Most spherical bearings have an outer raceway that is a portion of a sphere and as such they are internally self-aligning. Each roller has a curved form at right angles to the direction of rotation, which conforms relatively closely to the inner and outer raceways. This gives this bearing high radial load carrying capacity. Applications for these bearings include heavy support rollers, ship line shafts and rudder shafts, crankshafts, rolling mills and grinding machines.
The surface finish of the tracks and rolling elements is critical to the running performance and noise characteristics of these bearings. Taylor Hobson have a range of Form Talysurf systems which are suitable for measuring the surface finish characteristics of spherical roller bearings. For further details click the link below.
Also of critical importance is the roundness and waviness of the tracks and rolling elements. Typically these features are measured using roundness instruments, for further details click the link below.
Along with surface texture and form there is a requirement to measure and analyse a wide number of geometric features, which include the outer track radius and the flange angles. Typically the tracks and rolling elements have defined radii which minimise the build up of peak stresses at their edge and improve radial load capacity. These features can be analysed using special geometrical software from Taylor Hobson Ltd.