Universal Joints Blog

This guide outlines the essential steps for prototyping universal joints and driveshafts tailored to aerospace applications. For personalized assistance and expert guidance, reach out to our sales and application engineering team. Let Belden Universal help you achieve excellence in your next aerospace project.

Living in an ideal world where our couplings never falter would be a dream. However, living in the daily reality of manufacturing, our u-joints occasionally throw us a curveball. We thought we’d have a little fun with this blog post and give you a few of the *best* ways to break them:

Real-life industrial applications often deviate from the ideal scenario for a mechanical system. Rather than a temperate and dry environment, your application may be hot and humid. Instead of a dust-free, clean room, your u joint might be subjected to dirt, corrosive chemicals, or seawater. If your application is particularly dirty, hot, corrosive, or unusual in some other way, this article discusses how to size, maintain, and extend the life of u-joints for extreme applications.

“We’d like something off the shelf.” These are the words we hear most often in a first conversation with a design engineer or buyer when they find our universal joints online or through a distributor. Whether it’s an AS9100 aerospace or defense project, a high-precision medical device application, or a joint for a simpler industrial machine, the first request is always for a standard, off-the-shelf u-joint. Why might this be?

Are you trying to get smarter about universal joints but don’t know where to start? Belden Universal has created a curated collection of leading-edge educational content covering the wide variety of universal joints and customizations available to perfectly fit your engineering application.

At Belden Universal, we take pride in the expertise of our application engineers. We work with every customer to spec out the exact u joint needed for their unique application. If you’ve worked with less detail-oriented universal joint suppliers in the past, perhaps you’ve experienced unexpected u joint and driveshaft failures in your equipment.

Hubs can be machined in alloy steel with various platings, various grades of stainless steel, forgings, extruded aluminum for a high strength-to-weight ratio, and other specialized materials as needed. Belden Universal’s high-precision manufacturing processes ensure that each Belden u joint or drive shaft can perform optimally with long life and minimal backlash under challenging application conditions. Find your solution with our precision universal joints.

Belden Universal has you covered with the u-joint boot required for your application! Keeping universal joints fully lubricated reduces friction, wear, and heat generation and can significantly prolong the useful life of the assembly.

Belden Universal relies on innovative approaches throughout its custom solution development, production, and operational processes. Progress through innovation is what sets Belden Universal apart from competitors. Our ability to deliver new solutions results in higher quality products, faster delivery times, and cost savings to you.

Leading global engineers and machine builders across a wide variety of sectors look to Belden Universal to solve their most difficult power transmission challenges. We provide various solutions from standard to custom for all sorts of challenging applications and environments. See if our internally spring-loaded high-strength drive shaft could help you solve your application challenges.