ROLLER BEARINGS: LOAD-BEARING CHAMPIONS
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ROLLER BEARINGS: LOAD-BEARING CHAMPIONS
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Despite the name, you won’t find roller bearings in roller skates. Instead, roller bearings show up in places like wind turbines, conveyor systems, and agricultural machines.
The thing that differentiates roller bearings from other types of bearings is, well, the rollers. Where a ball bearing has balls between its races, a roller bearing has rollers: cylindrical elements that roll to reduce friction. Because of their shape, rollers make more contact with a bearing’s raceway than balls. Wider contact surfaces make it easier for the bearing to handle a higher radial load. Roller bearings reduce friction in motors, axles, gear reductions, machine tools, and other machinery.
There are a few types of roller bearings, each with its strengths and weaknesses.
- Cylindrical roller bearings, with simple cylindrical rollers, can support heavy radial and impact loads at high speeds. They have a wide variety of applications.
- Conical or tapered roller bearings have cone-shaped races with cylindrical rollers. They can handle radial and unidirectional axial loads. They most commonly appear in car and truck wheels.
- Spherical roller bearings have a spherical shape to the inside of their races. The rollers are shaped like barrels. They have higher friction than other roller bearings, but can safely tolerate more misalignment and heavier radial loads.
- Thrust roller bearings are designed for axial loads, such as on a vertical shaft. They can be cylindrical, spherical, or tapered.
- Needle roller bearings have thin, needle-like rollers – hence the name. Their small rollers means they add little weight and can fit into tight spaces. They wear out more quickly than other roller bearings.
For help selecting the right roller bearing for your application, finding a specific bearing, or placing an order for roller bearings, contact one of our sales engineers.
Have you seen our other Bearings 101 articles? Here are our pieces on Thinex and torque tube bearings, machine tool spindle bearings, deep groove bearings, a comparison of bushings to bearings, and our bearing glossary.
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Premium Quality Bearings Produced by the Industry’s Leading Manufacturers.
Since 1957, Alpine Bearing has sought the industry’s leading manufacturers to ensure the delivery of high quality bearings to OEMs, distributors, rebuilders, and individuals. We specialize in miniature and instrument, Thin section, spindle, Thinex and torque tube, stainless, chrome, radial, angular contact, and ball screw support bearings of all precisions. With thousands of bearings in stock, same day shipping is available on most products.
Alpine Bearing has a Class 10,000 clean room and as a certified re-lubrication facility for New Hampshire Ball Bearing (NHBB) & Nippon Miniature Bearing (NMB), we can customize our bearings to suit your needs. Bearings can also be re-packaged for optimum protection.
Offering bearing re-lubrication services
Alpine Bearing’s re-lubrication center is a class 10,000 clean room with Class 100 laminar bench work stations certified to Federal Standard 209E. We are a certified re-lubrication facility for New Hampshire Ball Bearing (NHBB) & Nippon Miniature Bearing (NMB). We can customize bearings to suit your needs. We also re-package bearings for optimum protection.
