How Are Small Ball Bearings Manufactured?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen

root through this.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=%22steel+balls%22+%2Bmanufacture+%2Bsmall&btnG=Search&meta=

as far as I know they start with wire and cut it into very short lengths and let it fall through a plasma in a reducing atmosphere to melt them and allow the molten metal to fall and cool in an inert gas as small spheres and then they sort them and put them through a rounding operation and some get hardeened as well.

You might find a laser would also work with the right time and intensity to melt it and hold it molten as it falls and cools. At the bottom is usually a cooling fluid.

For ball pens

Okay, this is my understanding after many years in the machining area, and from materials that I have read. Steel balls of small sizes are typically made by "spitting" liquid steel from an elevated height to a cooling area below. The larger balls are often sheared from barstock. In both cases, heat-treatment and annealing operations are performed-sometimes more than once.

Then the fun begins as an attempt is made to form the chunk into a smooth ball. The steps usually involve the successive use of special centreless grinders that employ the three-wheel method of regulation and grinding, then pass the blanks further to similar machines for further refinement until the shape, size, smoothness and roundness are correct.

The smaller the ball, the more tough it is to make correctly. The same applies for the precision class vs. the utility class of balls. The more refined the finished product-the more refined the process.

Ing. Robert Forbus

I think that for ball point pen balls to work correctly, the ball has to be grooved or dimpled to carry the ink.

When ball point pens were first introduced in the 1940's the price was in excess of $20 each (probably close to $100 in today's money). Within two or three years, they were being sold for less than $.10 each.

To add to the prior message. There was, until foreign competition put the out of business, in Irwin(?), TN a manufacturer of small ball bearings. An article in the paper about that time said it was by grinding between two flat, counter rotating, horizontal discs. The disc ran in opposite directions and were closer together at the perimeter that at the center.

Go to http://science.howstuffworks.com/question513.htm

As one who 'cut his teeth' in the bearing industry i must point out that you are confusing the term "ball" with the assembly of components known as a ball bearing.

A steel ball starts with a determined length of wire, compressed axially ("headed") between two hemispherical die cavities, then rough ground between two vitrified wheels, one of which is crooved in a spiral that conforms to ball radius. Depending on ball size, lots can be in 100K's. Rough ground balls are then heat treated. Finish grinding on the now hardened balls is much the same, but less agressive, & using a finer & harder wheel. If precision balls, lapping follows, using a pair of cast iron laps, one grooved as above, with an abrasive/oil slurry. Precision measurement/grading follow.

This is standard ball in an antifriction bearing. Also used for gauges.