MANUFACTURING PROCESS OF

ROLLING ELEMENT BEARING

Ramakanth P Joshi
100922003
M.Tech (CAMDA)
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OUTLINE
 Parts or rolling element bearing

 Raw materials

 Manufacturing process of steel balls, RACES and cage.

 Observations relating to manufacturing

 Assembly

 Inspection

 Bibliography

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PARTS OR ROLLING ELEMENT
BEARING

Courtesy SKF industries

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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.

 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.

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STEEL FOR BEARING
MANUFACTURING
 Production of wrought or pig Iron : Furnace

 Degassing : Removal of gaseous molecules

 Casting an ingot

 Soaking : holding at certain temperature

 Rolling : ingot to billet

 Normalizing : To refine the grains, accomplished by heating at appx. 55 to 85 degree above

the upper critical temperature( for 52100 its around 750) ans allowed to coll in
air( austenitising)

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BEARING MANUFACTURING
 Forging produces a fiber orientation in the race material that makes the races less
sensitive to variations in steel quality. Bearings with forged races can have dynamic
capacities up to twice as high as bearings with races cut from tubing.

 Compressive residual stress reduces maximum shearing stress and increases fatigue
life. For bearings with light to medium loads, residual compressive stress can increase
life. But for bearings with heavy loads, the effect is significant.

 Controlled-hardness bearings have rolling elements and races matched for hardness.
Generally, the rolling elements are 1 to 2 Rc harder than the races. Since fatigue life is
related to hardness, the matching process can result in order-of-magnitude
improvements in fatigue life.

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MANUFACTURING PROCESS OF STEEL BALLS

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DEFLASHING MACHINE

. Photo courtesy of Noonan Machine Co.

Rill plates for ball machine Ball machine

As the ball travels through the groove, it spins and tumbles, the rough edges
get broken off, and the ball gets squeezed into a spherical shape, a little like
rolling a ball of dough between your hands. This squeezing of the balls
compresses the metal, giving the balls a very hard surface. Because the balls
are metal, this operation generates a lot of heat, so water pours over the balls
and plates to cool them.
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DEFLASHING, HEAT TREATMENT AND LAPPING

1550
& 300

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PRODUCTION SEQUENCE OF STEEL BALLS IN BRIEF

Wire Coil: Steel wire of specific material and size is checked for correctness.

Cutting: The wire is cut into required lengths.

Forging / Heading: Spherical shapes between dies are formed.

Deflashing: The flash line along the circumference is removed.

Heat Treatment: Chrome and bearing steel balls are thorough hardened.

Cleaning / Descaling: Basic surface cleaning is done.

Hard Grinding / Filing: An exacting process to achieve required sphericity and size of the steel ball.

Lapping: The final surface finish is acquired through this process.

Polishing / Burnishing: Surface luster, work hardening, higher product life is achieved.

Passivation: Carryover iron and other contaminants are removed and a surface film prevents atmospheric and water corrosion on stainless steel
balls.

Inspection: For surface finish, size and tolerance.

Rust preventive oil: Applied on chrome alloy steel balls to save from rusting and corrosion.

Packing: Done as per requirement in numbers, pieces or by weight. VCI paper or bags are used wherever necessary.

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MANUFACTURING PROCESS OF 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.

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12
HEAT TREATMENT PROCESS

Annealing : 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

Tempering : 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

Consequence : Hard and tough races

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GRINDING

 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.

 very fine abrasive slurry is used to polish the races for several hours to get
almost a mirror finish.

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CAGES

 Cages are manufactured in different ways from a variety of materials.

 Although but an auxiliary component, the cage has such an important part to
play that the success, or failure of a bearing under a given set of working
conditions may well depend on its design and material used in its construction.

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MANUFACTURING PROCESS OF CAGES
 The materials used include yellow
metals, mild steel, tool steel, duralium

 Steel cages are stamped out of fairly thin

sheet metal
 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 Metal sheet
bent to the shape of the hole inside.
The die is then opened, and the
finished part is taken out, ready to be Hemispherical
assembled. die

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PLASTIC CAGES

Plastic cages are usually made by a process called Injection molding or

by permanent moulding. 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.

Eg. paper bonded with synthetic resin (phenolic), or plastics reinforced

with disintegrated fabric
The cage is formed by riveting both

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OBSERVATIONS RELATING TO MANUFACTURING

 During rotation of the bearing, those rolling elements under load push against the cage
and rotate the cage, and the cage in turn pushes those rollers which are not under a load.

 Unfortunately, the cage does not tend to remain concentric in the bearing but instead
tends to move in an eccentric path due to dynamic imbalance;

 To address this problem, the cage is usually piloted to limit eccentric movement of the
cage within the bearing.

 The cage may be piloted either on the outer race, the inner race or on the rolling
elements themselves.

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CONTINUED…
 During rotation of the bearing, "centrifugal force" maintains the rolling elements in firm
contact with the outer race so that the rolling elements tend to run at the outer race speed
(which may be zero for a static outer race) with any skid then being more likely to occur
between the rolling elements and the inner race.

 In such cases it is preferable to pilot the cage on the inner race ie to provide a closer
clearance between the inner race and the cage than between the outer race and the cage,
so that the lubricating oil in between the cage and the inner race introduces a net viscous
drag between the inner race and the cage, tending to cause the cage (and hence the
rolling elements) to run closer to the inner race speed.

 Unfortunately, in practice centrifugal effects make it difficult to retain lubricating oil in-
between the cage and the inner race, and this has a limiting effect on the `viscous
coupling` between the cage and the inner race.

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ASSEMBLY

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ASSEMBLY TYPE 1
The typical ball bearing, called a Conrad bearing. There is enough space between the balls that if
they're all pushed over to one side; the inner ring can be pushed to the opposite side, into the space
left by moving the balls. This increases the space on the side where the balls are, letting them be
removed.

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ASSEMBLY TYPE 2
The other kind of ball bearing is called a maximum capacity bearing, and has a special notch cut in
the side of the rings, into which the balls are placed during assembly. As a result of this notch, the
axial loads this kind of bearing can take are quite small, and must be in combination with a large
radial load. However, the increased number of balls that can be fit into the bearing means the
maximum capacity type bearing can handle a larger radial load.

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INSPECTION ( BASED ON MASTER GAUGES)
After the final polishing operation the steel balls undergo ocular examination of diffused light
for the purpose of detecting flaws or grinding marks

For balls up to about 5/8 in. in diameter the machine used is designed so that the hopper
delivers the ball one by one to a pair of knife edges forming a narrow V and set on an incline.
The balls roll down the incline and drop through the V – opening, at different points according
to their diameter, into recepticles below. The ocular inspection, it should be noted, precedes the
grading, since slight flaws in the surface of the balls might otherwise affect the accuracy of
gauging.

Balls about 5/8 in. or more in diameter are fed through a grading machine in which the v
opening is horizontal lengthwise and vertical as far as its width is concerned. Cylindrical and
taper rollers are also gauged in machines constructed on this principle.

Hardness inspection : BHN

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RACES INSPECTION

The outer and the inner rings of the bearing are inspected at every step in their
manufacture from the straightening of the steel bar preceding delivery to the
automatic lathes to the final check up following assembly of the bearing. Some
sixty to eighty separate checking operations are thus undergone by every
bearing produced.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Rolling bearing,R.K.Allan, 2nd edition,Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons ltd.,1960.

Bearing Design & Application, Donald.F.Wilcock &E.Richard Booser, 1st edition,
McGraw-hill book company-1957.

Websites

www.howstuffwork.com
www.wikepedia.com
www.scribed.com
 

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Thank you

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