In October last year, the world's first 1000 tons of rolling and forming equipment ACDR rotary mill successfully conducted the first test mold.

The news immediately caused a sensation in the bearing industry. The reason is that this equipment will break the industry limitations that large-size discs in the fields of transmission, high-grade bearings, aviation engines, gas engines and other fields cannot be formed as a whole at one time.

Careful people noticed that the research and development of this equipment is the technical team of Northwestern Polytechnical University, but the machine is manufactured in Lingbi County, Suzhou City, Anhui Province, a famous stone in the northern Anhui county.

Why Lingbi can crack the worldwide problem of bearing industry? Why did the technical team in the northwest transform the technological achievements in the strange stone town thousands of miles away?

The world's first TV birth story

The company that produced this super large tonnage disc shaft spinning rolling molding equipment is called Anhui Hanzheng Bearing Technology Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as Hanzheng Bearing). The company is located in Lingbi bearing industrial Park. This is a high-tech enterprise focusing on the research and development and production application of ultra-fine crystal modification technology of metal materials, and the technical team is from Northwestern Polytechnical University.

In fact, this rotary mill was produced, and the strong rotary rolling technology (PTR) used by Northwestern Polytechnical University professor Liu Dong's team has been hard at work for more than 10 years.

To understand the significance of this technology, you must first understand the bearing.

Bearings are known as the "joints" of mechanical equipment.

As an indispensable part of contemporary mechanical equipment, the main function of the bearing is to support the mechanical rotating body, reduce the friction coefficient between the mechanical rotating body, so as to ensure the rotation accuracy of the mechanical rotating body.

The quality of bearing steel required for manufacturing bearings is directly related to the life and reliability of bearings. Previously, domestic enterprises have been relying on high-quality bearing steel imported from foreign countries at high prices.

In order to crack the "stuck neck" technology of bearing steel, after more than 10 years of hard work, in 2019, the PTR technology developed by Liu Dong's team was selected by Northwestern Polytechnical University and conducted a roadshow on campus to prepare for the transformation of results.

The technology makes the carbide of the bearing steel refined to 1/10 of the original, the average contact fatigue life of the bearing increased several times, the reliability reached 99.9%, and the production process was shortened by 2/3.

"In 2021, we ran 33 cities, almost the Beijing-Guangzhou line, Longhai line can do bearings and gears on the area ran all over, and finally by the school and Anhui provincial local leaders matchmaking, the project finally landed in Lingbi." "Mr. Liu recalled in an interview.

At the end of this year, Hanzheng Bearing was officially established. It only took half a year to build a new factory covering an area of about 25,000 square meters, and it took about a year to build two full-automatic production lines of strong rotary rolling. The speed surprised even Liu Dong.

Everything comes naturally, only with Lingbi "the world's first birth record".

"Out of nothing" sword refers to tens of billions of industry

From the northwest miles to Lingbi scientific and technological achievements transformation, Liu Dong fancy here bearing industry cluster.

As a characteristic industrial cluster (base) of machinery manufacturing in Anhui province, Lingbi Bearing Industrial Park has now settled 54 bearing and supporting enterprises, of which 26 enterprises have been on the plan, basically forming an industrial chain with a clear division of labor and strong supporting ability to bearing steel pipe, bearing rings, heat treatment, bearing assembly, bearing research and development. In 2023, the output value of bearing and supporting enterprises in the park will reach 2.49 billion yuan, an increase of 140.9% year-on-year.

However, before 2018, the bearing industry was also "insulated" with Lingbi. In recent years, Lingbi County has come out of nothing, grasped the strategic opportunities such as the integration of the Yangtze River Delta and the revitalization of northern Anhui to undertake the industrial transfer of the Yangtze River Delta, and let the "small bearing" transfer out of the big industry.

In recent years, the Lingbi County Party Committee and the county government have formulated and implemented "Several measures to accelerate the development of the bearing industry in Lingbi County" and "Opinions on accelerating the development of the bearing industry in Lingbi County" and other "package" policies and measures to support the bearing industry.

It is worth mentioning that Lingbi County has also cooperated with Northwestern Polytechnical University, Hefei University of Technology, China University of Mining and Technology, Luoyang Bearing Research Institute and other universities and research institutes to build a bearing testing R & D innovation platform, carry out joint research, and find a unique path for the development of high-end bearing industry.

Take the "axis" as the medium to "inherit" the future

On June 6, the website of the Anhui Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology released the "Publicity of the List of characteristic industrial clusters of small and medium-sized Enterprises in Anhui Province in 2024", and the bearing industry cluster in Lingbi County of Suzhou City was selected.

For the bearing industry, Lingbi has greater expectations - to promote the bearing industry to become bigger and stronger, and to accelerate the creation of a bearing industry cluster with important influence in the country.

Such expectations are projected into the development blueprint of Anhui Hanzheng bearing.

"We plan to build seven ultra-fine crystal bearing steel pipe and ring automatic intelligent production line in Lingbi, the current two have been completed and put into production, is expected to be fully completed in 2025 up to the annual output value of more than 1.5 billion yuan, is expected to achieve high-end bearings, gear, drive shaft and other basic parts of the transmission system import replacement." Liu Dong is also full of expectations for the bearing industry in Lingbi.

Source: People's Daily Online - Anhui Channel