March 10, 2021
The Never-Rusting Screw | What Others See as a Lump of Iron, She Treats as a Work of Art
“To other people a bearing looks like a lump of iron. To me it is a work of art.” The “Lei Feng” we introduce today has stayed on the research front line for nearly 40 years, tackling one hard problem after another. The bearings she has designed fly into space and dig deep underground, and she has become a true iron rose of China’s bearing industry.
The seventh batch of Guangdong’s demonstration sites and pace-setters for practising the Lei Feng spirit was recently announced, and she was named a provincial “Model Pace-setter for Practising Lei Feng’s Spirit at the Post”. She is Wang Bing, chief engineer of TCB Bearing Manufacturing Co., Ltd. in Zhongshan, Guangdong.
Visiting TCB’s workshops and model-worker innovation studio recently, our reporter saw the honours Wang Bing has earned through years of blood, sweat and care. She is unfazed by them. “Looking back at Lei Feng’s life, there was nothing earth-shattering in it — he did small, ordinary things. Since childhood I have remembered what he said: ‘be a screw that never rusts.’ That is how I position myself. In design and in product, be solid and real; in life, take responsibility the way a bearing does. A bearing hides inside a machine, unseen, yet it matters enormously. Everything from a razor and a bicycle to a car, a submarine and a satellite depends on one.”
From the Fengyun-1 satellite to TCB: nearly 40 years on the research front
Answering the nation’s call to study engineering, then joining the industry’s only national-level research institute
What drove a woman to dedicate her life to bearings? “When I was small I wanted to be a soldier. Later the country called for the Four Modernisations, and I answered that call by studying engineering,” Wang said. When the college entrance examination was restored in the late 1970s, she signed up immediately and won a place at Hefei University of Technology, in the mechanical engineering programme she had always wanted. After graduating she joined the Luoyang Bearing Research Institute — then China’s only national-level bearing research institute. There she and her team developed bearings that flew into orbit aboard the FY-1 (Fengyun-1) meteorological satellite, work that won a first prize for scientific and technological progress from the Ministry of Machinery and Electronics Industry.
In 1990, riding the wave of reform and opening up, Wang and her husband both joined the Zhongshan Bearing General Factory. In 1999 the factory was restructured, and the couple took part in founding TCB Bearing Manufacturing Co., Ltd., becoming one of its technical leaders.
“I used to work with satellites and missiles, but the most the Zhongshan factory made then were ordinary components for farm machinery.” To bridge the gap, Wang studied and worked harder still, bringing the rigour and technical experience of a defence researcher to the plant and leading it towards standardised, systematic and institutionalised operation.
Ninety days to win a European elevator maker’s approval
A drive unit nearly 70 per cent smaller forced breakthroughs across the whole technical chain at once
In 2003 a well-known European elevator manufacturer set out to launch a new type of green, energy-saving elevator. Its traction drive unit was nearly 70 per cent smaller than a conventional one, which meant smaller bearings and far tighter tolerances.
Learning of the opportunity, Wang led her team in. With only 90 days to deliver samples, they attacked the problem simultaneously across structural design, process methods, inspection techniques and test equipment — writing their own software, rebuilding their own equipment and inventing their own inspection instruments and test rigs. The result was an integrated precision quick-mounting composite unit that combined multi-wedge belt transmission with bearing friction reduction. It beat the competition and won approval for volume supply.
Innovation as a habit, and a studio in her name
Engineers, master craftsmen, technicians and frontline workers under one roof
For Wang and her team, innovation has become a habit. In 2011 the company established an innovation studio bearing her name, bringing together engineers, craftsman-level technicians, skilled workers and frontline shop-floor operators.
Asked how someone who has spent a lifetime with bearings understands and practises the Lei Feng spirit, Wang answered: “The Lei Feng spirit means different things in different times. For a science-and-engineering person like me, working with bearings, learning from Lei Feng means learning his screw spirit — staying at my post, studying technology hard and making every bearing well, contributing my small part to the country’s Four Modernisations.”
March is the month for learning from Lei Feng. His spirit is never distant and never absent. Hold it in your heart and you keep an upward drive; act on it, and there will always be warmth and mutual help in a crisis.
Source: Zhongshan Torch Media Center (WeChat). Originally published March 10, 2021; translated and adapted by TCB.