Fake Ball Bearings

[m_sasso]

Interesting reading on fake supposed high quality SKF ball bearings, what are you using with your bikes?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-13/forget-sham-rolexes-the-real-money-is-in-fake-ball-bearings

[Lewis Moon]

Wow. That's just effing scary.

[josephr]

more reason not to buy knock-off anything. I worked for an industrial distributor for a few years and the big thing then was knock-off hydraulic fittings as well as the bearings. At least then the poorly made stuff from China was packaged/sold from asian manufacturers....pretty brazen of them to copy the boxes!

[weisan]

pals, there are people who trafficked H-U-M-A-N-S...do you think they will spare a couple of ball bearings?

[AngryScientist]

counterfeit equipment and hardware is a huge problem in the industrial space. with the increased amount of junk and fake parts on the market it really reinforces the need for engineers and QA/QC specialists to be involved in almost any project of nearly any size. its crazy and a widespread problem.

bottom bracket bearings are one thing, and certainly no one wants a fake and all, but larger equipment containing counterfeit parts of suspect quality can be catastrophic, cause big $$ damages and even hurt/kill people.

much earlier in my career i spec'd and bought a large piece of industrial powerplant equipment. I went out to the field to see what i bought and it arrived on the truck as i was getting to the site. it was in pieces, not by design. it never survived the transportation to the site. i was devastated and felt like i had missed the boat, big time on the design.

i later found out, through a forensic investigation and a hefty ongoing lawsuit that the culprit was counterfeit bolts made of cheapy pot metal. it was a big deal. i'll never forget that project.