UCP205 Bearings - Manufacturer comparison

Firstly, if you have come here wanting to buy a UCP205 bearing online then follow this link. This page contains information about the bearing but isn’t the product page for it.

Here, we’re going to be looking at the differences between bearing unit manufacturers for the same item.

The manufacturers that we are going to look at today are SKF, NTN, RHP, FAG and Koyo who are all premium OEM bearing manufacturers and we’re going to look at the part number UCP205 and see whether there are any differences between the manufacturers.

UCP205 Part numbering

To begin with, let’s look at the part numbering system used.

In the bearing industry this item is commonly known as a UCP205 which comes from the fact that the bearing is made up of a P205 cast iron housing and a UC205 insert bearing. You then join the letters together with the insert letters going first and then follow it with the housing letters and then the number series.

Not every manufacturer calls the part the same thing, it’s not universally standard although you will find most manufacturers do follow a similar part numbering system. In the table below you can see the part numbers for some major manufacturers for this bearing

You can clearly see that SKF just add a space after the insert and housing types before they put the part number. NTN add a D1 onto the end of their part number. Bearing suffixes are common amongst all manufacturers as they identify specific features about the bearing. On an NTN bearing whenever there is a D1 at the end of the part number it means that the bearing can be lubricated, essentially for the UCP205 bearing this means that their bearing comes with a grease nipple and lubrication groove to allow you to regrease the bearing as part of its maintenance.
RHP here you can see are the wild card amongst the list and don’t follow the same part numbering system. The NP25 is part of RHP’s self-lube bearing range and they use a different standard for their housings and inserts. The housing is NP3, as they list their housings in castings groups and the insert bearing is a 1025-25G, the 25 denoting the inner diameter of the insert and the G denoting that it’s greaseable and we’re back to normality with the FAG and Koyo variants who both use the standard part numbering format.

So what else is different about the UCP205 bearing between these manufacturers ? Well you might think that they should all weigh the same because they are meant to be the same part. That isn’t however the case.

UCP205 Mass

The table below shows the mass catalogued from each of the manufacturer’s. As you can see there is quite a spread in terms of the mass between different manufacturers. The mass for the RHP NP25 bearing is the lowest and the FAG UCP205 bearing is the highest.

Does this mean that a RHP NP25 bearing is inferior to all of the other bearings because it weighs less ? That’s not really how bearings work. There are many more important factors at play including the precision level and finish of the component parts and the quality of the materials that they are manufactured from. In fact, RHP have one of the best reputations in the world for their bearing unit quality and their self-lube range is recognized globally. They are trusted globally amongst OEM’s and are often the first choice when it comes to bearing unit or pillow block selection. With the catalogued mass it’s quite feasible that the catalogue mass are computer generated rather than being actually weighed from a real component. Alternatively it’s possible that some manufacturers calculate their mass without packaging and some manufacturers calculate their weight with packaging. What we’re saying is take the catalogued mass with a pinch of salt, especially amongst the premium manufacturers. There are cheap variations of these bearings on the market where the production costs are reduced by taking weight out of the housing to save the casting cost but these tend to be lower end, quality products and it’s not something that is worthwhile to the reputation of the brands featured on this page.

UCP205 Dimensions

As you can see from the table above, the critical shaft size is the same for all variants of the UCP205 with some minor differences in other dimensions. In some bearing units these variances between manufacturers can be larger and could cause fitment issues. For example, if you are currently using a Koyo UCP205 and you have a restriction on the height. Maybe the housing only just slots into the required space. You might then have a problem fitting the RHP NP25 or the FAG UCP205 as replacements as these are 1mm taller overall than the Koyo variant. It’s therefore always the best to check what constraints you have before replacing your bearing with an alternative brand, particularly when it involves cast items as cast parts usually have large production tolerance allowances as machining the cast surface would add additional production cost.

As we develop the site further we will look to put the UCP205 bearings from each of the manufacturers on accelerated bench tests at various loads and speeds so that we can truly see whose bearings outperform the others. 

We hope that you have found this information useful. If you think it would be beneficial for us to write on another bearing related topic then please contact us and we will add it to our workflow. We are keen to make sure that we become a knowledge resource for all things bearing related and bridge that gap of requiring industry experience to navigate the minefield that is bearings.