By moulding rather than machining our plastic bearings, we provide a high degree of design flexibility and innovation. Our custom design and moulding techniques create bearings with product-specific features and functions to best serve the diverse requirements of the automotive controls market, where each Original Equipment Manufacturer uses different haptic feedback and product characteristics.
We have worked closely in collaboration with our customers in the automotive and domestic appliance controls markets, pooling expertise to ensure success and minimise risk in new concept designs. From one or two integrated functions, to ‘push’, ‘slide’, ‘turn’ and press button functionality in one moulded bearing product, we now offer a range of designs for some of the most innovative user interfaces on the market.
By integrating functions into our plastic bearings, we provide more stability than multi-component encoders or linear slides, reducing the feel of ‘wobble’ in the haptic feedback. Low torque to rotate enables their smooth operation and we can ‘tune’ the torque to a range of resistances, for a different ‘feel’ to each product. This stability and smoothness make our bearings particularly suited for use with touchscreens, where bearing rotation tracks through options on a menu or scale via conductive components. Smooth and stable contact with the screen is essential to ensure the signal is consistent.
We provide proprietary haptics by integrating specific features such as detents, wave forms and springs into the bearing, to achieve a required feel or ‘click’, ‘deadening’ for a subtler sound or creating a heavy or light feel to suit customer specification. Further customisation of controls can be achieved through moulding retaining features, castellations for optical sensors, poke yoke characteristics, a middle space location for displays, identifiers, photo interrupter fingers - all into one plastic bearing product.
Discover out custom control products: www.bnl-bearings.com/controls
