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Any machine that has rotary motion needs some form of bearing to do it, and the worldwide annual market of $50 billion is really rolling. Kaydon Corp. is celebrating its 70th year in the bearings industry by continuing its expansion with an eye towards Asia.

“The Asian market itself is right now the largest regional bearing market, with China being the No. 2 country bearing market in the world,” President Jeff Manzagol asserts. “China will be the largest market in the world eventually. We’ve more than tripled our export sales over the last four to five years. If you want to participate and grow with that market, you have to have a more extensive manufacturing base to service that market.”

Kaydon Corp. designs and manufactures custom-engineered, performance-critical bearings for aerospace and defense, medical systems, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, industrial machinery, heavy equipment, renewable energy and aftermarket customers. It has seven plants totaling 1 million square feet, including one each in Muskegon, Mich., and Avon, Ohio; two in Monterrey, Mexico; and three in Sumter, S.C.

Manzagol attributes the company’s longevity to developing new industrial niches. “If you take our market position, you’re talking less than one-half of 1 percent globally,” Manzagol points out. “In our selected areas, we’re market leaders, but we have succeeded as far as growth and profitability by staying to our niches and not trying to go head-to-head with the global manufacturers. Our new tag line: Kaydon – infinite bearing solutions – emphasizes this ability to provide custom-engineered products to solve our customers’ biggest design challenges.”

Riding the Wind

Besides the Mars Rover – which has been operating since 2006, far beyond its calculated lifespan – Kaydon’s products are used in electricity-generating windmills, surgery-performing robots, Apache helicopters, destroyer turret mounts, tunnel boring machines, military drones, computed tomography scanners, semiconductor and photovoltaic manufacturing equipment, and many more devices.

Many aerospace applications where weight is critical use the company’s thin-section bearings. “A thin-section bearing in and of itself is relatively expensive to produce compared to a standard-section bearing of a similar size, but in cases where somebody can’t afford the weight or has very limited space they can place a bearing into, they need a thin-section bearing,” Manzagol explains.

Wind turbines use Kaydon’s slewing ring bearings, which are designed for oscillating applications and frequently have gears on the outside or inside diameter. “Wind energy is now our largest market,” Manzagol notes. “The majority of our wind energy business is done in America, but last year roughly 25 percent of our wind energy business was done in China and India. Seven years ago, wind energy was a very small market not even identified for Kaydon as a separate market. Now it is our biggest market.”

The company continues to refine and develop bearings for the larger wind turbines of the future. Manzagol foresees very large wind turbines off the shores of Michigan, Massachusetts or the United Kingdom. For turbines situated offshore in ocean water, Kaydon is developing sealing and coating solutions for the bearings to protect them from salt water and other environmental factors.

“That presents some additional challenges as far as bearing longevity,” he points out.

Kaydon entered the market for bearings used in equipment that manufactures microchips early in the 1990s, and now that expertise is being used in similar processes to manufacture the photovoltaic solar panels and for the equipment that rotates solar panels to face the sun throughout the day. The largest thin-section bearing the company makes is 40 inches in diameter; the largest slewing bearing has an outside diameter of 20 feet. Such giants are used in mining equipment or naval gun mounts.

Born for Bearings

Although he may not have been born to make bearings, after receiving his degree as a mechanical engineer from the University of Toledo, Manzagol has spent much of his career at various international bearing manufacturers.

“Coming out of school, I looked seriously at working for the auto industry, but based on the fact that you really had to turn yourself into a specialist, I liked working in the component industry,” he recalls. “It allows you to work across more applications with more customers. The bearing industry from that perspective was a good fit for me.”

Manzagol’s leadership philosophy is two-fold. “What it comes down to first is having the eye for where the opportunities may be coming, and then making sure you have the people and capabilities to take advantage of them,” he summarizes.