What do bearings do

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Tapered roller bearings Tapered roller bearings can support large radial and thrust loads. Magnetic bearings Some very high-speed devices, such as advanced flywheel energy storage systems, use magnetic bearings. Bedrock Automation. Yale Materials Handling Corporation. By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies.

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But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. Necessary Necessary. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These include ball bearings, roller bearings, ball thrust bearings, roller thrust bearings and tapered roller thrust bearings. Ball Bearings, as shown to the left, are probably the most common type of bearing.

They are found in everything from inline skates to hard drives. These bearings can handle both radial and thrust loads, and are usually found in applications where the load is relatively small. In a ball bearing, the load is transmitted from the outer race to the ball, and from the ball to the inner race.

Since the ball is a sphere, it only contacts the inner and outer race at a very small point, which helps it spin very smoothly. But it also means that there is not very much contact area holding that load, so if the bearing is overloaded, the balls can deform or squish, ruining the bearing.

Roller Bearings, like the one illustrated at right, are used in applications like conveyer belt rollers, where they must hold heavy radial loads. In these bearings, the roller is a cylinder, so the contact between the inner and outer race is not a point but a line.

This spreads the load out over a larger area, allowing the bearing to handle much greater loads than a ball bearing. The rolling elements roll on the specially formed raceways of the rings or discs and are kept apart and guided by the cage.

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Home Bearings Products What is a Bearing? The bearing in its current form was developed towards the end of the 19th century. It was initially made by hand. Bearings have two key functions: They transfer motion , i.