Tapered roller bearings to fit 100mm shaft

Tapered roller bearings come with a large variety of standard sizes to suit most applications, so just how many sizes are there ? We have more than 7,000 unique tapered roller bearing part numbers set up on our system. Of course, some are more popular than others but this gives a product designer such a large choice when creating a new product.

What should engineers consider when choosing a tapered roller bearing to use in a design ?

When creating a new product there are multiple things that a product design engineer should consider in terms of bearing selection.

• Firstly which bearing type do I need ? Tapered roller bearings for example are a good choice for handling both axial and radial loads simultaneously
• What loads do the bearings have to carry ?
• What speeds do the bearings have to operate at ?
• What space restrictions do I have in the application ?
• How readily available are the bearing options that I have?
• What are the costs of each of the bearing options available ?

These are all important questions and will help you to narrow down your tapered roller bearing selection.  Let’s say you need the bearing to suit a 100mm shaft and you cannot possibly change on that (sometimes you are always given some fixed parameters that you have to work with), well in our product range at the time of writing this article there are 21 different tapered roller bearings all that have a 100mm inner diameter size.

So what next ? well this depends on the product that you are designing. Does it have a high load requirement or is it more important to have something that’s cost effective and readily available ? The most common types of bearings in the list above are the old ISO 15 series bearings which start with a 3 and contain 5 numbers such as the 32020, 30220, 33220, 30320, 31320 and 32320. These parts have been in existence for longer so have therefore had more time to be taken up for use in applications and become more mainstream and therefore readily available. On the other hand the latest ISO 355 revisions include an expanded range of metric tapered roller bearings which are prefixed by a J. These haven’t had the time to become quite as popular yet but when you look at the product table you can immediately see that they offer some advantages. The JP series bearings for example like the JP10049A/JP10010 have much smaller overall dimensions. For an OEM this can be important as it means the designs can be more compact, carry less weight and be less costly. If producing and storing in bulk it also has storage benefits too as you need far less space to store 10,000 of these than you would storing 10,000 of the 32320 bearings. In 2022 with logistics space costs spiralling as well as energy and transport costs remaining high choosing a tapered roller bearing option that reduces the overall footprint is obviously highly advantageous.

How as an engineer do I know which tapered roller bearings are more readily available ?

Some manufacturers such as SKF produce a popular parts list within their catalogues or put a symbol next to the parts showing which are the popular series. Alternatively you can contact us to ask what the available options are or depending on your company you may already have an OEM account with one of the major bearing manufacturers and have a direct representative there who can advise on the availability.

How do I differentiate between the JP10049/JP10010 part numbers ?

You may have noticed from the product table that there are 4 bearings with identical basic dimensions as below

But the part numbers differ slightly, so what do all of these variants mean ? This is where you need to dig a little deeper into the tapered roller bearing manufacturers catalogue to find the subtle differences. In this case the A’s on the end of the part numbers refer to different chamfer sizes on the bearings so depending on how much of a leading chamfer you need on the part will depend on the chamfer and therefore part number that you need. From our experience, the JP10049A/JP10010 tapered roller bearing has already started to be used comprehensively in product design with engineers obviously seeing and being advised of the benefits of reducing bearing size without losing performance.

The manufacturers below are all using the JP10049A/JP10010 bearing in their products.

All of the companies above are tractor manufacturers, the obvious benefit to them of maintaining the same 100mm inner diameter but reducing the overall bearing size and weight is that reducing weight from the application and being able to pack the same performance into a smaller and lighter footprint allows for increased fuel efficiency. With profit levels in agriculture being squeezed and it’s viability being tested, tractor manufacturers are having to keep up with the general automotive market in improving fuel efficiency of their vehicles. Selecting the right bearings has a small but very important part to play in this and assuming that similar improvements are being made in other components in the tractor then you can see just how these cost savings and weight reductions would compound across the whole vehicle.

If you are designing a new product on a smaller scale and don’t have direct access to one of the larger bearing manufacturers then give us a call or email us to see how we, at SGL Bearings Ltd can help you to make the right bearing selection.