Industrial Machinery Business

NSK has gained a large share of the global market for industrial machinery bearings, and supplies these products to industries making all kinds of items ranging from household appliances like vacuum cleaners and washing machines to rail cars, mining and construction equipment, machine tools, steelmaking equipment, wind turbines, chemical plant equipment, industrial pumps, airplanes and satellites. In more recent years, the company has been working on products for newer industries such as solar power generation, shale gas, and smart phones. Bearings are available in all sizes, from miniature bearings just 2 millimeters in diameter for ultra-compact motors, to extra-large bearings over 2 meters in diameter for wind turbines. While just one general household electric appliance can use about 150 individual ball bearings, all are covered in NSK's wide lineup of products.

NSK produces a vast number of specialized bearings that can be used even under extremely harsh conditions. These include bearings for dental drills that rotate at high speeds of more than 400,000 revolutions per minute, bearings used in machine tools that rotate so fast that the spin of the outer circumference of the bearings approaches the speed of sound, and bearings used in steelmaking equipment that are exposed to temperatures in excess of 1,000 degrees and subjected to repeated rapid cooling in water. For almost 100 years, NSK has contributed to technological innovations and the development of highly advanced technologies, providing the high-precision bearings needed for Japan's Shinkansen bullet trains and satellite attitude control systems. More recently, the company has been focusing on developing products for the home appliance markets in emerging countries and other high-volume markets, which place a premium on cost-competitive bearings with basic functions. All of NSK's bearings are designed in mind to be compact, light weight, reduce of friction loss, long service life and high reliability. With this NSK's bearing feature, the machinery can benefit less energy, increased production efficiency and contributes significantly to environment conservation.

In its Precision Machinery and Parts business, NSK takes advantage of the advanced technologies it has gained through the production of bearings to develop and manufacture linear motion products such as the world number one ball screws and the NSK Linear Guide™, as well as mechatronic products like the Megatorque Motor™. The company supplies Precision Machinery and Parts worldwide to various types of industrial manufacturing facilities that require advanced technologies to produce machine tools, semiconductor and LCD production equipment, injection molding machines, industrial robots. In recent years, medical equipment, seismic isolation and vibration control device, and production equipment for lithium ion batteries. Moreover, many of NSK's products are used in machine tools that require extremely precise processing from the sub-micrometer¹ level to the nanometer² level.

In addition, Megatorque Motor™, NSK's flagship mechatronic product, is used in various industries that require highly accurate positioning, particularly semiconductor and LCD production equipment.

In the other business segment, NSK supplies bearings and linear motion equipment under the SPACEA™ Series, designed for extremely high performance in special environments, including vacuums, high temperature conditions, sterilization liquids and clean rooms. Also we aim to contribute to realize a further more safety, secured and comfortable society by challenging toward research and developing human assist robot with guide-dog function and also products that are useful in medical and bio technology industries.

Looking forward, NSK is anticipating the next generation of industrial machinery with a view to quickly capitalizing on potential demand from customers.

• 1 Sub-micrometer means less than one-millionth of a meter (0.000001m)
• 2 A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter (0.000000001m)