Funan Bearing: Ranked among the "first echelon in China" in 4 years

Bearings are common in life. As a supporting role in mechanical equipment, it is not big, but the role is not small, mechanical parts can smoothly rotate, but also rely on it to achieve.

Fujian Funan Bearing Co., Ltd., located in Ximei Street, Nan 'an, focuses on the production of this unique "small parts" and makes the small bearings into a large market. Recently, under the attack of the research and development team of Funan bearing, a type called "agricultural machinery maintainment-free bearing" has entered the stage of small batch production, and will soon play a big role in agricultural machinery.

Funan bearing technicians are testing the performance of the products.

Small bearings make a big market

On April 9th, Minxiao Industrial Park, Liantang Village, Ximei Street, as soon as we entered Funan Bearing Factory, rows of special automatic CNC equipment in the workshop worked in an orderly way, with precision machining, strict inspection, precise assembly and elaborate packaging... The processes work in an orderly manner.

Liang Bin, the chief engineer leading the team, stopped in front of one of the equipment with great interest, and picked up a finished product and introduced it, "This is our newly developed maintenance-free bearing for agricultural machinery, with a service life of 3 to 5 years. Once installed on the farm machinery, it will be maintenance-free for two years."

Although only the size of a fist, but this product on the market, will solve the pain point of agricultural machinery. Liang Bin explained that agricultural machinery due to long-term exposure to the outdoors, field work, mud, dust, crop stalks lead to the short service life of bearings, often each harvest season need to replace the bearings two or three times, or even more.

This has brought a lot of trouble to farmers. On the one hand, it is time-consuming and costly to replace bearings, and on the other hand, it is difficult to find maintenance outlets, which greatly affects the production efficiency. In order to effectively reduce the number of mechanical equipment maintenance and save costs, under the research and development team led by Liang Bin, this bearing with dustproof, mud proof and maintenance free will greatly improve the stability of agricultural machinery and equipment.

"Since October last year, more than 800,000 yuan has been invested in the research and development of maintainment-free bearings for agricultural machinery, excluding equipment investment." Yao Guanghai, general manager of Funan Bearing Company, told reporters that the first batch of bearings will be successively sent to agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturing factories and northeast China, Shandong, Xinjiang and other agricultural production areas. "We will track the use of users throughout the process, gradually improve and expand production capacity."

There is a big market for small bearings. Relevant data show that the annual sales of agricultural machinery in China is nearly 100 billion yuan, and the annual demand for special supporting bearings is nearly 3 billion yuan, with thousands of models. "Once the agricultural machinery maintenance-free bearing is put on the market, there is a market demand of hundreds of millions of yuan, with great potential." Yao Guanghai said.

Maintenance-free bearing of agricultural machinery is only an epitome of technological innovation of Funan bearing. It is understood that there are 160 employees of Funan Bearing, and 11% of them are scientific and technical personnel engaged in research and development and technological innovation activities. In 2019, the revenue of the bearing part is nearly 50 million yuan, and the R&D investment in the three years accounts for about 5% of the sales.

Moving from low-end manufacturing to high-end

If 15 years ago, Funan Bearing was just a fledgeling explorer, now, by virtue of scientific and technological innovation and the spirit of craftsmanship, it has been focusing on bearing matching for more than ten years. Funan Bearing has made remarkable achievements: it has successfully ranked among the "first echelon in China" in the field of outer spherical ball bearings with seat.

That all changed four years ago. In 2016, Funan bearings encountered difficulties: due to the low quality of products, the price war was not only low profit, but also difficult to do. Only by relying on scientific and technological innovation to produce medium - and high-end products can we get out of this dilemma.

The introduction of talents is particularly important. Liang Bin, who graduated from Henan University of Science and Technology in bearing design and manufacturing, is an expert. He has been obsessed with bearing manufacturing and research and development for decades. He worked in large state-owned enterprises, private enterprises and foreign-funded enterprises before and was hired by Funan Bearing at the end of 2016 with large amount of money.

"As the core of machinery, bearings must ensure the stability of rotation, but also reduce vibration noise." As soon as he came to Funan Bearing, Liang Bin received a task: to complete the research and development of "high speed, low noise and high-end outer spherical ball bearing with seat".

"Previously, many customers had high-end bearing procurement needs, we can only import from abroad. The profit will be high only if you produce it yourself." Liang Bin told reporters that in order to develop this product, they spent two years and four years to achieve catch-up.

First of all, the design drawings and products are bought from abroad, and the precision, performance, life and reliability of the products are analyzed and tested with reference to the standards of big-name enterprises. The essence of the products is extracted, and the disadvantages are made up with reverse thinking, and the innovation is digested and absorbed.

In equipment, tens of millions of yuan are invested to purchase advanced CNC equipment, testing instruments, heat treatment production lines, etc. The finished bearings are strictly tested for three items, namely, rotating accuracy, radial clearance and vibration noise level of bearings. The vibration noise level of bearings has reached V2 level stably.

"Bearing vibration noise is divided into four levels: V, V1, V2 and V3. V3 represents the international advanced level. We are gradually narrowing the gap and getting closer to the international level." Liang Bin explained that with the improvement of technical level and product quality, at present, in the key product of outer spherical ball bearing with seat, Funan bearing has come from behind to achieve a leap from low end to high end.

Yao Guanghai introduced that in addition to outer spherical ball bearings with seats, Funan bearings also produces a full range of outer spherical ball bearings, bearing seats and non-standard custom products. With an annual output of 7 million bearings, 4 million sets of bearings, and supporting in fan equipment, textile machinery, agricultural machinery, automobile testing lines and other fields.

While exploring the domestic market, Funan bearings also actively expand the international market. Among them, in Europe, North America, South America and Asia and other regions, the products of Funan bearings have been serving users.