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ISO 9001 Registered
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Miniature Balls for Bearings, Ballscrews, Pumps and Pens

New England Miniature Ball specializes in the manufacture of miniature precision and semi- precision balls from .007" to .160" for various industries and applications including, bearings, ballscrews, pumps and pens.

To meet the requirements of many industries like automotive and electrical, as well as different applications, NEMB manufactures balls from a wide variety of metals. While chrome and stainless steel are the most common metals used we have vast experience manufacturing balls from tungsten carbide, titanium, gold, copper, and brass to meet other demanding applications if necessary. Please choose from the material links to the left for more information. NEMB can also easily accommodate special customer requests such as passivation and coating.

Manufacturing Process

Heading - Ball blanks are cold headed from rolls of wire. The heading machine cuts off a short cylinder of the material and a moving die with a concave spherical cup drives the cylinder into a matching cup in a fixed die. The result is a spherical shape, which is the ball blank.
Flashing - The flashing operation removes the slight ban and small protrusions left on the surface by rolling them between the two hard alloy plates under high pressure.
Heat Treat - The balls are hardened, if required, by heating them to a high temperature in a furnace and then quenching them into a liquid bath. Samples are checked for hardness.
Rough Grind - The hardened balls are precision ground by rolling them between the faces of a fixed iron plate and a very hard fine-grit grinding wheel.
Finish Lap - The next step is the finish lapping operation. The hardened ground balls are rolled between two cast iron plates. One plate is fixed while the other is rotated at a very low speed. This critical process determines the final quality of each precision ball. At this stage, the sphericity and size are established and carefully inspected to ABMA customer requirements.
Finishing/Cleaning - The final production operation cleans the finished ball and adds a shiny luster to it.
Final Inspection - Balls are gauged, visually inspected and subjected to other quality tests to insure every customer's requirement is achieved.
Packaging - The balls are packaged in accordance with customer needs for shipping.