Hi Henry, Most of the largest Bearing manufactures have plants in China ie SKF,
and Japan have three of the top companies in the world.
Just stick to Brands that you recognize as they have the quality
control for piece of mind regardless of manufacturing site

Location: Tinopai NZ

Chinese made and branded bearings are usually made from unsuitable steels with poor hardening and finish - they won't last.

Using only known brands should be OK, but the big difficulty with reputable branded bearings now being made in China- there are also unscrupulous Chinese manufacturers who will copy everything and anything- producing- say - an SKF copy bearing marked SKF and packed in copy of the original SKF boxes but still using unsuitable steel, poor hardening and finish.

Not sure how you overcome this- locally we have sourced old stock SKF, R&M, RHP etcetera bearings from wherever we can and only bought European made known brands when no others are available.

Tony.

Location: Australia

Location: Far West of New Zealand

My contacts at SKF Australia have told me of similar cases-

Last year a customer placed an urgent order with SKF for a bearing, to be told it was unfortunately not available at present.

The customer then did his own search and found what he thought was the wanted SKF bearing - correctly marked and packaged as such.

After installation and early failure he attacked SKF for supplying a faulty product to be told that as advised SKF did not have this bearing available anywhere in the world and the bearing the customer had obtained was therefore a total fake !

They also told me that the Chinese manufacturers apparently would only use genuine SKF bearings and not Chinese made bearings.

Takes me back to the 60's when Japanese bearing manufacturers first tried producing large double row spherical roller bearings for Jaw Crushers, undercutting SKF prices. These early Japanese bearings failed regularly causing much grief among plant engineers.

It took many years for Japanese bearing manufacture to recover - there is a lot more to bearing design and manufacture than many thought, as well as using the correct high quality clean steel.

Tony.

Location: Australia

Hi, Shop around for a Bearing supply Company in your area that has a proven record of supplying quality bearings not cut price.
In NZ iuse SAECO WILSON and I trust them to supply the Quality of bearing that I require.
and they have not let me down ever.

Location: Tinopai NZ