Custom Machined Aluminum, Bronze & Steel Bushings

Where a custom bushing beats the catalog

Off-the-shelf bushings come in fixed sizes, and a sleeve bearing is only as good as the three numbers that have to be right at once: bore, OD, and length. Stock catalogs make you settle on at least one of them, then shim, sleeve, or re-bore the housing to cope. A turned-to-print bushing skips all of that. You give the bore that fits your shaft, the OD that fits your housing, and the length that fits the pocket, and the part is made to those numbers from one piece up.

The common shapes all turn easily: plain sleeve bushings, flanged bushings (a shoulder that locates the part against a face and takes thrust), pivot and wear bushings that ride against a moving pin, drill bushings that guide a bit on a fixture, and pressed-in liners that replace a worn bore inside a larger assembly. If you can describe the job, it can be turned to suit it.

Bore, OD, and getting the fit right

The fit is the whole point, so it pays to be specific. A press fit (interference) means the bushing is slightly larger than the housing bore and stays put once pressed in; a typical liner runs a few thousandths of interference. A slip or running fit means the part goes in or turns by hand with a small clearance, which is what you want on the inner bore when a shaft has to rotate. Tell us which surface presses and which one runs, and the tolerances follow from there.

Concentricity matters as much as the diameters: if the bore and OD aren’t true to each other, a pressed-in bushing pulls the shaft off center. Turning the bore and OD in one setup keeps them concentric. Wall thickness is the other quiet variable. A thin wall can collapse or shrink the bore when pressed in, so heavier interference wants more wall. For very tight, true bores, the finished part can be ground after turning; see precision grinding for ground-bore work.

Choosing the material

Aluminum (6061) is light, cheap to cut, and anodizes well; it suits spacers, light pivots, and non-bearing sleeves where load and wear are modest. Bronze is the classic sleeve-bearing pick: oil-impregnated bearing bronze such as SAE 841, or a cast bearing bronze like SAE 932, runs against a steel shaft with low friction and good wear life. Steel is the hard-wearing choice and can be hardened for pins and drill bushings that see abrasion. Stainless earns washdown and corrosion duty. Delrin / acetal runs quiet, is self-lubricating, and won’t mar a shaft, which makes it a favorite for light, dry, or food-adjacent jobs.

What to put on the print and finishes

Five things make a bushing right the first time: bore size and tolerance, OD with the fit to the housing called out, overall length, any chamfer or lead-in (a small chamfer on the OD makes a press fit start straight), and flange diameter and thickness on flanged parts. Note which diameter is the bearing surface so it gets the tighter number while the rest breathes. If you’re matching a worn part, send the old bushing and the shaft it rides on and the team can work back to the right fits.

Finishes are simple: anodize on aluminum for wear and corrosion, passivation on stainless, and bare for bronze, steel, and Delrin, which generally run as-machined. The team flags any design issue at no charge before you commit, and every part is inspected before it ships.