Roller Thrust Bearing to Handle Heavy Thrust and Loads

Roller Thrust Bearing

In all automobiles and machinery, bearings are fixed. Though the bearings are small in size they play a vital role in minimizing friction. When a metal comes in contact with another metal, it generates large amounts of friction. Slowly, the friction produces grinding which causes wear and tear of the metals and finally degrades it. Bearings help to reduce this friction generated between the metals by allowing the two surfaces roll over smoothly on one another.

The bearing is made of a roller or smooth metal ball that rolls against an outer and smooth inner metal surface. These rollers take the load and allow the machine or device to spin without any friction. The load which acts on the bearing is either thrust or a radial load. So, as per the location of bearing in the device, it can experience thrust or radial load or even both. A roller thrust bearing is used in places where heavy thrust need to be handled.

Common Types of thrust Bearings:

There is a plethora of types of bearings that are specially designed and manufactured to handle the load. Different devices demand different bearings to handle the specific load and weight. Here are some very common types of thrust bearings which are fitted in the devices which we daily use:

Ball Thrust Bearings: They are designed to handle thrust load exclusively in low-weight and low-speed devices.

Roller Thrust Bearings: A thrust roller bearing is similar to ball thrust bearing with the difference in the amount of weight they can handle. A Roller thrust bearing can handle thrust loads and can support higher amounts of thrust load. Hence, the roller thrust bearings are used in devices like car transmissions where they support the helical gears. Spherical roller thrust bearing is sophisticated. They have good self-aligning capacity and hence widely used.

Specialized Bearings: For specific devices, several types of specific bearings are manufactured. These include giant roller and magnetic bearings. Giant bearings as the name suggests are used to handle extremely heavy and large loads. Magnetic ones are used in those devices which have no moving parts.

However, the only limitation is that this kind of bearings can handle only radial loads and are not suited to handle thrust loads. For certain devices where availability of space is an issue, manufacturers can use needle bearings which work great with cylinders with a small diameter.

You can search online to get the best bearing since there are plenty of manufactures offer the best quality bearing online. So, choose the bearing for the various applications as per the need from these common and specialized ones. Nevertheless never compromise on quality since the bearings determine the lifespan of a machinery.