In a cross-discipline move that shouldn’t come as a surprise to any forward-thinking design engineer, plastic roller bearings are on the move, both figuratively and literally. Advanced engineering plastics make this measure a practical alternative to standard metal rolling elements, likely because new classes of plastic are delivering mechanical characteristics that meet and sometimes exceed […]
The cage of a ball bearing shuns the spotlight, leaving the twin races and the rolling elements to claim center stage, but that doesn’t mean the hidden mechanical separator isn’t important. Quite the opposite, the cage is responsible for keeping the sandwiched balls evenly spaced as they interact with the deep-grooved rings. It offers radial […]
Bearings with concentrically arranged rings (races) are manufactured as relatively simple geometrical assemblies. The deep-grooved rings trap a set of toughened balls and create a balanced interaction zone between the spheroids and the steel bands. The assembled parts work in tandem, with the uniform dimensions of the balls generating an efficient force handling profile, one […]
Engineers have to overcome big challenges when incorporating bearings into their designs. They select the friction mitigators to carry a burden but balance this feature against rotational fluency. The load is heavy or light, and the velocity of the bearing is fast or slow, leading to designs that are necessarily tasked with a number of […]
When bearings function as designed, they’re the very personification of fluid action. Ball bearings, workhorse handlers of radial friction, work as a blur, with the concentrically arranged metal spheres smearing into a single fast-turning whole when regulating rotational forces. It’s a thing of beauty when the operational domain is properly functioning, but, should the bearings […]