The development of the 3D printing technology industry is showing an accelerated growth trend. 3D printing is widely used in industrial manufacturing, medical organization production, archaeological restoration, architectural models, automobile molds, space equipment and other fields, and are known as the "third industrial revolution".

Bearings are known as industrial joints. The production of a set of customized bearings requires more than one hundred processes. At present, the small and medium-sized bearing manufacturing department of Luoyang Bearing Research Institute Co., Ltd. produces about 200 new bearing models every year. There are about 2,000 tooling accessories that need to be processed, and the outsourcing process is under great pressure. The production cycle is generally about three months, which causes great troubles in product delivery. As the saying goes, sharp tools make good work. Speeding up the processing cycle of tooling accessories can shorten the processing schedule of bearing.

Recently, the small and medium-sized bearing manufacturing department of Luoyang Bearing Research Institute Co., Ltd. applied 3D printing technology to the production of tooling with complex shapes, low precision and low stress, and achieved unexpected results. We used a personal basic printer with simple structure and low cost. It uses PLA thermoplastic molding technology, and the printing accuracy can reach 0.12mm. The software can realize automatic slicing, automatic establishment of support, automatic filling, and support for pause and resume printing. Aiming at the problem of hot melt adhesive when printing consumables during discontinuous printing, after more than two months of exploration, ZYS technicians have overcome many difficulties in high temperature environments and constantly adjusted equipment and process parameters. Finally, the hot melt drawing phenomenon of PLA material is significantly reduced. The printed finished tooling has certain hardness, stable molding, good printing effect, and the tooling meets the requirements of use. Since the printer was commissioned, more than twenty kinds of tooling have been printed using 3D printing technology. The printed products have been successfully applied to bearing inspection and assembly, and the tooling processing cycle has been shortened from three months to one to two days. It greatly shorten the waiting time for bearing processing and reduces the pressure of outsourcing production.

Luoyang Bearing Research Institute Co., Ltd. will widely promote the application of 3D printing technology in bearing processing and manufacturing, as well as the research and development of new products and new processes. We will try to use light-curing 3D printing technology with higher precision and faster processing speed to process some higher precision tooling, reduce labor burden, ensure production and delivery, and improve the labor efficiency of all employees.