ALIGNMENT
The Self-Aligning Advantage
Accurately aligned bearings will always provide superior performance and longer service life than poorly aligned bearings. While misalignment affects plain and rolling bearings differently, the result is often shaft binding, which causes unintentional loads.
When a plain bearing isn’t aligned properly, the misalignment causes high-stress contact points, which in turn cause poor load distribution, shaft binding, higher friction and uneven, accelerated wear.
Figure 1. Misaligned plain bearings bind the shaft.
A misaligned rolling bearing causes increased rolling friction, accelerated fatigue, shaft binding and decreased service life. Damage to rolling elements and races can also occur.
Figure 2. Improperly loaded ball bearings have shorter service life
Misaligned bearings are often a result of the manufacturing process. Castings, die-castings and injection-molded components frequently shrink and deform as the material cools and stabilizes. The nature of these processes makes it difficult to consider molding a bearing support without additional operations to line-bore or precision machine supporting bores. Even a fully machined precision component may have difficulty with material stress relief, resulting in misaligned bearing supports. Although manufacturing problems can be worked around, each additional process adds considerable cost to the end product, especially when competing in a global market.
Spyraflo self-aligning bearings allow designers to achieve design intent without the costly methods required to keep bearings mounts perfectly aligned. Using self-aligning bearings, you can relax tolerances and component constraints, and simply rely on the self-compensating features of the Spyraflo bearing. This approach can dramatically reduce component and assembly cost.
Figure 3. Spyraflo plain bearings self-align for ideal performance
Spyraflo self-aligning bearings provide the best possible alignment regardless of alignment imperfections in the mount component. Straight, smooth-running, self-aligning bearings deliver ideal performance with the lowest possible friction and the longest service life.
Figure 4. Spyraflo self-aligning rolling bearings ease assembly
Spyraflo self-aligning bearings are also self-compensating, so the ID is unaffected by assembly. This results in a feature-rich solution that not only enhances design, but can also significantly reduce manufacturing cost.
Figure 5. Spyraflo self-aligning ball bearings open new possibilities to designers worldwide
We offer bearings in press-fit, self-clinching, or mounted configurations, with plain or rolling elements, in a variety of materials. Bearings come in standard inch and metric sizes — including miniature options.
