Do you know the differences between bearing steel balls, wear-resistant balls, and cutting balls? Today, Kangda Steel Balls will summarize and analyze these three types of balls for your reference:
1. High Chromium Balls
Kangda Steel Balls often receives calls asking if there are steel balls ranging from 60 to 100MM?
When I asked further, I found that such balls generally come in large quantities, but unfortunately, they are not the type of balls we produce. So I introduced to the customer that these balls are generally called high-chrome balls and low-chrome balls, not the bright-surfaced balls we manufacture, which have completely different manufacturing processes. Of course, they are much cheaper than our balls. This kind of wear-resistant balls, often in hundreds of tons, mainly emphasizes the chromium content. Their main uses are for crushing, mixing, and other operations in mines, coal mines, power plants, cement plants, building materials plants, paper mills, ceramic material plants, etc.
This high-chromium ball is produced by melting a certain proportion of high-quality scrap steel and chromium alloy materials in an induction furnace, then subjecting the molten iron to micro-alloying treatment and tempering. It is subsequently cast into shape using a unique metal mold and sand mold casting process. Finally, it undergoes high-temperature quenching and tempering treatment to achieve high hardness and wear resistance.
High Chromium Ball
2. Bearing Steel Balls
The metal balls assembled on bearings are called bearing steel balls. The main material used is GCR15. These steel balls have a bright surface, high precision, and high hardness, with a complex manufacturing process and higher price. Of course, there are also such balls that are disassembled from old bearings, which are used for grinding and polishing. Whether used for assembly or grinding, their raw materials are high-quality steel bars or rods from steel mill production lines, not scrap steel. The manufacturing process involves cold heading and extrusion forming, followed by multiple grinding and sizing operations on ball grinders and polishing machines, and further circularity improvement and brightness enhancement on precision grinding machines. It takes dozens of production processes to manufacture high-precision, high-hardness bearing steel balls, which are then assembled into various hardware components, mechanical parts, automotive parts, and bearing accessories.
Bearing Steel Balls
3. Shot Blasting / Peening
This is also a question that many friends often ask me by phone: whether we have steel balls with diameters such as 0.2mm, 0.3mm, 0.5mm, 0.6mm, and 0.7mm. When I ask them how much they need, they say they need hundreds of kilograms, or even several tons. At this point, it's clear that these are not the steel balls we produce. When I further ask about their intended use and tolerance requirements, it becomes even more evident that they are not the precision steel balls we make. Strictly speaking, these are not balls at all, but rather cut shot or blast shot. Cut shot is produced by cutting steel wire into small pieces, and blast shot is formed by spraying molten steel wire. Therefore, they are irregular and not round at all—some are cylindrical, others are spherical but not perfectly round. Compared to our precision steel balls, the manufacturing process for these is much simpler, and naturally, the price is significantly lower.
This type of shot blasting or grit blasting is mainly used for surface treatment work such as polishing, rust removal, and dust cleaning.
Cut ball
Shot peening
