Advantages of polymer ball seat
Looking at the photo above, the steel looks harder. Clearly, steel is a harder material than polymer.
However, hardness is not a solution in every environment.
We compared steel ball seats to CTR products using polymer ball seats.
The wear durability test shows the durability of the product by repeatedly moving the ball joint hundreds of thousands of times.
This is the inside of the ball seat when the test is completed.
The polymer ball sheet only produced soot on the spherical surface, but the steel sheet had a cracked surface and all heat treatments to increase hardness were peeled off.
How will this change affect performance?
Performance tests were conducted with products that have been tested for wear durability.
Looking at the table above, steel products have a larger variation in clearance and torque.
In the wear durability test, wear occurs due to friction between the ball stud and the ball seat. This results in a larger gap (= clearance) between the two parts than before the test. The larger the clearance, the weaker the force for fixing the ball studs (= torque decline), and the easier it is for foreign matter to penetrate into the gap and make noise.
This means that the less the torque and clearance change, the higher the durability.
