Wheel bearing is the core component of a vehicle's steering system. Therefore, automotive manufacturers have imposed extremely high requirements on the materials. used for making wheel bearings , They must not only carry high dynamic and static load, but also look nice in terms of product appearance.

Moreover, as nylon is easy to absorb water, moisture will slowly penetrate into the bearing if the wheel bearing is not well sealed, possibly resulting in abnormal noise or even failure of the steering system. For this reason, bearing manufacturers coat nylon with thermoplastic elastomer (TPU or TPE) to avoid leakage. However, because hard plastic and soft plastic have different levels of surface energy, they cannot be tightly bound even when techniques such as double-shot molding, optimized physical locking or even adhesives are used. Many  complaints already boiling over the i nternet against abnormal noise generated by wheel bearings of multiple car models. These complaints demonstrate how big the challenge is to solve this issue.

It is simply because the steering plane bearing plays such an important role and has such stringent material requirements that a well-known Japanese brand  automobile manufacturer was having much a  headache in how to find a material that could meet all requirements when designing the steering system for its new SUV. The m ain issue was the heavy weight of the SUV, that the load requirement of its wheel bearings was far higher than of ordinary cars.

Finally, Germany's well-known supplier of modified, engineering plastics AKRO-PLASTIC performed testing and developed a unique 60%-glass-fiber-reinforced nylon, which successfully passed the tests and solved the challenges facing the material for the wheel bearings. of the SUV model.

AKRO's glass fiber reinforced nylon created customer value in three aspects.

1: Stringent strength:
In this SUV model, AKRO's material was injection-molded to make plane bearing supports. Through 60% glass fiber reinforcement, the material achieved super high strength and lower creepage. It should be noted that AKRO-PLASTIC's 60%-glass-fiber-reinforced material achieves a tensile modulus of 21,000 MPa when dry.

2: Nice product appearance
For 60% glass fiber reinforcement, how to maintain a smooth appearance of injection-molded components and avoid the presence of exposed fiber was also a technical challenge. The product made through injection molding with AKRO material  showed completely  no sign of exposed fiber, which received highly satisfactory recognition from the said  manufacturer. that specified extremely high requirements for product appearance.

3:  Resolving the problem of bonding with the TPE coating material
By developing a special nylon material, AKRO-PLASTIC successfully solved the problem of loose bonding between TPU/TPE and nylon  and eliminated the need to use specially modified TPU/TPE specifications. This material could maintain excellent adhesion even within high and low temperature testing environments. These special nylon specifications cover Nylon 6, Nylon 66, glass fiber, glass bead, mineral powder and even carbon fiber reinforcing fillers to have solved this industry problem forever .

Since its launch, this new SUV has obtained significant market recognition. The sophisticated after-sales service and technical support from AKRO also gave the automotive manufacturer more confidence and encouraged it to continue working with AKRO to look for solutions of  materials problems.