In the field of slew bearing manufacturing, customers often fall into a misunderstanding: they think that the performance of products with similar structure and parameters is not much different, and the price is the core consideration. However, as a professional manufacturer with many years of experience in the industry, SWBTEC must reveal a key fact – 80% of the load carrying capacity, service life and even the risk of failure of a slew bearing is determined by the quality of the unseen forgings. And those ‘low price, high quality’ commitment, often buried fatal hidden danger.

First, the four major quality of forgings life and death line, you can’t have one without the other

1. Chemical composition accurate to the decimal point

50Mn and 42CrMo strength advantage is built on the harsh elemental ratios. Take 42CrMo for example, chromium content fluctuation ±0.05% will lead to a 15% decrease in hardenability, molybdenum element exceeds the standard 0.01% may trigger grain boundary embrittlement. SWBTEC requires suppliers to issue a spectral analysis report, to ensure that the elemental deviation is less than the national standard of 1/3.

2. Forging process determines the soul of the metal

Real forging of slew ring is not as simple as ‘heating and hammering’. We require:

The starting forging temperature must be controlled at 1150±10℃ (ordinary manufacturers allow ±50℃).

Forging ratio ≥ 4:1 (industry common 2:1) in order to completely break the cast organisation

The use of multi-directional die forging process, so that the flow distribution in line with the direction of force

3. Millimetre control of tempering treatment

Take 50Mn tempering as an example, SWBTEC performs ‘three-stage precision quenching’:

① Austenitising heat preservation at 880°C (time calculated at 1.8 minutes per mm of thickness)

② water – oil dual-media quenching (water temperature constant 30℃±2)

③ 620 ℃ tempering with nitrogen protection against decarburisation

This process can make the uniformity of hardness to HRC±1, far beyond the industry±3 standard.

4. Detection standards must penetrate the surface

We use ‘three-dimensional detection matrix’:

Ultrasonic flaw detection (ASTM A388 standard) to detect internal cracks

Magnetic particle flaw detection (ISO 4986) to find surface defects

Metallographic analysis (100x microscope) to monitor the grain size of more than 6 levels

Second, the selection of suppliers is not to buy food, you must ‘pass the five hurdles’.

SWBTEC establishes ‘five-dimensional evaluation system’ for suppliers:

Melting capacity certification: must have electric arc furnace + LF refining furnace duplex process

Forging equipment audit: press tonnage ≥ 8000 tonnes (only 3000 tonnes for small plants)

Process traceability system: each forging piece can be traced back to the melting furnace number, forging batch

Quality cost ratio: testing equipment investment needs to exceed 15% of total assets

Accident response mechanism: 24-hour technical team in the plant support

SWBTEC’s Quality Commitment

We know that a slewing ring bearing with top quality forgings can extend its life at least by 3 times under the same working conditions and reduce the failure rate by 80%. This is exactly the bottom of our insistence that ‘non-top forgings are not used’ – because every rotation of the slewing ring bearing carries the trust of customers.

Choosing slew bearings is essentially choosing the metallurgical gene of the forging supplier, and SWBTCC is willing to be your most demanding ‘quality gatekeeper’, replacing the price game with scientific data, and witnessing the professional value with decades of life.