Roller Bearings

Roller bearings are one of the primary branches of rolling bearings, the defining feature of which is the use of rollers (cylindrical, taper, or needle roller) as rolling elements for bearing loads. Compared with traditional ball bearings, roller bearings substitute line contact for point contact, and the contact area of rollers and raceways is larger, thus showing unimaginable superiority in load capacity, shock resistance, and service life. On the basis of structural characteristics, roller bearings are generally classified into four groups: cylindrical roller bearings, tapered roller bearings, spherical roller bearings, and needle roller bearings.

The roller bearings possess a number of benefits over ball bearings like greater load-carrying capacity, durability, and adaptability to varying working conditions. However, roller bearings also possess one significant drawback with respect to ball bearings. That is the excessive frictional resistance due to the line contact between rolling elements and raceways.

LNB Bearings offers a full range of high-quality, competitively priced roller bearings and can be able to provide custom options to meet specific customer demands.

Tapered Roller Bearings

Cylindrical Roller Bearings

Needle Roller Bearings

1. What is roller bearing

The roller bearing is a bearing that employs cylindrical, tapered, or needle roller shapes as rolling elements to support a rotating shaft in place and reduce friction. The roller bearings in the structure are mainly constituted of an outer ring, an inner ring, rolling elements (rollers), and a cage. According to the shape and arrangement of the rollers, the roller bearings can be classified into cylindrical roller bearings, tapered roller bearings, spherical roller bearings, and needle roller bearings. Their biggest superiority is heavy load-carrying capacity and shock resistance, thus roller bearings are widely used under heavy load, shock load, or low speed and high torque operating conditions, and are an important and key part of modern industrial machinery systems

2. Types of Roller Bearings

(1)Tapered Roller Bearings

Tapered roller bearings are separable bearings. The biggest characteristic is that they are easy to install. Tapered roller bearings can usually through adjusting the bearing clearance to optimize performance. They have high load capacity, and good durability, etc., advantages.

Tapered roller bearings are suitable for equipment that needs heavy load, high speed, etc., such as machine tool spindles, transmission systems, mining equipment, and so on.

(2)Cylindrical Roller Bearings
Cylindrical roller bearings’ structure is similar to tapered roller bearings. But the rollers between the inner and outer rings are cylindrical. Cylindrical roller bearings have a larger contact area, so they can withstand large radial loads while reducing friction and wear.
Cylindrical roller bearings are widely used in environments that need to withstand heavy loads, such as machine tools, automobiles, railways, industrial equipment, and other occasions. According to the line numbers of cylindrical roller bearings, they can be divided into two types: single-row and double-row.

(3)Needle Roller Bearings
Needle roller bearings’ structure is compact, it uses slender needle rollers as rolling elements. Needle roller bearings are mainly designed to bear radial load and they have the characteristics of high load capacity, low friction, and so on.

Needle roller bearings are widely used in equipment that requires high loads and compact design, such as automobiles, machine tools, and aerospace. According to the cage, needle roller bearings are divided into two types: with cage and without cage.

3. Roller Bearing Characteristics

(1)High load carrying capacity: Since the roller and raceway are in line contact with each other, roller bearings can carry high radial loads.

(2)Great impact resistance: Since the rollers have a greater volume and the contact area is broad, roller bearings can transfer the impact force well and are suitable for heavy-duty working conditions.

(3)High friction: Compared to ball bearings, roller bearings involve a larger contact area between raceways and rolling elements, hence the friction resistance is relatively higher and a proper lubrication system needs to be employed to reduce friction and generate heat while in high-speed applications.

(4)Enhanced rigidity and consistent performance: Owing to the shape and structure of the rollers, roller bearings exhibit enhanced rigidity and are in a position to provide stable running support, which is suited to mechanical devices that have high precision and high rigidity needs, e.g., machine tool spindles.

4. Roller Bearing Application

Roller bearings, with their high load carrying capacity and shock resistance, are widely used in various types of heavy-duty, high-precision or complex working conditions of the mechanical system, the following are its typical application areas:

(1)Heavy industry and energy equipment: Roller bearings are widely used in machine tools, mining equipment, metallurgical equipment, wind power, generators and engines.

(2)Transportation equipment: Roller bearings are used in automobile wheel hubs and gearboxes, axle boxes and gearboxes of railroad locomotives, aircraft engines and landing gears.

(3)Agricultural and construction machinery: Roller bearings are used in tractors, harvesters, excavators, cranes and other fields.

(4)Other applications: Roller bearings are also used in medical equipment, robot joints, optical equipment and other fields.