Get to Know The Types and Characteristics of Roller Thrust Bearing and Their Uses

Roller Thrust Bearing

Thrust roller bearing variants are primarily designed to handle mostly axial loads, as well as impact or peak loads. Nevertheless, they are not meant to accommodate any radial load. With these bearing types, you can manage single-directional or double-directional loads. Their compact construction makes them occupy less axial space, and hence, they are the most sought-after components in various industrial applications.

Other than this, a thrust roller bearing design is easily interchangeable, for it is separable with rolling elements, shaft, housing washers, and cage assembly mounted and dismounted separately. The housing washers with sphered seat surfaces help the bearing variants manage misalignment during the functioning of the machine tool.

Advancements in engineering technology have led to the development of improved designs in bearings. A roller thrust bearing can manage pure axial or thrust loads in the direction of the shaft. The rolling elements are barrel-shaped with ends conical, tapered, spherical, and cylindrical to sustain single-direction or double-direction loads.

What Features Make a Roller Thrust Bearing Distinguishable?

The shape of the rollers in a thrust roller bearing determines its efficiency. The common shapes include spherical, cylindrical, tapered, and needle-shaped. Further, the inner and outer ring raceways are also designed to flat, convex, tapered, concave, and grooved shapes to meet different application needs. Roller thrust bearings are manufactured using high-quality steel and are phosphate coated for better durability and reliability.

These roller types are also known to accommodate misalignment and shaft displacement, which helps have less energy consumption, noise, and wear and tear.

Different Types of a Roller Thrust Bearing for Applications

When it comes to a thrust roller bearing design, you have some variants that can manage shaft displacement or misalignment. Here are a few types to know.

Cylindrical Roller Thrust Bearings

These bearings are designed to accommodate heavy axial loads. Their separable design allows easy replacements through quick mounting and dismounting. They come in different designs to accommodate heavy loads in a single direction or double direction. You can find them largely used in presses and injection molding machines.

Spherical Roller Thrust Bearings

A spherical roller thrust bearing is known for its asymmetrical rolling elements and specially crafted rings that can support axial loads acting in one direction and acting in radial loads concurrently. The rolling elements are so designed to transfer the load between the ring raceways along the contact surface at an “angle to the bearing axis”.

Some applications under extreme conditions use spherical roller thrust bearings for their heavy-load handling and self-aligning features. The logarithmic roller profile helps regulate the frictional heat at a low level.

Needle Roller Thrust Bearings

They are designed to have numerous needle rollers offering high rigidity. Needle roller thrust bearings are largely used in the automotive industry.

If you are looking for a suitable roller thrust bearing for your application, you can decide on using any of the design variants explained.