Ceramic Ball Bearing Turbochargers. Good Or Bad? Looking For Your Experience And Comments

[hypergear]

Hi Every one. Ceramic Ball bearing turbochargers has been out for a while, been recommended for high power and high response. and there are few turbo companies currently building them.

With few days of browsing I have managed to source a pair of ceramic bearing cartridges from US, and been told it has been used in turbochargers.

I've discussed with my engineers about building ceramic ball bearinged CHRAs and every one are pessimistic about this project.

Any one here is currently using Ceramic ball bearinged turbochargers? and any experiences based on its performance and life cycle against a normall Steel BB turbocharger. We appreciate your input.

[mad082]

i have no experience with them as far as turbochargers go, but i know that in other areas where they are used they perform well. they spin faster/more freely (which results in less heat generated), wear much better (last longer) and require less maintenance. they have been used in skateboards for a long time, and while they might not see speeds anywhere near close to those of a turbo, they do take a hell of a pounding when jumping over or off things. and i think they survive better if starved from oil.

i could see the spool times of a ceramic bearing turbo being quicker than that of a standard ball bearing turbo due to the lower resistance of the bearing. and they are used by NASA, although they are a ceramic hybrid bearing.

[75coupe]

I dont have experience with ceramic used in turbos, but I can add that the mining industry use ceramic in place of steel and other hard metals as wear plates, because it lasts longer in abrasive envrionments and is better at handling adhesion to metal with heavy impacts.

I worked with a guy who study ceramic composition for years and he was making all sorts of things out of a ceramic to replace titanium and steel because of heat, wear & shock resistance to a degree...

so I can imagine there would be many uses for ceramic in place of steel and other metals...

Edited March 12, 2010 by 75coupe

[toorock which]

http://www.microblueracing.com/

This web site has some nice onfo regarding ceramics

[XRATED]

Most of the marine jet turbine power plants I deal with on yachts use ceramic bearing technology. Ceramics are used to deal with thermal demand, more than the difference in friction. Also ceramic ball bearings are supposed to be more true or round...

Hope it helps

Justin.

Back on turbocharger technology, if your interested.... we recently did some back to back road testing on billet compressor wheel turbos if your intrested. The billet comp wheel turbo was slighly bigger and rated higher, however it was ALOT more responsive and progressive. With the old tune, on the same boost the engine was very lean right from 1500rpm. With a touch up to the fuel and timing maps, the car jumped from 780 to 860bhp on the same boost.... the ignition was breaking down, once the misfires are sorted 900bhp should be easy.

[Birds]

Forgive my ignorance when it comes to chemistry, but I thought steel was stronger than ceramic or does that only apply to turbine blades in a turbocharger?

[mad082]

what causes the ceramic turbos to fail isn't so much the material itself, it is the glue/resin holding the wheel onto the shaft. also bearings spinning are subject to totally different forces than a spinning turbo wheel.

[NYTSKY]

Mr Turbo, Billet turbochargers have been doing it for years.

Have a look at their website.

[hypergear]

Thanks for the input guys.

Our engineers argues that:

Because the turbo works on a moving vehicle, it must coop with on road conditions such as pumps, rough surfaces, off road and etc.

Even ceramic bearings it self is hard, light, but brutal, it doesn't have the strength as steel, there for lot more sensitive to minor oil contaminates and easier to crack under thrust.

Then they gave few cases which a CB turbo failed and how customer/friend replaced it for a Garrett steel BB turbos and happily everafter blah blah blah which I'm not really interested as most of them are very conservative.

I had a look at few CB turbo manufactures and found most of their turbos runs of one single CB cartridge and one sleeve. any one knows or have thoughts about why they don't run twin CB cartridges?

[discopotato03]

The thing you have to like about big Gs bearing cartridge , not CHRA cartridge , is that they are so easily fitted to a housing with a simple hole machined through it .

These things have been around for a while now and it may pay to find out who supplies the bearing pack for Gs units .

I think we're going to find increasingly more parts available for Gs BB cartridges just like it has been for plain bearing center sections .

Have you thought about importing G's cartridges from overseas and doing your own thing with housings ?

A .

[mad082]

Thanks for the input guys.

Our engineers argues that:

Because the turbo works on a moving vehicle, it must coop with on road conditions such as pumps, rough surfaces, off road and etc.

Even ceramic bearings it self is hard, light, but brutal, it doesn't have the strength as steel, there for lot more sensitive to minor oil contaminates and easier to crack under thrust.

Then they gave few cases which a CB turbo failed and how customer/friend replaced it for a Garrett steel BB turbos and happily everafter blah blah blah which I'm not really interested as most of them are very conservative.

I had a look at few CB turbo manufactures and found most of their turbos runs of one single CB cartridge and one sleeve. any one knows or have thoughts about why they don't run twin CB cartridges?

as i said though, they have been used in skateboards for years now. think about how much harsh treatment they would get landing from 1m off the ground (and often much higher) with 80kg spread across 8 bearings. and think of the vibrations, etc when rolling down a road. anywho who has ever ridden a skateboard on the road will know just how rough it is. much more rough and the vibrations in a car driving down a dirt road.

they are starting to be used in bikes now in the cranks. so think about the forces there. around 80kg pushing down on it with a leverage or around 175 to 180mm, plus the force of landing from doing jumps, etc. and not all of these bikes have suspension. some are full rigid.

oh and as for the example of the CB failing and then the customer using a ball bearing, has anyone ever had issues with the normal steel bearings failing? i'd say so, which makes that story null and void. it would be like saying that fords are better than holdens because you spoke to 5 people with holdens and some of them had had problems, but only spoke to 1 ford owner and he hadn't had any problems.

[hypergear]

I've designed and machining my own bearing housing out of a block of soild steel at this stage. so hopefully things work out I expected.

I will be using a 360 degrees thrust bearing with 2x CB bearings.

Also would any one know why most CB bearinged turbos would have one bush bearing it the rear?

[scotty nm35]

Ceramic bearings would be more likely to be damaged by the cruddy oil on the exhaust side, also the high tolerance and heat cycles may cause them to seize?

I like bush bearings as there is no contact between the shaft and bush,(as long as the shaft is balanced well) the issue is the friction from the thrust washer. If a thrust bearing was installed instead of the 360, wouldn't it help with the initial spool times and increase shaft speed?

Btw, nice milling machines!

Edited March 13, 2010 by scotty nm35

[oztrax]

Introducing myself.

looking for a decent forum on turbochargers .

"Hypergear" has blown me away with his milled Center core !!

i have a turbocharger that operates in a marine environment with ceramic ball bearings.

Got it apart ATM to replace compressor wheel due to corrosion .

the turbine side has a ceramic ball bearing with 8 loose balls.

they are black/grey so seem to be Si3N4 material, 7/64 size (See pic)

turbo is an IHI RHF5 model. A/R is 0.614 so it's pretty small.

The core housing does not allow the bearings/guts to be removed.

fair to say it's a core replace not repair.

Hard to see the compressor end bearing, it's a lot smaller ( 5.11 mm shaft bore)

Seems to be a lot smaller bearing/bush arrangement.

Anyway the bearings are not worn and seem to be in good condition,

except ii could only find 5 of the 8 installed. Initially I thought I had lost them,

but the remaining 5 were installed 90 degrees apart.

i remembered the guy I Purchased this from, said he had pulled apart turbo to service it.

Appears in the process he lost 3 of the balls, so just put it back together and here I am 

200 hours later with it rotating fine !

so have purchased new balls same size and material for $1 each.

In the process I found synthetic sapphire and ruby balls for $4 each.

Ceramic ball turbos precautions are not to allow impact on housing and to store horizontally.

the ruby/sapphire would be more resistant to impact and are also another 5 times harder than ceramic.

Ball bearing turbo cores have a restrictor in the oil inlet. Couldn't take a photo for you guys,

but inlet hole in the Center housing is probably not much more than 1/16 inch.

 

This agrees with the beginning of this thread , that one large ceramic bearing is used

on turbine end, and a smaller sleeve/bearing on the compressor side.

well at least for IHI turbos.

 

 

[hypergear]

This post is close to  7 year old. Yes our ceramic ball bearings turbos has been evaluated and released few years ago, into WTAC twice, Broke S chassis world record, drifted, won DCA battles, Vic drift battles, and about half of our daily builds involves ceramic ball bearings today.

The bearing setup changes a car's throttle response, requires less oil supply, takes more thrust load, and makes driving more pleasurable. 

I have tested and will not be voting for the cheap Asian bearing cages how ever. Complete bearing cartridge depends on the materials and making of the metal collar and cages instead of the bearings alone.  

 

[KiwiRS4T]

19 minutes ago, hypergear said:

This post is close to  7 year old. Yes our ceramic ball bearings turbos has been evaluated and released few years ago, into WTAC twice, Broke S chassis world record, drifted, won DCA battles, Vic drift battles, and about half of our daily builds involves ceramic ball bearings today.

The bearing setup changes a car's throttle response, requires less oil supply, takes more thrust load, and makes driving more pleasurable. 

I have tested and will not be voting for the cheap Asian bearings how ever. Alot of them is depending on the materials and making of the metal collar and cages instead of the bearings alone.  

 

Good to know - wondered what happened!

[GH05T]

that was a good read, never seen this thread before.

[Lithium]

What S-chassis record was broken?

[hypergear]

 

[Griffin]

Is it known whether there is as the same gap over plain bearing turbos once both are up to operating temps and lubricated with oil? 

The BB one is impressive on the bench, just never heard of real world results. What are your opinions?