RBC Industrial

Founded in 1919 as Roller Bearing Company of America in Newark, New Jersey, the company originally manufactured bearing products including tapered roller bearings, spherical bearings, and needle roller bearings. Since its earliest days, RBC Bearings has been at the forefront of bearing technology, and provided solutions to industrial customers’ problems. Today, our industrial customers are a virtual “who’s who” of global industry – Caterpillar, Oshkosh, Deere, Hitachi, Komatsu, Liebherr, General Dynamics (Electric Boat), Newport News Shipbuilding, Applied Materials, Joy Global, Dana, Eaton, Parker, National Oilwell Varco, U.S. Government, and various aftermarket distributors including Applied Industrial Technologies, Kaman Industrial Technologies, and Motion Industries, among many others.

From the 1990s to today, the company continued to grow through acquisition of complementary bearing, specially engineered product, and machine tool product manufacturers.

In 1990, RBC acquired Industrial Tectonics Bearings (ITB). Located in Rancho Dominguez, California, the division was founded in 1955. ITB manufactures a complete line of thin section ball bearings with capabilities to over 40 inches outside diameter. ITB supports a large range of industrial applications including bearings that are used in medical equipment, industrial automation robots, and in the production of semiconductors.

Heim® Bearings, Fairfield, Connecticut, joined the RBC Bearings family in 1993. Founded by Louis Heim in 1942, the Heim® name has been known and respected for designing the first integral rod end bearing, specifically the Unibal® spherical bearing rod end. This bearing was originally designed to solve aircraft delivery delays due to critical shortages in rod ends and self-aligning bearings during the war effort. Widely referred to as “Heim Joints” – even by our competition – RBC Bearings’ rod ends remain an industry standard to this day. Today, Heim® rod ends are used in a wide range of applications including military vehicle suspension systems, recreation vehicles and golf carts, material handling, and fluid power applications.

In 2000, RBC Bearings acquired Schaublin SA based in Delémont, Switzerland. As a result, RBC Bearings added Schaublin’s metric rod ends and metric spherical bearings to the family of global RBC Bearings products, and a base with which to service the European market. Schaublin is recognized as the world leader in terms of precision machine tool collets and work clamping hardware. Schaublin has continued to make advancements in the machine tool industry with advancements such as the patented SRS (Schaublin Runout adjustment System) collet chuck that allows the machine tool operator to adjust the positioning of the workpiece to achieve extremely low levels concentricity on the workpiece even on a machine tool that is not equipped to achieve these low concentricity levels. Schaublin is also a world-wide supplier of specialized self-lubricating lined suspension bearings for high speed trains, and produces low profile car coupling bearings for trams. RBC Bearings also acquired what is now called RBC France located near Paris in Les Ulis, France — a sales, engineering, marketing, and distribution arm for Schaublin and RBC Bearings product, and Myonic® miniature bearings. In order to support Schaublin with low cost production capabilities, RBC Bearings built RBC Polska, in Mielec, Poland in 2017. RBC Polska manufactures components for bearings as well as complete bearing products, and machine tool accessories for Schaublin.

In 2008, PIC Design in Middlebury, Connecticut joined RBC Bearings. PIC produces a wide range of parts including precision gears (spur, bevel, helical, etc.), anti-backlash gears, gear racks, worms and worm wheels, speed reducers, gearboxes, dowel pins, shoulder screws, timing belts, precisions shafts, shaft couplings and collars, miniature bearings, and associated hardware. PIC supplies product for medical and laboratory equipment, general industrial, material handling, semiconductor, and defense industries.

RBC Bearings acquired Lubron in 2009 which is now called RBC Lubron Bearing Systems and is located in Santa Fe Springs, California. Lubron produces bearing systems that are used in bridges, oil refineries and offshore oil platforms, large construction cranes, hydroelectric and windpower applications, skyscrapers, and a many other of industrial applications. Today Lubron’s line of Fiberglide® split bushings are used in a wide variety of applications including heavy-duty suspensions systems for trucks and tractors, oil and gas pipeline butterfly valves, clutches and variable speed sheaves, packaging equipment, material handling, aerial work platforms, and truck liftgates.

In 2013, RBC Bearings acquired Climax Metal Products. Climax provides shaft collars, rigid couplings, keyless locking devices, Clesco mounted bearings and Clesco abrasives hardware. Climax supplies products to a diverse range of industrial sectors including windpower, lumber and steel production, mining, glass bottle production, and material handling.

In 2015, RBC Bearings acquired Sargent Aerospace and Defense, which added a number of companies to RBC Bearings including Sargent Controls & Aerospace which designs, manufactures and tests hydraulic actuators and valves for aerospace and marine applications. Sargent’s history of design and manufacture of hydraulic components dates back to the B-25 bomber aircraft during World War II. Sargent has been a supplier of critical hydraulic equipment for U.S. Navy submarines since the 1950s. Today Sargent is a major supplier for US nuclear submarines which utilizes Sargent Controls’ proprietary quiet hydraulic valve technology.

In 2019, RBC Bearings acquired Swiss Tool Systems AG located in Bürglen, Switzerland. Swiss Tool produces innovative modular precision boring system hardware for normal depth and deep bore holes. Swiss Tool is also a leading supplier for HSK turning tools.

Today, the family of highly engineered RBC Bearings and related products includes: ball bearings, rod ends, cam followers, ball screws, thin sections ball bearings, spherical plain bearings, tapered roller and tapered thrust roller bearings, airframe control, self-lubricating, custom-engineered bearings, and machine tool collet/deep hole boring products, and marine hydraulic actuators and valves.

One RBC Bearings division was actually the inventor of the self-lubricating lined spherical bearing, with the first application developed in 1957 for the Chevrolet Corvette® steering joint. The company offers more than 25 different liner systems depending upon the loading, wear, and temperature conditions in the application (including the patented Fibriloid® and Fiberglide® self-lubricating liner technology).

More recently, RBC Bearings introduced the RBC Roller™ cam follower as a maintenance-free alternative to the standard needle roller cam follower. This innovation offers five times the operating life and twice the speed of its closest competitor, and has performed extremely well in difficult applications in the packaging, bottling/canning, material handling, automation, and specialty machinery markets. Other innovations in spherical plain bearings include QuadLube®, ImpactTuff®, and SpreadLock® seals for heavy-duty industrial applications, such as construction, mining, and agriculture. Our Pitchlign®, DuraLube® series of heavy duty needle roller bearings is the bearing of choice in marine crankshafts and connecting rods, gear pumps, oil field pumping jacks, and mud pumps.

RBC Bearings industrial products are also used in semiconductor, rail, medical equipment, heavy construction vehicles, mining vehicles, military vehicles, nuclear submarines, oilfield applications, bottling/canning, material handling, robotics, windpower and hydropower, infrastructure, and the machine tool industry, among others.

Trademark Information
Chevrolet Corvette® is a registered trademark of General Motors LLC, Detroit, Michigan
Myonic® is a registered trademark of Myonic GmbH Corporation in Leitkirch, Germany

Strategic Plan and Vision

RBC Bearings’ strategic plan and vision is to continue down the path of profitability and growth - organic growth including market penetration and the addition of new products and growth via acquisition to which RBC Bearings’ aggressive track record of acquisition attests.


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