Bearing Maintenance – What You Need To Know

Keeping your roller or ball bearings in tip top shape is essential to a great spin, whether it’s on your vehicle, skateboard, or household appliance. The good news? With just a little bit of bearing maintenance, you’ll be at the top of your game.

1. Keep your bearings free of moisture and dirt, and be sure to keep them well lubricated. This requires attention on your part. You’ll never know if your bearings are looking rough unless you actually take the time to inspect them.

2. Keep an ear out. Just as you should be making a visual check on your bearings, you’ll also want to listen for any unusual sounds. When bearings become dirty they may start emitting a squeak. This means they are in desperate need of a cleaning. Use your preferred cleaning solution and dry your bearings ASAP. Once dried, reapply lubricant to prevent any wear or rusting.

3. Never lubricate dirty bearings. While it may seem like a quick fix for the time being, you should never attempt to oil or lubricate bearings if they are unclean. This may only further harm the bearings by driving the dirt into the gears.

4. Talk to people who know what they’re doing. When it comes to “DIY Bearing Maintenance” make sure you have a friend or associate who knows exactly what they’re talking about. This may only end up ruining your bearings. Instead, choose a knowledgeable bunch (Like us!) who knows exactly what they’re talking about.

We didn’t invent the wheel, we just keep it spinning! Contact VNC Bearing for roller bearings, ball bearings and custom solutions.  Call us today at 614.876.1000

Why is proper lubrication important?

After experiencing numerous axle hub failures on new production, a customer called upon VNC to help determine the root cause and solution.

The very next day, VNC traveled to the customer’s site in order to examine the failed axle hubs and review all of the known facts.

While keeping an open mind to all possible root causes, all early indications pointed towards a problem involving inadequate lubrication, however, upon reviewing the site’s assembly and lubrication processes no irregularities were observed.

With inadequate lubrication seemingly ruled out, several failed bearings, as well as the mating components, were disassembled and taken back to VNC’s inspection lab for a more in depth examination.

Forensic Examination:

Although most of the bearings were badly destroyed and difficult to inspect, the forensic examination continued to point towards inadequate lubrication as the root cause of failure.

During the examination the bearing fragments from the raceways and rollers consistently demonstrated severe discoloration and scoring. At such an early stage in their field life, such signs would not occur under proper lubrication conditions.

In addition to the failed bearings, sampling was completed on the current bearing inventories and all bearings were found to meet specifications.

The Hypothesis:

With all components meeting design specifications, no signs of external contamination, and inadequate lubrication seemingly ruled out, the team turned towards the one observation that could not be explained.

Despite the numerous failed axle hubs on new production, every single failure was occurring on the curb side of the axle. If a product defect were causing failures in the field, this affinity to one side of the axle would not occur. Instead the failures should exhibit a random pattern among the assembly locations.

With renewed focus on the curb side of the assembly line, the assembly and lubrication processes at the customer site were reviewed once again in greater detail.

The Solution:

Several days later after an in depth investigation of the lubrication portion of the assembly line, the customer was finally able to identify the root cause for the recent axle hub failures.

With the renewed focus on inadequate lubrication, it was discovered that the lubrication machinery used on the curb side of the assembly line was improperly modified in order to decrease the time for lubrication.

This modification was found to directly cause less lubrication to be applied to the curb side axle hubs. With less lubrication, the bearing components were not receiving ample lubrication in order to protect the bearing components and perform properly.

Once the machinery was returned to normal operating conditions, the curb side axle hubs were once again receiving a proper amount of lubrication during assembly. With the root cause corrected, the axle hub failures were eliminated.

Contact VNC Bearing today to find out how we can help you.