Subject: Re: old toy

From: [email-masked] (ron ginger)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1993 12:25:26 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Joe Landau) writes:

|>In my attempt to use my old LeBlond mill, I'm trying to restore the vertical
|>head.  It had a paired set of angular contact ball bearings, to handle
|>thrust as well as radial load.  They had failed--pitted, and would hardly
|>spin. My local bearing distributor has new ones, class 7 precision
|>bearings, for $450 a pair. If I can do without the precision, they are only
|>(ha!) $89 each.  McM lists ordinary radial bearings in that size for $16 ea.,
|>with "deep grooves".  So I ordered those, figuring I'd try it, and see what
|>happened. 
|>
|>any opinions?
|>
|>--Joe

If you read the specs on even the lowest level of ball bearings, you find
they are amazingly close tolerances. Unless you plan to do some kind of
super precision work to micron tolerances, I bet the common bearings are
fine. 

In any case, for a machine with angular contact bearings it will be far more
important that they be set to proper pre-load. YOu can clearly get any possible
slop out by correct adjustment. Likewise even the high precison bearings
would be useless if not setup properly.

Plain radial bearings may not be a good substitute, since they cant be 
pre-loaded to remove play. Check the bearing house for angular contact bearings,
but of lower class.

ron ginger