Teflon [PTFE] sliding on Aluminium or steel

[THERMIK]

Good Morning,

I would like to ask you about cooperation between Teflon material and an aluminum plates, below description.
I have a plate made of aluminum that moves relatively to the ground (in horizontal directions) on ball units (standard element eg. from SKF catalogue). I would like to replace ball units with teflon discs, below questions:
1. How does teflon cooperate with an aluminum plates?
2. What kind of roughness do you recommend on an aluminum plate surface that works with teflon?
3. Do you recommend you other material for a plat, anti corrosion steel, or other.
4. What kind of roughness do you recommend on a steel plate surface that works with teflon?
attached you schema of the idea
[

http://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=e88a231b-5967-4ebe-b294-842c4870889d&file=1.jpg

]

Thank you in advance.
BR

 

[Duwe6]

http://slidebearings.net/fluorogold-slide-bearings.html

Please don't try to reinvent the wheel, and expect inexpensive, excellent performance.

 

[Jboggs]

Contact this company. They have an amazing variety and knowledge of everything about plastic bearings.

http://www.igus.com/

Also, this one. They specialize in steel bearings with special coatings and make some in a flat configuration.

https://www.ggbearings.com/en

 

[KENAT]

As implied by others above, think twice about using simple Teflon/PTFE. While nominally slippery its wear characteristics aren't great and some of its other secondary characteristics can be problematic too.

If you're looking for cheap & cheerful consider UHMWPE - not as slippery but better wear resistance.

If you're looking at doing it properly the links the other 2 give are worth looking at, not sure if they are mentions on Jboggs links but might want to look into materials like Turcite.

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[drawoh]

THERMIK,

I designed a sliding door that consisted of a 1/8" aluminium 6061-T6 plate, sliding in a pair of PTFE slides. The primary problem I was solving was that I had to fit everything into a very small height. I had the aluminium anodized and I called up a 16[μ]in finish on the edges. There was a little bit of rattling I could do nothing about, but otherwise, it worked. It flew in an aircraft and everything!

Teflon has a low coefficient of friction against anodized aluminium, and all sorts of other stuff. I paid attention to the possibility that the door might rotate in the tracks and jam. You need an absolute clearance, so the thing will rattle a bit. Any preload spring will create more friction.

--
JHG

 

[tbuelna]

One interesting thing with metal surfaces sliding against PTFE materials is the effect of the metal surface roughness on friction after accumulation of several operating cycles. PTFE materials have very little shear strength. And if the mating metal surface sliding against the PTFE has the appropriate surface roughness, a layer of PTFE will be deposited onto the metal. This will result in a surface contact condition of PTFE on PTFE, which has a very low sliding coefficient of friction.

 

[KENAT]

I had a colleague who said they'd played around with this sort of thing and found PTFE on UHMWPE was actually lower friction than PTFE on PTFE.

However, I don't have much context for that claim or evidence to support it.

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