Thrust Bearings
At Melett, we have a thorough understanding of thrust bearing manufacture, including the main methods of producing the initial thrust bearing blank and the appropriate method required for each application, including:
- Sliced sections of a continuous cast bar;
- Stamped blanks;
- Powder metal (referred to as sintering);
- Hot forging.
All Melett thrust bearings then undergo double disc grinding, oil feed hole drilling and most importantly ramp sizing on the oil pads:
- Oil Ramping is an extremely important feature on the thrust bearing and this critical detail is often overlooked. The ramping creates a wedge of oil as the thrust component rotates and helps to force the parts away from the surface, reducing wear and therefore increasing the turbos life.
Where possible, Melett improves the original method used i.e. K03 & K04, BV39 & BV43 thrust bearings.
