ball bearing

1. A friction-reducing bearing consisting essentially of a ring-shaped track containing freely revolving hard metal balls against which a rotating shaft or other part turns.
2. A hard ball used in such a bearing.

Background

Ever since man began to need to move things, he has used round rollers to make the job easier. Probably the first rollers were sticks or logs, which were a big improvement over dragging things across the ground, but still pretty hard work. Egyptians used logs to roll their huge blocks of stone for the pyramids. Eventually, someone came up with the idea of securing the roller to whatever was being moved, and built the first "vehicle" with "wheels." However, these still had bearings made from materials rubbing on each other instead of rolling on each other. It wasn't until the late eighteenth century that the basic design for bearings was developed. In 1794, Welsh ironmaster Philip Vaughan patented a design for ball bearings to support the axle of a carriage. Development continued in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, spurred by the advancement of the bicycle and the automobile.

There are thousands of sizes, shapes, and kinds of rolling bearings; ball bearings, roller bearings, needle bearings, and tapered roller bearings are the major kinds. Sizes run from small enough to run miniature motors to huge bearings used to support rotating parts in hydroelectric power plants; these large bearings can be ten feet (3.04 meters) in diameter and require a crane to install. The most common sizes can easily be held in one hand and are used in things like electric motors.

This article will describe only ball bearings. In these bearings, the rolling part is a ball, which rolls between inner and outer rings called races. The balls are held by a cage, which keeps them evenly spaced around the races. In addition to these parts, there are a lot of optional parts for special bearings, like seals to keep oil or grease in and dirt out, or screws to hold a bearing in place. We won't worry here about these fancy extras.

Raw Materials

Almost all parts of all ball bearings are made of steel. Since the bearing has to stand up to a lot of stress, it needs to be made of very strong steel. The standard industry classification for the steel in these bearings is 52100, which means that it has one percent chromium and one percent carbon (called alloys when added to the basic steel). This steel can be made very hard and tough by heat treating. Where rusting might be a problem, bearings are made from 440C stainless steel.

The cage for the balls is traditionally made of thin steel, but some bearings now use molded plastic cages, because they cost less to make and cause less friction.

The Manufacturing
Process

There are four major parts to a standard ball bearing: the outer race, the rolling balls, the inner race, and the cage.

Races

• Both races are made in almost the same way. Since they are both rings of steel, the process starts with steel tubing of an appropriate size. Automatic machines similar to lathes use cutting tools to cut the basic shape of the race, leaving all of the dimensions slightly too large. The reason for leaving them too large is that the races must be heat treated before being finished, and the steel usually warps during this process. They can be machined back to their finished size after heat treating.
• The rough cut races are put into a heat treating furnace at about 1,550 degrees Fahrenheit (843 degrees Celsius) for up to several hours (depending on the size of the parts), then dipped into an oil bath to cool them and make them very hard. This hardening also makes them brittle, so the next step is to temper them. This is done by heating them in a second oven to about 300 degrees Fahrenheit (148.8 degrees Celsius), and then letting them cool in air. This whole heat treatment process makes parts which are both hard and tough.
• After the heat treatment process, the races are ready for finishing. However, the races are now too hard to cut with cutting tools, so the rest of the work must be done with grinding wheels. These are a lot like what you would find in any shop for sharpening drill bits and tools, except that several different kinds and shapes are needed to finish the races. Almost every place on the race is finished by grinding, which leaves a very smooth, accurate surface. The surfaces where the bearing fits into the machine must be very round, and the sides must be flat. The surface that the balls roll on is ground first, and then lapped. This means that a very fine abrasive slurry is used to polish the races for several hours to get almost a mirror finish. At this point, the races are finished, and ready to be put together with the balls.

Balls

• The balls are a little more difficult to make, even though their shape is very simple. Surprisingly, the balls start out as thick wire. This wire is fed from a roll into a machine that cuts off a short piece, and then smashes both ends in toward the middle. This process is called cold heading. Its name comes from the fact that the wire is not heated before being smashed, and that the original use for the process was to put the heads on nails (which is still how that is done). At any rate, the balls now look like the planet Saturn, with a ring around the middle called "flash."
• The first machining process removes this flash. The ball bearings are put between the faces of two cast iron disks, where they ride in grooves. The inside of the grooves are rough, which tears the flash off of the balls. One wheel rotates, while the other one stays still. The stationary wheel has holes through it so that the balls can be fed into and taken out of the grooves. A special conveyor feeds balls into one hole, the balls rattle around the groove, and then come out the other hole. They are then fed back into the conveyor for many trips through the wheel grooves, until they have been cut down to being fairly round, almost to the proper size, and the flash is completely gone. Once again, the balls are left oversize so that they can be ground to their finished size after heat treatment. The amount of steel left for finishing is not much; only about 8/1000 of an inch (.02 centimeter), which is about as thick as two sheets of paper.
• The heat treatment process for the balls is similar to that used for the races, since the kind of steel is the same, and it is best to have all the parts wear at about the same rate. Like the races, the balls become hard and tough after heat treating and tempering. After heat treatment, the balls are put back into a machine that works the same way as the flash remover, except that the wheels are grinding wheels instead of cutting wheels. These wheels grind the balls down so that they are round and within a few ten thousandths of an inch of their finished size.
• After this, the balls are moved to a lapping machine, which has cast iron wheels and uses the same abrasive lapping compound as is used on the races. Here, they will be lapped for 8-10 hours, depending on how precise a bearing they are being made for. Once again, the result is steel that is extremely smooth.

Cage

• Steel cages are stamped out of fairly thin sheet metal, much like a cookie cutter, and then bent to their final shape in a die. A die is made up of two pieces of steel that fit together, with a hole the shape of the finished part carved inside. When the cage is put in between and the die is closed, the cage is bent to the shape of the hole inside. The die is then opened, and the finished part is taken out, ready to be assembled.
• Plastic cages are usually made by a process called injection molding. In this process, a hollow metal mold is filled by squirting melted plastic into it, and letting it harden. The mold is opened up, and the finished cage is taken out, ready for assembly.

Assembly

• Now that all of the parts are made, the bearing needs to be put together. First, the inner race is put inside the outer race, only off to one side as far as possible. This makes a space between them on the opposite side large enough to insert balls between them. The required number of balls is put in, then the races are moved so that they are both centered, and the balls distributed evenly around the bearing. At this point, the cage is installed to hold the balls apart from each other. Plastic cages are usually just snapped in, while steel cages usually have to be put in and riveted together. Now that the bearing is assembled, it is coated with a rust preventative and packaged for shipping.

Quality Control

Bearing making is a very precise business. Tests are run on samples of the steel coming to the factory to make sure that it has the right amounts of the alloy metals in it. Hardness and toughness tests are also done at several stages of the heat treating process. There are also many inspections along the way to make sure that sizes and shapes are correct. The surface of the balls and where they roll on the races must be exceptionally smooth. The balls can't be out of round more than 25 millionths of an inch, even for an inexpensive bearing. High-speed or precision bearings are allowed only five-millionths of an inch.

The Future

Ball bearings will be used for many years to come, because they are very simple and have become very inexpensive to manufacture. Some companies experimented with making balls in space on the space shuttle. In space, molten blobs of steel can be spit out into the air, and the zero gravity lets them float in the air. The blobs automatically make perfect spheres while they cool and harden. However, space travel is still expensive, so a lot of polishing can be done on the ground for the cost of one "space ball".

Other kinds of bearings are on the horizon, though. Bearings where the two objects never touch each other at all are efficient to run but difficult to make. One kind uses magnets that push away from each other and can be used to hold things apart. This is how the "mag-lev" (for magnetic levitation) trains are built. Another kind forces air into a space between two close-fitting surfaces, making them float apart from each other on a cushion of compressed air. However, both of these bearings are much more expensive to build and operate than the humble, trusted ball bearing.

Where To Learn More

Books

Deere & Company Staff, eds. Bearings & Seals, 5th ed. R. R. Bowker, 1992.

Eschmann, Paul. Ball & Roller Bearings: Theory, Design & Application, 2nd ed.

Harris, Tedric A. Rolling Bearing Analysis,3rd ed. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1991.

Houghton, P. S. Ball & Roller Bearings. Elsevier Science Publishing Company, Inc., 1976.

Nisbet, T. S. Rolling Bearings. Oxford University Press, 1974.

Shigley, J. E. Bearings & Lubrication: A Mechanical Designer's Workbook. McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1990.

Periodicals

Gardner, Dana. "Ceramics Adds Life to Drives," Design News. March 23,1992, p. 63.

Hannoosh, J. G. "Ceramic Bearings Enter the Mainstream," Design News. November 21, 1988, p. 224.

McCarty, Lyle H. "New Alloy Produces Quieter Ball Bearings," Design News. May 20, 1991, p. 99.

[Article by: Steve Mathias]

For more information on ball bearing, visit Britannica.com.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: bearings containing small metal balls
  Synonyms: needle bearing, roller bearing

Working principle for a ball bearing.

A 4 point angular contact ball bearing

For individual balls that are sometimes called "ball bearings", see Ball (bearing).

A ball bearing is a type of rolling-element bearing which uses balls to maintain the separation between the moving parts of the bearing.

The purpose of a ball bearing is to reduce rotational friction and support radial and axial loads. It achieves this by using at least two races to contain the balls and transmit the loads through the balls. Usually one of the races is held fixed. As one of the bearing races rotates it causes the balls to rotate as well. Because the balls are rolling they have a much lower coefficient of friction than if two flat surfaces were rotating on each other.

Ball bearings tend to have lower load capacity for their size than other kinds of rolling-element bearings due to the smaller contact area between the balls and races. However, they can tolerate some misalignment of the inner and outer races.

Compared to other bearing types, the ball bearing is the least expensive, primarily because of the low cost of producing the balls used in the bearing.

Contents 1 History 2 Common designs 2.1 Angular contact 2.2 Axial 2.3 Deep-groove 3 Construction types 3.1 Conrad 3.2 Slot-fill 3.3 Split-race 3.4 Single-row versus double-row 3.5 Caged 3.6 Ceramic hybrid ball bearings using ceramic balls 3.7 Self-aligning 4 Modern applications 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

History

Wingquist's and SKF's self-aligning ball bearing.

The first patent was awarded to Jules Suriray, a Parisian bicycle mechanic, on 3 August 1869.^[1] The bearings were then fitted to the winning bicycle ridden by James Moore in the world's first bicycle road race, Paris-Rouen, in November 1869.^[2]

The modern, self-aligning design of ball bearing is attributed to Sven Wingquist of the SKF ball-bearing manufacturer in 1907, when he was awarded Swedish patent No. 25406 on its design.

Ball bearings were found on the Roman Nemi ships constructed in about 40 A.D.^[3]

Common designs

There are several common designs of ball bearing, each offering various tradeoffs. They can be made from many different materials, including: stainless steel, chrome steel, and ceramic (silicon nitride (Si₃N₄)). A hybrid ball bearing is a bearing with ceramic balls and races of metal.

Angular contact

An angular contact ball bearing uses axially asymmetric races. An axial load passes in a straight line through the bearing, whereas a radial load takes an oblique path that tends to want to separate the races axially. So the angle of contact on the inner race is the same as that on the outer race. Angular contact bearings better support "combined loads" (loading in both the radial and axial directions) and the contact angle of the bearing should be matched to the relative proportions of each. The larger the contact angle (typically in the range 10 to 45 degrees), the higher the axial load supported, but the lower the radial load. In high speed applications, such as turbines, jet engines, dentistry equipment, the centrifugal forces generated by the balls will change the contact angle at the inner and outer race. Ceramics such as silicon nitride are now regularly used in such applications due to its low density (40% of steel - and so significantly reduced centrifugal force), its ability to function in high temperature environments, and the fact that it tends to wear in a similar way to bearing steel (rather than cracking or shattering like glass or porcelain).

Most bicycles use angular-contact bearings in the headsets because the forces on these bearings are in both the radial and axial direction.

Axial

An axial ball bearing uses side-by-side races. An axial load is transmitted directly through the bearing, while a radial load is poorly-supported, tends to separate the races, and anything other than a small radial load is likely to damage the bearing.

Deep-groove

A deep-groove radial bearing is one in which the race dimensions are close to the dimensions of the balls that run in it. Deep-groove bearings have higher load ratings for their size than shallow-groove , but are also less tolerant of misalignment of the inner and outer races. A misaligned shallow-groove bearing may support a larger load than a similar deep-groove bearing with similar misalignment.

Construction types

Conrad

A Conrad bearing is assembled by placing the inner and outer races radially offset, so the races touch at one point and have a large gap on the radially opposite side. The bearing is then filled by placing balls in to the large gap, then distributing them around the bearing assembly. The act of distributing the balls causes the inner and outer races to become concentric. If the balls were left free, the balls could resume their offset locations and the bearing could disassemble itself. Thus, a cage is inserted to hold the balls in their distributed positions. The cage supports no bearing load; it serves to keep the balls located. Conrad bearings have the advantage that they take both radial and axial loads, but the disadvantage they cannot be filled to a full complement and thus have reduced load-carrying capacity compared to a full-complement bearing. The Conrad bearing is named for its inventor, Robert Conrad, who got British patent 12,206 in 1903 and U.S. patent 822,723 in 1906. Probably the most familiar industrial ball bearing is the deep-groove Conrad style. The bearing is used in most of the mechanical industries.

Slot-fill

A slot-fill radial bearing is one in which the inner and outer races are notched so that when they are aligned, balls can be slipped in the slot in order to fill the bearing. A slot-fill bearing has the advantage that the entire groove is filled with balls, called a full complement. A slot-fill bearing has the disadvantages that it handles axial loads poorly, and the notches weaken the races. Note that an angular contact bearing can be disassembled axially and so can easily be filled with a full complement.

Split-race

The outer race may be split axially or radially, or a hole drilled in it for filling. These approaches allow a full complement to be used, but also limit the orientation of loads or the amount of misalignment the bearing can tolerate. Thus, these designs find much less use.

Single-row versus double-row

Most ball bearings are single-row designs. Some double-row designs are available but they need better alignment than single-row bearings.

Caged

Caged bearings typically have fewer balls than a full complement, and thus have reduced load capacity. However, cages keep balls from scuffing directly against each other and so can reduce the drag of a loaded bearing. Caged roller bearings were invented by John Harrison in the mid 1700s as part of his work on chronographs.^[4] Caged bearings were used more frequently during wartime steel shortages for bicycle wheel bearings married to replaceable cups.

Ceramic hybrid ball bearings using ceramic balls

Ceramic bearing balls weigh up to 40% less than steel bearing balls, depending on size. This reduces centrifugal loading and skidding, so hybrid ceramic bearings can operate 20% to 40% faster than conventional bearings. This means that the outer race groove exerts less force inward against the ball as the bearing spins. This reduction in force reduces the friction and rolling resistance. The lighter ball allows the bearing to spin faster, and uses less energy to maintain its speed.

Ceramic hybrid ball bearings use these ceramic balls in place of steel balls. They are constructed with steel inner and outer rings, but ceramic balls; hence the hybrid designation.

Self-aligning

Self-aligning ball bearings are constructed with the inner ring and ball assembly contained within an outer ring that has a spherical raceway. This construction allows the bearing to tolerate a small angular misalignment resulting from deflection or improper mounting.

Modern applications

Today the ball bearing is used in numerous applications which affect the functionality of everyday life. One interesting application for ball bearings has been implemented at the San Francisco International Airport. In the airport there are 267 columns which are used to bear the weight of the airport. Each column is placed on a steel ball bearing with a diameter of 5 feet. The ball sits in a concave foundation. If an Earthquake occurs, the ground can move up to 20 inches in any direction, as the columns roll on their bases. This is an effective way to separate the building from the movement of the ground. After the earthquake has ended, the columns are re-centered on their bases by the force of gravity.^[5]

Ball bearings are also used for dental and medical instruments. In dental and medical hand pieces, it is necessary for the pieces to withstand sterilization and corrosion. Because of this requirement, dental and medical hand pieces are made from 440C stainless steel, which allows for smooth rotations at fast speeds.^[6]

• Hard drive bearings used to be highly spherical, and were said to be the best spherical manufactured shapes, but this is no longer true, and more and more are being replaced with fluid bearings.
• German ball bearing factories were often a target of allied aerial bombings during World War II; such was the importance of the ball bearing to the German war industry.^[7]
• In horology, the company Jean Lassale designed a watch movement that used ball bearings to reduce the thickness of the movement. Using 0.20 mm balls, the Calibre 1200 was only 1.2 mm thick, which still is the thinnest mechanical watch movement.^[8]
• Aerospace bearings are used in commercial, private and military aircraft and aerospace systems. These bearings are commonly made from 440C stainless steel, silicon nitride (ceramic), or Titanium Carbide coated 440C.

See also

• Ball screw
• Bearing Specialists Association
• Brinelling, a common failure mode
• Fluid bearing
• Linear bearing
• Thrust bearing
  • Thrust ball bearing

References

1. ^ French Wiki - 1869 in science
2. ^ Bicycle History, Chronology of the Growth of Bicycling and the Development of Bicycle Technology by David Mozer
3. ^ Purtell, John (1999/2001). Project Diana, chapter 10: http://nemiship.multiservers.com/nemi.htm
4. ^ Sobel, Dava (1995). Longitude. London: Fourth Estate. pp. 103. ISBN 0-00-721446-4. "A novel antifriction device that Harrison developed for H-3 survives to the present day - ...caged ball bearings." 
5. ^ http://science.howstuffworks.com/bearing4.htm
6. ^ J. J. C. Hoo (1998). Bearing Steels: Into the 21st Century. ASTM International. p. 444-445. http://books.google.com/books?id=VQOVbmvTyxQC&pg=PA444&lpg=PA444&dq=%2B440c+%2B%22stainless+steel%22+%2Bdental&source=bl&ots=Wg4ARSn8NT&sig=Mzu3XTsoRvHEhnt9F_94tfBY1Hc. Retrieved on 2008-11-18. 
7. ^ Speer, Albert (1970). Inside the Third Reich. New York and Toronto: Macmillan. pp. 331–347. 
8. ^ Brunner, Gisbert (1999). Wristwatcges - Armbanduhren - Montres-bracelets. Köln, Germany: Könnemann. p. 454. ISBN 3-8290-0660-8. 

External links

Look up ball bearing in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• How ball bearings are manufactured

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