Rolling Bearing Types And Where Each One Belongs
A working comparison of ball, cylindrical, tapered, needle, thrust and spherical designs by load direction, speed and section height.
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Knowledge Center
Product Material And Process Guides
Eighteen guides covering bearing types, materials, precision classes, clearance groups, mounting, lubrication, failure analysis and cross referencing, each linked to the product families they apply to.
Product Guides
Tapered Roller Bearings Explained
Single, double and four row arrangements, contact angle, cup and cone terminology, and why four row units dominate rolling mill work rolls.
Read GuideThrust Roller Bearings Explained
Thrust cylindrical, thrust tapered and thrust spherical designs, washer and cage construction, and the TP and T inch series.
Read GuideCylindrical Roller Bearings Explained
NU, N, NJ and NUP configurations, axial location, full complement variants and when the cage should be removed.
Read GuideAngular Contact Ball Bearings Explained
Contact angle, universal matching, back to back and face to face arrangements and preload in spindle work.
Read GuideNeedle Roller Bearings Explained
Drawn cup, machined ring, thrust needle and combined designs, and the shaft and housing requirements that come with them.
Read GuideMaterial Guides
Bearing Steel And Material Selection
GCr15 and GCr15SiMn through hardening steel, case carburised grades, stainless and ceramic options with their practical limits.
Read GuideCage Materials Compared Brass Steel And Polyamide
How cage choice changes speed limit, temperature limit, lubricant compatibility and behaviour under shock load.
Read GuideOil Seal Materials NBR FKM Silicone And PTFE
Temperature windows, media compatibility and lip design for rotary shaft seals, with a note on floating labyrinth types.
Read GuideProcess Guides
Bearing Precision Classes P0 P6 P5 P4 And P2
What each ISO tolerance class controls, how it maps to ABEC grades, and when paying for a tighter class actually changes anything.
Read GuideInternal Clearance Groups C2 CN C3 C4 And C5
Why residual clearance after mounting matters more than the clearance in the box, and how interference fit and temperature consume it.
Read GuideMounting And Dismounting Rolling Bearings
Cold, heat and hydraulic mounting, force paths, common damage patterns and a step by step procedure.
Read GuideBearing Lubrication Grease And Oil Basics
Base oil viscosity, thickener type, fill quantity, relubrication intervals and the reasons over-greasing fails.
Read GuideDesign Guides
Reading A Bearing Designation
Series, bore code, suffixes and prefixes, and how to work back from a manufacturer specific number to a dimensional description.
Read GuideTroubleshooting Articles
Reading Bearing Damage And Failure Patterns
Spalling, brinelling, false brinelling, fluting, smearing and corrosion, and what each pattern says about the cause.
Read GuideBuying Guides
Buying Bearings From A Chinese Factory A Checklist
What to confirm before an order, how to specify so the right part arrives, and the documents an export shipment needs.
Read GuideMaintenance Guides
Bearing Storage Packing And Preservation
Shelf life, humidity, vibration in storage, rust preventive films and how to keep a spare usable for years.
Read GuideComparison Articles
Cross Referencing Bearings Between Manufacturers
Where designations agree, where they do not, and a practical routine for identifying a part with no readable marking.
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Still Not Sure Which Part You Need
Send the designation, the OEM number or three caliper measurements and it will be identified for you.
Answers
About These Guides
Who writes these guides
They are written for buyers and maintenance engineers using the same reference data that sits behind the product catalogue on this site. They cover general bearing and seal engineering rather than company claims.
Can I use these in a specification
They are a starting point for narrowing a choice. Where a machine builder has specified a class, clearance group or lubricant, that specification takes priority.
Is there a downloadable version
Category catalogues and datasheets are available in the Download Center as PDF files.