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NES’ condition analysis program part of extensive bearing inspection arsenal.

On the Napoleon Engineering Services’ (NES) website, just below its nameplate on the masthead – and in many of its print and digital advertisements – sits its familiar tag line: “Your one-stop shop for engineered bearing products.”

Often associated with that phrase is the term “comprehensive,” whether preceding the words manufacturing facility, approach or bearingservice provider.

And that’s not just a marketing buzzword. At NES, operating out of a 46,000-square-foot facility in Western New York, it’s the reality.

And there are myriad tangible examples to support that assertion.

Take, for instance, its relationship with a worldleading marine control technology outfit.

Napoleon Engineering had already enjoyed a longstanding connection with this company, performing bearing condition analyses for it for the last decade-plus. Recently, however, this organization began experiencing issues with its bearing supplier and, by extension, its primary product. Lacking the bearing-specific technical support to resolve the problem, it turned to NES for further assistance. And NES was able to provide it, pairing a dimensional and visual inspection with bearing modeling analysis – on both new and used products – to help better understand the issue and generate a solution.

And generate a solution, it did.

NES proposed greasing the bearing using a different methodology of distribution; it then affected the initial re-grease while its customer, based on the supplied data, worked with its OEM to begin distributing the grease differently thereafter.

And within that cycle, it demonstrated again how it can, indeed, serve as a “one-stop shop:” Its years of condition analysis work led to an in-depth physical inspection, which led to a re-grease modification job, which led to a solution for a customer, which was empowered with the information needed to talk with its supplier and make a larger-scale change.

“Comprehensive.”

For NES, it was another concrete example of how its business units come together to create an allinclusive bearing service-provider.

AT NES, within each of its bearing inspection, testing and custom bearing manufacturing segments, those services are many..

The heart of its bearing inspection department remains its renowned Source Qualification Inspection (SQI) program, a unique bearing reverse engineering program designed for the industrial sector which allows OEMs to more confidently (and cost-effectively) qualify sources of supply. The SQI achieves this through three key elements: Determining the design intentions of a manufacturer, assessing how well the manufacturer carried out those intentions and evaluating the bearing’s overall quality of workmanship.

Also at the core of NES’ inspection arsenal, however, is its failure and condition analysis programs. This, remember, is from where its relationship with that marine control technology outfit was first formed.

THERE ARE, of course, many causes of premature bearing failure, including contamination, assembly error, misalignment, corrosion and electrical fluting.

All of these can be prevented with the proper measures. Many companies, though, aren’t equipped with the engineers, expertise or background to understand why a bearing might have failed in their application.

Enter Napoleon Engineering Services, which boasts all three of those components.

NES’ state-of-the-art failure analysis and metallurgical testing programs pinpoint the cause of bearing failure by determining the material composition and microstructure of a bearing and identifying the wear characteristics that led to that failure.

“NES’ failure analysis program provides customers a complete breakdown of why the bearing failed in the application,” said Chris Napoleon, NES’ president and chief engineer. “Through an extensive inspection (which includes, among several steps, a thorough cleaning of the bearing, profile measurements and visual inspection), NES can determine if the problem is system- or bearing-related.

“With microscopic observation capability and sophisticated dimensional inspection, our team of highly trained engineers can accurately verify the condition of the product and its wear characteristics. Napoleon added: “The resulting detailed reports furnished by our failure analysis program have successfully helped many industrial customers identify failure characteristics and prevent failure recurrence.” Similarly, NES’ condition analysis program consists of a visual and dimensional inspection to assess how well a bearing has performed in a field or lab test conducted by a customer. This type of inspection, Napoleon noted, is ideal for customers who want to identify whether a bearing has useful remaining life after it has been in operation.

By performing condition analysis, NES can highlight issues associated with system design, provide a qualitative assessment of bearing life expectations and allow for direct comparisons of suppliers or different designs. Additionally, it can help define the failure mode of the bearing within the application. This is important since understanding the failure mode is crucial to selecting the proper follow-up standard bearing test, if this next step is needed, allowing for a more cost-effective approach to future product development.

“Many of our customers need someone to (help estimate) how close to end-of-life that bearing was in the application,” Napoleon pointed out. “That’s not something that’s in a book or in a catalog that’s out there. That comes from our years of expertise, which can help guide you in your decision and limit a customer’s risk of continuing to use (a potentially) exhausted or deficient product.”

In the end, the savings gained from these programs are well worth the cost.

“If I can extend that time between overhauls,”

Napoleon said. “If I’m not having to buy expensive new bearings and I’m not shutting production down, then I’m getting more production out for the cost by allowing that equipment to keep running.”

Story courtesy of J.P. Butler,
Marketing Coordinator,
Napoleon Engineering Services

This article is published in Motion+Drives June 2026 issue on pages 61-63