Can ceramic bearings replace bicycle steel bearings?

I saw a lot of friends who love bicycles are discussing about ceramic bearings. Here are some of the practical situations I have learned and some knowledge about ceramic bearings.

Ceramic bearings are generally divided into two types, one is a full ceramic bearing, and the other is a partial ceramic bearing. It is well understood that the so-called all-ceramic bearing is the inner ring, the outer ring, and the ball is a bearing made of ceramic material. For some ceramic bearings, we often see that the ball uses ceramics, while the inner ring outer ring still uses steel as the material.

Earlier ceramic bearings used composite alumina ceramics, which have the advantage of being very hard and very hard. In addition, composite silicon oxide is used, but the hardness of ceramic bearings using this material is slightly lower than that of alumina. The common feature of these materials is that the brittleness is relatively large. The main ceramic bearing material now uses incompletely recrystallized zirconia, which is very hard. Although this material is slightly lower in hardness than alumina, its impact strength is very very high.

At present, the impact of the universal ceramic bearing is no longer a problem. The universal ceramic bearing can meet this standard. The main problem now is that there is no suitable material for the retainer. It is common for ceramic bearings to be scrapped in general. Today's retainers are available in a variety of materials, from high-density nylon to metallic. But no matter what kind of material is used now, it can't be ground with ceramic materials.

Also, one problem with ceramic bearings is the price. Because of the limitations of the manufacturing process, its price can not be the same as steel bearings, so many places or many industries can not use such bearings, so it also leads to its small production, but also increases the cost of production in disguise. The price of ceramic bearings is high.

The main producers of ceramic bearings are now Sweden and Japan. China YWS bearings are also being produced, and the models are rarely very accurate. However, on the bicycle is more than Zhuo Zhuo. Even in places such as foreign countries, the models are rare and the supply period is very long. In addition, the ceramic grinding balls produced by the YuKi group in China are also many metrics.

The use of ceramic bearings for bicycles is of course very good. Ceramic bearings also have many advantages, high temperature resistance, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, suitable for higher speeds, very low expansion coefficient, and very low thermal conductivity. If the price can be controlled, Then it is absolutely no problem to replace steel bearings on bicycles. So it may not be the present, but there may be a day when ceramic bearings can replace steel bearings, so we should control the development and application of ceramic bearings on bicycles at the source, that is, at the price.