Morris Minor Owners Club

How they make ball bearings

I found out here, most intresting

http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/01/ ... -bearings/

my group produces more bearings than you could believe (including INA and FAG bearings and some others) That American clip was interesting but there's an awful lot more to it these days.
I did chuckle when they described the riveted metal ball cages... most are plastic single sided.
Inners, outers and balls will be graded. All parts can be hardened depending on the application requirements.

For really cheap bearings, they use less balls!

For real high tech applications, they use non round balls!?!

Well I used to work for Beaver Machine Tools 20 odd years ago making CNC mills with recirculating ball screws in the table positioning bit. It facinated me watching them run in the screws on a machine before measuring and changing the balls to suit. But I never considered just how a ball would be made till today. I was resonsible for making the pallet changers on HC 20's and VC15's High tech stuff in its day now sadly long gone. Can still remember some of the CNC commands as I used to key in my own test routine when we had a second user machine to refurbish and it needed running in as it were.

Thank you for sharing.