NTN Corporation (hereafter, NTN) has received the “Machinery & Robot Component Award” of ‘CHO’ MONODZUKURI Innovative Parts and Components Award 2023 hosted by the MONODZUKURI Nippon Conference and Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, Ltd.

Award Name

Machinery & Robot Component Award of
‘CHO’ MONODZUKURI Innovative Parts and Components Award 2023

Awarded Product

Sensor Integrated Rolling Bearing “Talking Bearing?”

Product Overview

The awarded product integrates electronic circuit including sensors, power generation units, and wireless devices into bearing and wirelessly transmits information on temperature, vibration, and rotational speed. Compared to the conventional sensing methods in which sensors are attached externally to the equipment, it can realize more advanced condition monitoring for early detection of abnormal conditions in bearing and peripheral components.

Features

Compatibility

Compatible with standard bearings by incorporating sensors, power generation units, and wireless devices into standard bearing*1 without changing dimension and load capacity    

Advanced condition monitoring and abnormality diagnosis

Detects bearing condition such as vibration and temperature with sensors built in bearing with high sensitivity compared sensors attached to outside of equipment    

High convenience

Cables are not required for power supply and data transmission, and it is easy to mount the product in equipment    

Rolling bearings with internationally standardized main dimension and type

Reasons for Receiving the Award

While efforts toward carbon neutrality have been made in various industries, there are growing needs for systematic maintenance and replacement of components in manufacturing industry to minimize equipment downtime and associated energy consumption.

“Talking Bearing?” enables early abnormality detection of bearings and peripheral components, and contributes to improvements in operation rate and productivity of facilities. Additionally, industry’s first structure, which incorporates sensors into standard bearings, enables the addition of condition monitoring function without changing facility designs. Thus the awarded product can be applied in a wide range of industrial machinery. In addition to contributing to the decarbonization of industry and improvement of safety, NTN received this award in recognition of the originality of the technology to incorporate sensors into bearing.

Reference: NTN’s proprietary magnetization technology leading development of “Talking Bearing?”

In order to ensure the operating life of rolling bearings, most of bearings are occupied by rolling elements such as balls and retainer that retain rolling elements, making it difficult to incorporate electronic circuit, power generation units, and wireless devices into standard bearings. Among them, it has been a challenge to develop power generation unit which is thin and compact, yet generates sufficient electricity.

This issue was solved by NTN’s proprietary magnetization technology. NTN has accumulated high precision magnetization technology and know-how by developing “Integrated Rotation Sensor Bearing*2” that detects motor rotations and “Multi Track Magnetic Ring*3” that contributes to detection of absolute angles of robot joints. By applying this magnetization technology, we have succeeded in developing highly magnetic power generation unit with extremely thin section.