Patent ID: 8782902

Claim:
A method of making a bearing, comprising: providing a bearing intermediate, which is unfinished while having an overall shape of a finished bearing product; providing a machine comprising a vibration generator, a vibration amplifier and an impacting tip, which form an integrated body, wherein the impacting tip is fixed to the vibration amplifier, which is attached to the vibration generator; and simultaneously applying dynamic load and static load onto a surface of the bearing intermediate with the integrated body to cause plastic deformation of the surface without grinding of the surface, wherein applying the dynamic and static loads repeatedly impacts the surface of the bearing intermediate at one or more ultrasonic frequencies to modify characteristics of the bearing intermediate, wherein the resulting bearing intermediate or finished bearing product comprises a substantial amount of nano-size grains at or underneath the surface, wherein the resulting bearing intermediate or finished bearing product has the following properties: a roughness value smaller than about Ra 0.19 μm, a hardness value greater than about HRc 60 at the surface, and a compressive residual stress value between about −300 and about −2500 MPa at the surface.