The basic machine for grinding a steel ball bearing has been the same since around 1900, but manufacturers have been steadily automating everything around it. Today, the process is driven by a conveyor belt, and, for the most part, it’s automatic. The most urgent task for humans is to figure out when things are going wrong—and even that could soon be handed over to AI.
The Schaeffler factory in Hamburg starts with steel wire that is cut and pressed into rough balls. Those balls are hardened in a series of furnaces, and then put through three increasingly precise grinders until they are spherical to within a tenth of a micron.
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