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Bearing Failures and Handling Measures

Preventive Measures for Common Bearing Problems

Post By: September 26, 2022 0 Comment

How to prevent bearing contamination

Symptoms:

  • ✧ High vibration and wear (caused by denting of the raceways and balls).

Prevention:

  • ✧ Always keep your hands, work areas, tools, and fixtures clean.
  • ✧ Keep bearings in their original packing until they are ready to be installed, and keep grinding operations away from bearing assembly locations.
  • ✧ Seals are essential because faulty or damaged seals cannot protect bearings from foreign contaminants.

How to prevent misalignment

Symptoms:

  • ✧ An unusual rise in bearing or housing temperature.
  • ✧ Heavy wear in the cage ball-pockets.

Most prevalent causes:

  • ✧ Bent shafts.
  • ✧ Dirt or burrs on the shoulders of housing or shaft.
  • ✧ Shaft threads are not square with shaft seats.
  • ✧ Locking nuts with faces that are not square to the thread axis.

Appropriate corrective actions:

  • ✧ Perform inspections of shafts and housings for runout of shoulders and bearing seats.
  • ✧ Use of ground threads solely on hardened shafts and single point-turned or ground threads on non-hardened shafts.
  • ✧ Using lock nuts of the highest precision grade.

How to fix overloaded bearings

Appropriate corrective actions:

  • ✧ Reduce the weight that the bearing can handle or redesign it with another bearing with greater load capacity.
  • ✧ Add bearings or alter bearing size to relieve pressure on each individual bearing (if high axial or radial loads are the cause of overloading).
  • ✧ An angular contact bearing can be optimised for a particular type of load by adjusting the contact angle.

How to cure overheating

Symptoms:

  • ✧ Discolouration (from gold to blue) of the balls, rings, and cages.

Causes:

  • ✧ Insufficient lubrication or cooling.
  • ✧ Inadequate heat paths.
  • ✧ Heavy electrical heat load.

Cure:

  • ✧ Additional lubricant cooling.
  • ✧ Sufficient heat path.
  • ✧ Thermal or overload controls.

How to solve normal fatigue failure

Symptoms:

  • ✧ Fracture on the running surfaces and the subsequent removal of tiny, discrete particles of material.

Solver:

  • ✧ Replace the bearing or re-design it to use a bearing with a longer calculated fatigue life.

How to extend the life of lubricants

Symptoms:

  • ✧ Discolouration (blue/brown) of balls and ball tracks.

Lubricant life extension:

  • ✧ Correct the improper fit.
  • ✧ Control preload better.
  • ✧ Cool the shafts and housings down.

How to prevent corrosion

Symptoms:

  • ✧ Discolouration (red/brown) of ball areas, bands of balls, raceways, and cages.

Prevention:

  • ✧ Diverting corrosive fluids away from bearing areas and, whenever possible, using integrally sealed bearings.
  • ✧ The use of external seals in addition to internal seals should be taken into consideration if the environment is hazardous.
  • ✧ It is also recommended to use stainless steel bearings.
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Stages of Bearing Failure

Post By: September 24, 2022 0 Comment

Bearings do not last forever as they can be damaged. They also have a shortened lifespan if the right preventative measures are not followed through in the facility.

So, how do you know if a bearing is about to fail?

At Stage 1 of bearing failure, the bearings are still considered within normal operation. They are still functioning normally, but small pits begin to form in the bearing race and the rolling elements’ impact will be audible at ultrasonic frequencies. Vibrations at ultrasonic frequencies ranging between 20,000 and 60,000 Hertz (Hz) indicate that there is a bearing-to-raceway contact caused by a lack of lubrication.

This stage can be avoided beforehand by checking the lubrication levels and making any necessary amendments.

At Stage 2 of bearing failure, bearings exhibit advanced micro-pitting as a result of increased friction from the low bearing lubrication. In this condition, resonance detectable in the range of 2,000 to 8,000 Hertz (Hz) will be generated. At this stage, it is best to replace bearings in extremely critical machines.

At Stage 3 of bearing failure, bearings show obvious defects. Harmonic frequencies and sidebands will appear on the spectrum. When the bearings are taken off, the defects in the raceways or rolling components are easily visible. Therefore, it is advised to replace the bearings in both critical and non-critical machinery at this stage.

At Stage 4, a noticeable noise floor increases at all levels, which then creates a random, broad spectrum. This stage also indicates that the bearings are nearing the end of their lifespan. Bearing failure is almost inevitable, and no machine should ever be pushed to this limit.

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Proper Handling of Bearings

Post By: September 24, 2022 0 Comment

Keep Your Bearings Clean

Cleanliness is very important when handling bearings. Contamination caused by foreign particles like dirt, sand, water, and chemical compounds may result in bearing failure, which will result in disruption of oil film, reduction of lubricant fluid flow, and corrosion.

Therefore, it is crucial to prevent the entry of these contaminants into bearing components by keeping the surrounding areas and environment as clean as possible.

Food and smoking are also prohibited near any bearings. Also, be sure to keep your hands, tools, and fixtures clean all the time!

Use Proper Tools

Proper bearing handling requires the use of proper tools; avoid general-purpose tools and never use your bare hands.

Proper tools should always be used when mounting and dismounting. The tools for mounting should make sure that the bearings are mounted squarely on the shaft and into the housing. The tools used for the bearing work must also be kept pristine, clean, and burr-free.

Moreover, do not clean housings and shafts with shop rags or cotton swabs because they may contaminate the bearings. Instead, it is best to use clean room wipes or clean room swabs.

Careful Handling

Bearings should be handled with care. One of the methods for handling bearings carefully is by keeping your hands as clean as possible. It is recommended to wear gloves such as latex gloves, talc-free finger cots or talc-free surgical gloves.

This is to prevent skin oils, moisture, and acid from hand from depositing and staining the bearing surface, which would cause etching and corrosion to the bearings. Hence, bearings must be kept in dry places in a dry environment.

Besides that, users should never subject a bearing to shock or impact load. If a bearing is dropped to the floor and subjected to excessively powerful impacts, it will break, crack or become brinelled, which means dents in the raceways.

Lubricate accordingly

Proper lubrication with the correct quantities of the appropriate lubricant is very important to prevent bearing failure. Besides acting as a seal against contaminants, bearing lubrication serves as a surface protection against corrosion, heat transference provider, and barrier between sliding surfaces and rolling contact.

However, lubrication can either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how much lubrication a bearing needs. This is because over-lubrication can increase friction and pressure, which will then lead to excess heat.

Similarly, under-lubrication will cause friction caused by direct contact between metals, which will result in destructive heat production. Therefore, sufficient viscosity at operating temperature is essential for good lubrication, which will help to preserve the bearing’s performance and rolling element bearings’ lifespan.

Two types of lubricants commonly used for bearings are oil lubricant and grease lubricant.

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Common Causes of Bearing Failure

Post By: February 9, 2022 0 Comment

Common Causes of Bearing Failure

When a bearing fails, it indicates the ineffectiveness of the bearing motion. The machine shaft would eventually fail without sufficient bearing action, resulting in machine damage and breakdowns. In this article, FEIKEN Bearing would explain more to readers regarding the factors of bearing failure and ineffectiveness.

The above pie chart displays a better illustration of the statistics underlying common bearing failure reasons. By learning from this article, readers are exposed to the knowledge of these potential problems and may help to prevent bearing malfunctions.

1.0 Lubrication Failure

Improper lubrication is the main common cause of bearing failure. The factors of damaged bearings due to lubrication failure are such as improper lubricant used, lack of lubricant applied, or the bearing has been subjected to extreme temperatures that have caused the lubricant to deteriorate.

2.0 Misalignment

Apart from lubrication failures, bearing misalignment is the second most prevalent cause of early bearing failure. When the faces of the inner and outer rings are not parallel, rolling element bearings are misaligned. The inner ring on the shaft or the outer ring in the housing might be crooked.

3.0 Corrosion and Contamination

Contaminants in bearing components, such as dirt, sand, water, and chemical compounds, create a variety of problems. These contaminants reduce the flow of lubricant fluids, leading to bearing surface corrosion, disruption of the oil layer, and erosion, which would result in an increase in the friction on the bearing.

4.0 Fatigue

Fatigue is a condition where bearing surfaces or raceways have fractures, causing the removal of tiny pieces of bearing materials such as metal and other particles. If this fatigue continuously spreads, it can lead the bearing to failure and malfunction.

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