Taking proper care of bearings is an important process to increase their useful life and improve their performance. Often when bearings are handled incorrectly, premature failure will occur.
These are some things you shouldn't do to avoid early failure:
1. Apply little grease
Applying less than the recommended amount of grease can increase temperatures and metal contact, leading to increased friction and damaging the bearing due to extreme wear. As a result, this leads to early bearing failures.
2. Apply a lot of grease
In fact, over-lubrication causes even more damage to bearings than under-lubrication. Applying too much grease will cause heat build-up as there is no place for the heat to dissipate, and along with internal vibration of the bearing, the excess grease will move out of the bearing and harden on the surface, preventing any other grease from entering.
3. Placement of grounding bearings
Avoid placing pads on the floor for long hours, even if they are new and tightly sealed in a package. This is due to the direct contact between the ground and the pads and therefore heat is quickly transferred from the floor to the pads. Additionally, the ground surface is also exposed to moisture that can penetrate the bearing assembly and possibly the bearing itself.
Therefore, it is highly recommended that whenever you receive the tablets, place them on objects with a large surface area such as a wooden pallet that acts as an insulator without any direct contact between the ground and the tablets so that heat transfer is slow; the same goes for humidity.
4. Hammer or apply direct force
Although bearings are relatively hard, using hammers made of metal (e.g. steel) with higher hardness can cause serious damage to the bearings.
Typically, the tight fit setting is intended for the shaft or housing. There have been cases where both components have had tight fits due to their deviation, which determines how far from the nominal size the actual measurement is allowed. For example, if the shaft has a maximum deviation of +10 µm and the case hole has a minimum deviation of -10 µm, this would mean that the shaft has a diameter slightly larger than its standard measurement, while the case has a diameter slightly larger than its standard measurement. smaller than its actual size. Therefore, the larger shaft and smaller housing cannot fit together due to tightness.
When faced with this situation, some use a hammer or similar tool to tap the bearings in hopes of “loosening” the adjustment. However, this action not only does not help loosen the adjustment, it also causes serious damage to the bearings. This causes misalignment of the rolling elements and also wear of the bearings due to hammering.
5. Expose bearings to moisture
Although most bearings have strong resistance to water or damp surfaces, they are still susceptible to rust under extreme conditions or when exposed to moisture for a long period of time, resulting in water contamination. It's important to note that even a little rust has a huge impact on the life of your bearings. Although bearing failure can take a long time, sometimes up to several years, to be noticed, the life expectancy of bearings is significantly reduced. Therefore, it is important to keep bearings sealed in their original unopened packaging (until needed) and stored in a clean, dry environment.
