Steel Balls

What does Aerospace, Automotive, Food Processing and Medical Instrumentation fields have in common? Give up? It is the steel ball. Just think about it, where there is a pump or bearing involved you will find a steel ball. Not just any ball, but a high polished, shiny, mirror-like finished, measured to millionths of an inch for accuracy ball. Now you can read all the charts and find out that a steel ball is made from specific percentages of chemical elements or how strong the tensile strength can hold up under extreme pressure or that the hardness is measured on a specific scale under the strictest of coded regulations, but what the charts don’t tell you is where you can get the finest product, the best prices with a highly trained technical sales staff that will service any professional ball need that you may have dreamed up.

Now when you compare a steel ball to other alloys you will find that this material, when made into a precision ball, is the most popular material requested. Bearings, valves, tooling and gauging applications are also the highest percentage of uses for a stainless steel ball. Why wouldn’t it be? Just think about how precise you can make this ball. In smaller sizes you can manufacture the tolerance to be as precise as +/-.00003”. The calibrated instrument that is needed to measure something that precise is a technical wonder unto itself.

Not only is the instrumentation precise when measuring a steel ball but the process itself when making the ball is also highly technical. You start with a wire or rod that is cut to length, then sent to the heading machine where it is made into a ball by a cold forged process with a ring around it. It moves along the machining process to be flashed where it removes the ring around the middle of the ball and then it sent off to be heat treated to harden the ball. Then the ball goes to grinding where it is sized to it approximate request and then goes to the lapping process to finish it to its specific size and finish. Through this process you can request any size of ball from 1/64” to 5 inches with any millimeter or decimal size in between. So, the next time that you call for a request for something as simple as a ¼” chrome steel grade 25 ball, you will begin to understand all the hard-work and ingenuity that goes into our product. You will also understand all the technical knowledge that is behind the positive response, we have that in stock and will send it to you right away. When making your call to Salem Specialty Ball Company, you can now be assured that you are getting the best possible product from the best possible sales and technical staff.

Listed below are some links to some types of steel balls along with other types of balls that Salem Specialty Ball offers. Feel free to contact us for a quotation today!