet PCs are released onto the market.

The newly commercialised “Thin Type Hydrodynamic BEARPHITE” features optimised hydrodynamic groove specifications and groove machining conditions for thin fan motors, and uses a newly developed lubricating oil to help maintain the non-contact structure that is characteristic of hydrodynamic bearings, even under tough usage conditions. The resulting product offers a high level of silence and reliability.

Cross-section of a cooling fan motor, showing the ‘thin type hydrodynamic BEARPHITE sintered bearing

www.ntn.co.jp  

Posted by: Paul Whittaker, Editor ipmd.net, [email protected]   

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