Prevent shaft from sliding

I want to play around with small wind turbine. I want to buy a 1 inch ball bearing from RadioShack and use a 1 inch pvc pipe as the shaft. I can slide the pipe into the bearing, but I can't figure out what I can use to prevent it from sliding up and down. I want it to be as frictionless as possible. I can just screw in a nut or something, but that would have lots of friction and wear my bearing quickly.

1" pvc pipe will measure 1.315" OD, will not slide into any standard size of bearing. Assuming that you find some other shaft material that will actuaally fit a bearing you hve several choices:

-use a 1" collar with a set screw in the side. These slide over the shaft, tighten with an allen wrench. Downside is that they leave ding marks in the shaft from the set screw.

-Oval lock bearings have a built in offset collar that mates up with a similar collar and set screw. The cam action locks is very tightly to the shaft.

Buy your supplies at a farm or tractor supply place (Fleet Farm, Tractor Supply, etc) Cheap parts, easy to look at what you are getting. 1" bearing with cam lock plus flange or pillow block mount should run less than $10

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:

Thank you so much. You are very helpful.

If you can get a bearing that fits PVC pipe, the best way I can think of to positively locate the bearing on the pipe OD is to get a 1" pipe joint (straight piece you butt 2 PVC pipes into to join them lengthwise) and saw it in half, then trim out the inside step the pipe would butt up against so the thing will slide over the OD of the pipe, decide where you want your bearing and use PVC glue to put this closely-fitting PVC collar where you want it permanently, then put on your bearing, then glue the other collar on the other side. No rust, no muss, no fuss.

GWE

That's about how I'd go about it too. If you use a repair coupling there nothing to trim. It's made to slide over the pipe. Buy two and there's no sawing. Tom

A good book would be Wind Energy Basics. I bought mine at

Stick a small piece of brass brazing rod under the setscrew..or a small piece of bird shot. It stops the ding issue

"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."

- Proverbs 22:3

Possibly the simplest thing to do would be to get another length of the same PVC, in a size that fits over the 1" piece. Cut in two so that you slide each over the shaft to "trap" the bearing at the desired position. If you can't get a close enough fitting piece, then even another 1" piece, then after cutting to the correct length, either slit them lengthwise and "force" over the shaft, or if it's too stiff to "force'", just slit/split each into two, and clamp them over the shaft.