I don’t like it when bearings pop out, so everyone should share how they keep bearings in and what they find is easiest.
Personally I’m a big fan of using button head bolt heads to hold the flange of a flanged bearing in, but the bolts sometimes come out if they don’t have loctite (especially on intakes). I want to look into rivet heads, or using a full (likely printed) casing to hold the bearing flange in.
What do you do?
If the bearing is at the end of a shaft I love tapping with washers for retention. If its in the middle of a shaft then a E-type ring in a little groove is simple.
Ive seen the button head screws on the flange, but tapping that tiny ive never been good at.
I usually tap 10-32 for button heads.
Top methods
-Bolts tapped into plates
-Rivets into thin metal
-Bearing plate cover for polycarb
-double snap rings with flanges on oppo sides
I put rivet holes tangent to the flange and the rivet them in. Normally 2 work just fine. Especially helpful on polycarbonate, however it’s not guaranteed to not fail, but it does make it much more reliable
The single ones are just doubles with the ear sawn off. Glass filled nylon.
+1 for this. When it comes to failures retaining bearings in poly we have seen it all… threads strip, bearings pull out of retaining bolts(holes get ovaled), and major plate failures due to the stress when only using 2 bolts at 180*. Definitely worth it to go overkill here and make a retaining plate. Alternatively if you go with a 2x.25” lexan intake you can counterbore one plate and retain the bearing between the two.
For everything else, we ran a 0 lathe part robot. All shafts are cut as close as possible on a cold saw. Short shafts are shimmed using .25idx.5od washers. Long shafts have an extra spacer placed on the outside (1/32 vex spacers are your best friend here). All shafts retained with bolt and washer and cots spacers used to ensure perfect spacing and keep everything fully constrained. We like this more than printing spacers because it saves time and lets the assemblers adjust for bad tolerance, although if you use cots standoffs you won’t have as bad of a time. Use clean bolts and let your thread locker cure. Check that everything is tight before and after every match.
Turn down the ends of the shaft then place a bearing fitting smaller size with flange on inside faces
For bonus points, also use a snap ring
I typically avoid bearing retention if at all possible. When needed (polycarb intake) I like the rivet method. Generally 2x rivets with washers on the back side so they don’t pull through the plastic.
Along the same lines as what @jjsessa said, I usually design with 0 lathe parts. That being said, we usually part our shafts off on the lathe just because it’s easy to get square cuts. Always tapped ends. No snap rings or shoulders.
The best method is no bearings in plates in the first place! Team Dead Axle!
We also had great success with intake 4-bar pivots this year that we just anodized aluminum spacers spinning inside of the polycarb sideplate holes.
We had a couple bearings fall out with impacts using the rivet retention method in 2020. I made a few of these last fall at work testing out our horizontal but they never made it onto our 2022 intake. It captures the flange and bolts through the polycarb. These could easily be made on an omio and 1/8" sheet
@R.C please sell these, or something like that.
Will do. We use these like crazy as well…
Edit can probably modify some plates we already make with a cbore.
I’m very temped. That’s basically the definition of SPEEDIO part. OP1 Vacuum, OP2 screws through the pallet into the tapped holes. Crank out whole sheets of them.
I’ll never say no to more options!
These are great!
While I love the pocket in the holder plate for the bearing flange, it is probably un-necessary. A washer between the holder plate and the part you are bolting them to should work just fine. These could easily be made out of polycarb as well.
If you’re CNCing them the flange bore only takes 5 seconds more and I usually like to reduce part count where possible. If they were being bandsawed out, washers would be a great idea.
+1 on dead axles… I have to prod the kids about that. Ice seen them put four bearing on the same hex shaft, which didn’t need to rotate anyway!
Hex holes in polycarbonate are great!
Living dead axle?
