steel balls

[eddief]

after a zillion miles of cycling, i never knew how these fundamental parts were made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19duYMdiXi0

[steamer]

The process of making the balls raw looks brutal.

[marciero]

That is an intense process. Those machines... and the final result is absolutely beautiful. And a UN 55 bottom bracket is like $14. Pretty amazing. I guess it's about volume. Once you have the tooling you pump them out.

[KJMUNC]

Fantastic video, thanks for sharing!

As someone who spends their professional life in/around manufacturing this video is a great way to show kids/others all the various facets of the trade. It's not just the end product, but the raw material, the specific machines used in each process, the lubricants, the various inspection technologies (AI-enabled video and even audio have replaced everything manual in this video), etc.

This video was probably shot in Asia, but there are still a ton of bearing manufacturing plants in the US making all sizes, shapes, materials that we use throughout life that typically go completely unnoticed.

[weiwentg]

...

This video was probably shot in Asia, but there are still a ton of bearing manufacturing plants in the US making all sizes, shapes, materials that we use throughout life that typically go completely unnoticed.

If you check the YT channel, it’s a Japanese channel. The English subtitles are pretty good, but something about the sentence construction made me think that it was distinctively Japanese. as if it were Engrish, but grammatical and properly spelled.

[old_fat_and_slow]

Steel balls are so 1990's ! Get on the ceramic ball bandwagon or get the hell outta the way !!! :):rolleyes:

[CO_Hoya]

This was an enjoyable watch.

Thanks.

[mnoble485]

Like many, I am self isolating. Thanks for the 15 minute break from the “news”. I have always been in awe of the machines that make things and the people that design the whole process.

Mike

[dustyrider]

I thought of this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyrlEE9AV58) video as soon as I saw the thread title...:p