Different Types of Conveyor Bearings

Regular maintenance is certainly essential in keeping your conveyor running and not shut down. Often lack of supervision and maintenance can cause downtime. Yet many operators follow exceptional maintenance activities and still have to deal with downtimes. The selection of improper conveyor bearings is found directly related to and often the unnoticed reason for downtime.

The size of conveyors can vary from a few feet to several miles long. The length of conveyors increases the complexity and technical requirements. All conveyors require bearings that are appropriately selected for load and situation, irrespective of size or scale. Fully understanding the fundamentals of bearing design can help operators decide if the conveyor bearings are suitable for the given task.

Conveyor Bearing

 

Basic knowledge of bearing rankings and characteristics can help the operators to pick conveyor bearings properly and reduce costs and downtime. There are typically three different types of conveyor bearings to consider; ball, spherical roller, and tapered roller. Knowing the basic components of each type of conveyor bearings can help in identifying the trouble areas of operation and help you find suitable bearings for your requirements. 

Types of conveyor bearings to choose

• Ball bearings

Ball bearings are designed for radial contact: this means it will be very effective if the force you choose to bring in contact with the bearing is perpendicular to its rotational axis. Hence, triple-row ball bearings are designed for angular contact.



Additionally, if you want to use a ball bearing for axial load, it should be remembered that this system supports only mild axial loads. However, this weakness can be avoided with the use of a double-row ball-bearing design. Ball bearings are also the lightest, as well as low-cost, making them the most widely used type of bearings. Using ball bearings while using small rollers running at high speed.



Ball bearings are typically used for lighter uses, such as conveyors for package handling. Ball bearings can bear radial as well as axial loads. Several metallic balls carry the charge in a ball bearing, riding on a curved, tunnel-shaped raceway. As the raceways have a slightly greater radius than the balls, the load is concentrated at one point of contact.



The bearing is a "loaded point," and the load is not evenly distributed over the raceway width. Since only a small area supports the load, load ratings and fatigue life are reduced, as compared to tapered and spherical roller bearings. Ball bearings may normally accommodate misalignment but generally cannot extend the shaft.



Conveyor Bearing

• Spherical Roller Bearing

These bearings typically can extend for high-temperature or outdoor applications. Heavier-duty conveyors typically have a non-expansion bearing on the drive end of the pulley and an expansion bearing on the driven end. The spherical roller bearings have two rows of barrel-shaped rollers that form a spherical profile when assembled.



Even the outer raceway is machined with a spherical shape, hence the contour of the rollers to the outer ring forms a kind of ball joint. This geometry means that spherical roller bearings have a high radial power, but are not well suited to high axial loads. This makes them ideal for heavily loaded, horizontal shafts, for example in applications such as mining, aggregate, and construction.



They are fully self-aligning, meaning the rollers can freely adjust with misalignment. This is useful for applications where there would be some degree of WP0181 2 misalignment, such as take-up pulleys.

• Tapered Roller Bearing

Tapered roller bearings can accommodate radial, axial, and combined loads (both at the same time). Thanks to their high rigidity, the loads can be very strong. If you are uncertain between a ball bearing and a tapered roller bearing, be mindful that heavier loads can be covered by a tapered roller bearing of equivalent dimension.



Tapered roller bearings are commonly used in highest-loaded applications where the shaft can be correctly balanced and mounted, such as the drive or tail pulley. Tapered roller bearings employ conical rollers running on conical races. Wedged between the inner and outer rings, the rollers make contact along the entire width of the raceway.



In general, tapered roller bearings have a slightly higher load rating than ball bearings or spherical roller bearings and can accommodate strictly radial, strictly axial, or mixed loading. Tapered roller bearings are not self-aligning, although some unitized, installed bearings can be misaligned and extended.

Select the best conveyor bearings as per your requirements.

Regular maintenance procedures and proper handling can keep the conveyors running. Before purchasing the conveyor bearing for your conveyors understand the important components and characteristics of each type of bearing. It will help you to find a perfect bearing as per your requirements. You also need to consider the type and brand of bearing while buying the conveyor bearings.