Case Study: The Timken Company accelerates bearing testing and brings products to market faster with MathWorks

Timken Improves Bearing Testing Process

The Timken Company, a century-old bearing manufacturer, needed to refine and accelerate its tapered roller bearing testing to ensure components met millionths-of-an-inch tolerances and to quantify how geometry and manufacturing variations affect dynamic torque and error motions. To do this, Timken turned to MathWorks, using MATLAB along with Data Acquisition Toolbox, Optimization Toolbox, and Signal Processing Toolbox to capture, analyze, and visualize test data.

MathWorks provided a unified MATLAB-based solution that controlled Timken’s custom test rig, acquired data from 16-bit DAQ hardware, calibrated instruments, applied nonlinear regression and optimization, and performed frequency-domain signal analysis. As a result, Timken achieved faster time-to-market, clearer correlation between bearing geometry and running torque, refined manufacturing tolerances, and greatly accelerated testing and analysis as part of their quality-assurance process.

The Timken Company

Dave Cogdell

Research Specialist