Boca Bearings Company (USA; privately held) said it is expanding beyond its traditional line of standard bearings and specialty ceramic bearings, to the value-added industrial lubrication market.

Founded in 1987, Boca's primary focus has been to maintain the world’s largest inventory of miniature bearings in both metric and inch sizes. They also have a wide inventory of special sizes and styles, including hybrid ceramic, phenolic, plastic-caged, and three piece thrust bearings. The company says it carries over 3 million bearings in inventory, and more than 5,000 sizes.

While Boca already offers several lubricants formulated for other specific purposes, this is the company's first move into a dedicated lineup of industrial oils, greases, coatings and solid lubes. Boca said its decision to develop an industrial line was in direct response to strong positive reaction from its customers.

The industrial lubricant line starts with Kyodo Yushi grease, a standard for lubricating precision machinery from Fanuc and Kawasaki industrial robots, to vacuum applications, to extreme temperature environments, and other demanding conditions.

Alongside Kyodo Yushi, Boca is also offering Kluber and DuPont greases.

Kluber greases are specifically for high speed, high load, and high heat applications; several different greases are for eccentric rollers, drafting equipment, actuators, and ball bearings.

DuPont’s Krytox is and extremely popular and versatile fluorinated aerospace grade grease -- used in many bearings and bearing applications from chemical processing to high-temp state-of-the art automotive applications to military aerospace equipment.

Finally, Boca has added industrial coatings and solid lubricant options, covering extreme or demanding applications.

For coatings, Boca offers an exclusive Ultra Dry Lube (UDL) process. UDL is basically a modified (WS2) tungsten disulfide in lamellar form that is bonded to almost any metallic substrate. This is accomplished by mechanically impinging a dry powder through controlled atmospheric application. The uniform UDL coating is only 0.5 micron, but reduces the coefficient of friction to 0.030 (dynamic) -- less than half that of graphite. It also provides protection against spalling, galling, and seizing, while eliminating stick-slip.

In solid lubes, Boca's Lightning Solid Lube Polyethylene (LSLP) is chemical and pressure washout-resistant and FDA/USFA approved for food grade applications. The other solid lube, Lightning Solid Lube Graphite (LSLG) covers extreme temperature applications from -250°F to 667°F (5251R9N7).

The company's industrial lubrication catalog is here: Boca Industrial Bearing Lubrication Catalog