When is the rusty ball

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Subscribe to receive exclusive newsletters and special offers from Cincinnati Refined! Enter your email address below to receive the latest updates. Watch Now. Special Advertising Content. Who'da thunk you could rock out to some of the best 80s covers around while giving back to the community? That's The Rusty Ball, and you should definitely go.

Rust, or corrosion, of precision balls can be a serious problem when the balls are made of some common bearing alloy steels.

The ambient environment in the storage area can be a major contributor to the presence of corrosion rust on precision balls. About 50 years ago we began storing our small overruns of chrome steel balls in small, screw-top glass-jars in Roto-Bin shelving.

We would put the clean, dry balls in the jars and put a squirt of oil over them. We began experiencing a rust problem that turned out to be caused by the moisture in that small volume of air above the balls inside the jars. Over many months or even years of storage, the temperature changes from day to day caused a precipitation of minute water droplets that gradually built up over time and caused serious corrosion rust on the surface of these balls.

We finally had to scrap this entire inventory of balls. We now use the same basic system, but we top off the glass jars with oil to eliminate this pocket of moisture-containing air. We have since had no further corrosion problems. There are two general forms that rust, or corrosion, takes on precision balls:.

This is usually large gray to black areas that appear to be stains. In situations where the rusting has just occurred, the stains can be yellow, brown, or even reddish brown.

All degrees of this condition are environmentally induced. Another version of this same condition that can manifest itself in the same kind of staining, is that the balls were coated with a classical rust-inhibitor that consists of a polar form of petroleum product, dissolved in a solvent.