1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to sliding bearing materials, and more particularly to sliding bearing materials having an alloy fixed to a metal backing and methods of construction thereof.
2. Related Art
Prior sliding bearings and bushings are known to fall into two basic categories: those that are essentially fully dense products in which a relatively softer bearing metal is secured to a rigid backing of steel; and those which are made of sintered bronze powder alloys and are highly porous with an open, highly interconnected pore structure for absorbing oil or impregnating other materials, such as PTFE.
It is not always desirable to have a high porosity bearing with highly interconnected pores, as such bearings can in some circumstances be too absorptive. The open interconnected porous structure is achieved by carefully controlling the size of the bronze particles, with the particles ideally being all the same size, so as to maximize the interstitial connected space between sintered particles. Using monosize bronze particles is costly, since only a relatively small percentage of particles produced in a batch would be of essentially the same size. It will be appreciated that the inclusion of smaller particles in such a mix would cause them to migrate to the open interstices and thus reduce the level of interconnected porosity.
Also known are essentially lead-free sintered powder metal bearing materials, including bronze alloy bearings containing a certain amount of bismuth in lieu of lead. Such a material is known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,746,154. These bearings can be produced by spreading prealloyed CuSnBi powder on a steel backing, roll compacting the material, sintering the compacted material followed by a secondary rolling and sintering operation to yield an essentially porous-free material (i.e., with a porosity less than 1%). These materials are not made of monosize particles in order to maximize the densification of the material.
A sliding bearing (or bushing) comprises a Cu—Sn—Bi alloy having a porosity ranging from 2% to about 10%. At least the majority of the porosity is not interconnected. In other words, while the material exhibits a relatively high degree of porosity for a Cu—Sn—Bi alloy, the porosity is not interconnected in the sense of a traditional bronze bushing, but rather is isolated such that the pores act as pockets, but not channels leading to a network of open pores.
These and other aspects, features and advantages of the invention will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art in view of the following detailed description of the presently preferred embodiments and best mode, appended claims, and accompanying drawings, in which:
Referring in more details to the drawings,
The method for making such a controlled, unconnected porosity alloyed powered bearing layer 14 according with the invention is illustrated schematically in
Surprisingly, applicants found that a standard mix of particle sizes of prealloyed Cu—Sn—Bi powder could be used to make a relatively high porosity Cu—Sn—Bi bearing layer having a low percentage of interconnected pores by adjusting the rolling process and eliminating a sintering step, i.e. post secondary sintering. The alloy bearing material layer 14 has the desirable property of about 2% up to about 10% porosity of the total layer volume, but the majority, greater than 50%, of the porosity is not interconnected. The alloy bearing material layer 14 holds oil within the individual pores 16, which are maintained out of direct communication with one another, such as by not being interconnected by channels, but does not absorb it in the sense of a traditional sintered bronze bearings with interconnected porosity.
It has further been found that the compaction and resultant non-interconnected porous structure 16 can be influenced by the speed of rolling, with a lower line speed favoring the development of the desired high porosity, but low interconnectivity of the pores.
Such bearing materials can be applied to steel backings and serve as a bearing material for sliding bearings or for bushings in oil containing environments.
The presence of the bismuth has the beneficial effect of providing additional lubrication in the event of oil starved running conditions, to supplement what little oil there may be available to the bearing.
Obviously, many modifications and variations of the present invention are possible in light of the above teachings. It is, therefore, to be understood that within the scope of the appended claims, the invention may be practiced otherwise than as specifically described.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61/020,058, filed Jan. 9, 2008, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
61020058 | Jan 2008 | US |