Technical note: Polymer ball bearings in corrosive environments

Abstract

Where moderate running speeds and loadings are involved, ball bearings engineered from polymer resins can offer significant advantages over their steel counterparts. They also give a far superior performance than can be obtained from plastics bushes. A primary disadvantage of running a shaft in a plastics bush is that, if unacceptably high friction losses are to be avoided, it has to be a fairly loose fit. In a polymer ball bearing, friction is only about one seventh of that experienced with a comparable bush bearing and the bearings are manufactured to close diametrical tolerances, enabling precision running to be preserved.