We recently took a tour of the CeramicSpeed factory here in Denmark, but it may have left you with a few questions
Maybe why you'd want to invest in their product in the first place in a nutshell
The answer is on this wall this wheel has ceramic speed bearings inside and this one doesn't but in this video
We are going far more in depth we're going to look at exactly
What CeramicSpeed bearings are what difference they can make statistically through the testing procedures they have here
And I'm also going to be having a go at making a CeramicSpeed bearing myself
I'd like to start by telling you exactly how a ceramic bull is made you start with a material called silicon nitride
Which is then in powder form pressed into a preform shape?
That then is sintered which is a hot isostatic pressing after which any surface imperfections are removed with a grinding process
Then they use lapping and precision finishing to make sure that it meets the specifications parisa T
Diameter and surface smoothness and the result is that a ceramic ball like this is
400% smooth 128 and harder and also 58% lighter than its steel
Counterpart what that means is that when the ceramic balls are using the bearings on your bike it will significantly?
reduce the overall friction of the components
But also significantly increase their lifespan quite interestingly the first ceramic ball was produced all the way back in
1972 but they weren't really mass-produced until around 1993 and that is down to the quite staggering
manufacturing cost of
Ceramic balls these things really aren't cheap to make I should also mention actually that not all ceramic balls are the same
I've said it in our factory tour previously the CeramicSpeed balls are grade 3 specification, which means that they are round down to
0.08 of a
Micrometer which basically is about as round as it gets and it also means though that the production time for these are quite long
Anything from 50 to 70 days you can reduce that production time, but then they wouldn't be the same quality
But some other manufacturers do use a lower grade
But when tested these grade three balls are shown to be 100%
Smoother and also withstand loads of 99 percent more than some of their competition and in fact
I think we've got a test show exactly that coming up a little bit later
Firstly though let's go and have a look at exactly how the boards are used in the bearings which are made by hand just
around the corner
Welcome to our OEM production site, that's where we will build our bearings
Yeah, all of them of course by hand in U of M and now. See how we do. Okay. Let's go
first step of course
It's really important that these when we have them are coming as outer and inner ring
They always go together
Okay, so second step would then be to add the right amount of ceramic more
different sizes of bearings
Uses different size you can get an amount of box of course so now the balls are sealed
Or secured inside there to race waves
the next part of the process
then is to make sure that the ball bearings are evenly distributed around they have got a machine it does that but
Understandably, they want to keep it a trade secret. I think I'm gonna be doing it by hand yes, yes Hugh
I hope for you ever is getting my bearings that I'm hearing it's got quite low tolerance in mine today. We will help you
So next step from here would be those bearings which are
Produced these will now be washed and clean since this is steel
We are working with of course all our operators are working with cloth
After the washing we still have gloves on and we have a protection
Film around there, mr.. Okay, then we would have them dried, and we would have them filled with grease
We can see that over here. Let's take a look. This is a 50% filling
It's a very small tiny so it's big grease source. We put on top and
Then you squeeze in the seal
So to make sure that we have an equal spread grease inside the bearing all around we would use this machine
Okay, and in the final part of the process is one more quality control rehe in quality control. Yes as you can see the
operator here is
Finalizing so if there's air in degrees you would be able to feel it that doesn't run would I be able to feel it or?
Is it I don't know I don't know you look you will not you will not be able to feel it
Right so now we have a machine that is
Measuring the play on all these bearings three times on each one butter looks of it
Yes, that's right. So we took some bearings away
And this order there is every part. We will take away
yeah for extra measuring and that is that machine that will measure the play and
As you just said will measure each bearing three times here as well
Yeah, and this is a document for us
And this is the document for the customer that we are inside that tolerances
So you send this out with the bearings to the customers that I know exactly with tolerances of every bearing that's right. Oh, right?
It's the moment that I have been waiting for at least I've got a box of parts. I've got my name on the box
Don't got gloves. You've got gloves
First of all I would put the inner Raceway in the outer yes
And to give you a little helping hand we prepared
This little piece for you. That's my knee
There you place the outer ring around those smiling and the inner ring
on the inside again
Okay
Exactly you're getting good at this then
Steady hands see
Next step for you is to
press the inner ring
Against the outer ring until it says click not on a broken nail
Hello a rustic Lake now you take one or at least one of the balls and squeeze it to the other side
That's good, and allow you separate the balls with equal distance
Area
Really nice you can turn the bearing around because you would have the branding
No
Moved around Oh shame to redistribute them we
Marry well so you can take the bearing now lift it on top of now
I see ok you should know we'd be able to press
There we go you can place this tool inside the middle and one yeah exactly oh there we go
perfect
So time to clean it up drop it in
Degreaser and it's just like a protein shaker
That's good, I'll switch on the extractor in a moment. I'll ask you please to wear ear protection in glasses
Going in
Brilliant
Garden this with my life
So it's time for the seals, then you press slightly from the outside very gentle
Yes, and make sure that it's well covered now. You can hold the inner ring
The outer ring, and then you should be able to turn it and it feels free and it actually does very well
What you do is you give it one?
one
Drop for each bearing no just you can put one on each side all right one drop there
Okay, except
sign now
It's put some blue on the inside of the pulley wheel here
Ready for the bearing to go in you only need a very small amount
Correct
There we go, please take the glue the cloth make sure that over the glue
That's been pressed outside on the back side maybe oh
Yeah, it's been removed. You know you can do the check one more time in your tool
That's beautiful in it, but it's like the geek our wheels in the movies
So we are now ready to put the whole lot together the pulley wheels inside the cage
remembering because they very kindly
Put my name in GC on this pulley wheel which is quite frankly amazing?
So I remembered to put that on the outside so anyway that takes a close look can see it's custom
There we go voila how's that it takes a little bit longer than it would
First go yeah, really good. Yeah, I would still say there is uh just a slightly thing we still need to do
We need to put it in a right box
There we go
Now we're in and then normally I
Put that 4-year warranty sticker in there as well, but it's er. Not sure I'm confident enough having built it myself to do that so
I'm gonna send that to myself and do my own little unboxing at home
We've come to do quite a simple test
Who would the hammer test we're literally going to drop a metal hammer onto a metal block and on it will be a bull
One of the balls will be from ceramics be another from a different manufacturer both ceramic though
So we give it a go. I think so yes, let's do it so place the
The ball I'll just adjust the hammer wait a minute, which one is this one. I'll show you
Is that yours, I'm joking he wears not mine
Right so that one's shattered yes all over the place actually I will now place another one
ours
Okay
Yeah, it's all in one piece
So I guess that shows that there are different grades even within ceramic bearings
But as pretty a lot of people would ask you we don't generally take a hammer to the bearings on our bike so
Why does it need to be like that how is it better?
So the quality of the ceramic balls itself in the hubs in the wheel bearings
Will show that you will have a lot of?
Impacts from the road going onto the bike it will not be as one impact
But it will be smaller impacts all the time
And if there is a lack of quality their balls will did be destroyed
They will not explode like this in your bottom bracket or in your wheels, but they will over time
starts to
break down
Let's get down to the nitty gritty how much are you really going to save energy wise by using these products well?
Let's break it down and start with the bottom bracket. They're at 250 watts
You can expect to see a saving of between 1 and 3 watts
And it's likely to be around the same for the hub bearings as well
And then we have the oversized rear pulley system here that will save you 40 to 60 percent of frictional losses
Compared to a normal rear derailleur, and I should also mention that these comparisons are all against very high-end products as well
and then when we get onto the UFO treated chain again depending on the
manufacturer that will save you anywhere between 3 and 5 watts and when out add up all together that really is quite a
Significant saving whether or not they are for you what only you can answer that question
But if you are slightly obsessive a little bit like the founder Jakob here
And you want to eke out every single drop of performance from your bike
I think I can guess what the answer will be and it's not just that energy saving
We've already mentioned the fact the other thing about ceramic bearings is their longevity and durability
And I'm going to give you a couple of examples of that now
CeramicSpeed officially Supply 3 world tour squads in
2018 and unofficially a whole host more and many of them are using their bottom bracket bearings and their hub bearings for the third season
Their rope they simply transfer them and move them onto new bikes for the new season and given the extreme testing ground that is Pro
Racing that is quite impressive and in the second example you may remember from our factory tour their drum
Which they used to test the wheel bearings on and one of the tests that they did on that drum was to use completely?
Dry bearings with only one single drop of very thin oil
Standard steel bearings that will that will last for 5000 kilometers before it failed but with the ceramic bearings they lasted
45,000 kilometers before the rim failed all quite interesting stuff
They certainly don't come cheap, but then again. You're probably not going to have to replace them very much if ever well
I hope you have learnt as much as I have from my experience here in Denmark
I very much enjoyed being here at a CeramicSpeed if you miss the first factory tour
You can find that by clicking it just over there, and if you've enjoyed this video. Please give us a thumbs up just down below