ball bearings with the U groove in outer ring

Look for cast iron casters and wheels. They make a grooved pulley type for inverted V track for heavy loads.

Regards

Jim Vrzal Holiday,FL

Alex wrote:

What do you think about using flanged ball bearings?

Try Reid Tool & Supply

they have steel & nylon cable pulleys & Bishop Carver V bearings (expensive) also V cam followers. Don Warner

Just buy some linear bearings and be done with it. Somebody figured this out a long time ago. Thompson bearings and shafts.

I considered it sometime ago. Unfortunately environment in which the device will be used have some abrasive dust present. Plus manufacturing cost will be too high because:

1. Turned, ground and polished shafts are expensive. Especially stainless ones.
2. Shafts must be absolutely parallel and at precise distance which makes the manufacturing expensive.
3. Making slide is an expensive due to the precision.

Thanks for suggestion anyway.

BTW The cheapest(but still too expensive for me) linear solution I found was from GUS.

An alternative to a single bearing with a grooved OD for riding on a round shaft is two regular bearings mounted in an 30-45 degree "V" configuration. Adjust the spacing at the bottom of the vee to accomodate the dia. of your shafting. These work very well in an abrasive environment (I've actually used this setup on a grinder head that rides on two parallel tubes) as they will just ride up and over deposits on the shafting (and abrasive dust does like to stick to tubing) instead of jamming like a groove would. Two of the common mass produced bearings that you can buy cheaply in bulk would probably be cheaper/more cost effective than a more specialized bearing too.

R. Wink wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Reid is THE place for useful, oddball stuff. They have the largest selection of handles, knobs and what not I have found.

Alexis,

how do you mount bearings in a "V" configuration? Do you use a special fixture?

Thanks, Alex

I used to operate a machine with ball bearings mounted in a vee setup. Basically it was a bracket that held 4 ball bearings about 8 inches apart. Think of a tube sliding over a smaller tube. Instead of the tubes actually contacting, the outer race of the bearings would touch the inner tube. I believe they were set about 135 degrees apart so the traveler was "captured" and couldn't lift off. That traveler part was a casting and the bearing axles were on eccentric screws so preload could be adjusted