Cageless, Multilayered, Full Complement Radial Roller Bearing

Last crawled date: 1 year, 10 months ago

First of several different rolling element bearing concepts I came up with back in late 2013 - early 2014.

The principal innovative aspect of this bearing design is that even though the bearing is full complement, there is no sliding contact between consecutive rollers within the same row or layer of rolling elements.

Nor are the rollers inside the bearing being kept apart by a single, common cage which they would all rub against rather than each other.

This is due to the use of more than just one row of rolling elements. More specifically, 3 inter-meshed layers of rollers are used: an inner and outer layer and an intermediary, separating layer – which acts as a sort of load bearing rolling cage and keeps consecutive rolling elements in the other two layers from touching each other.

It is necessary to use an odd number of layers of rollers because if an even number of rows of rollers were used they would actually attempt to convey rotation from the bearing's inner race to its outer one (or the other way around), which would work against the purpose and role of the bearing of enabling easy, low friction (or other resistance) rotation of one shaft or other component in relation to another.

Using just two layers would mean that spinning the bearing would require and cause the rolling elements to actually travel in the opposite direction at a proportionally impractically high rate of speed.

Because of this the bearing has to have an odd number of layers of rollers. And using just one row of rolling elements would have been no different than regular bearings in ubiquitous use today, which exhibit sliding contact either between consecutive rolling elements or between these and a non-load bearing cage which keeps them separated.

The way the bearing is designed, the middle layer of rollers separates and prevents sliding contact between any two consecutive rollers in either the 1st and 3rd/last layer, acting as a sort of rolling cage analogous to the sliding cage in a regular roller bearing, which has just one row of rollers.

Conversely, consecutive rolling elements in the middle layer are themselves kept apart by rollers in the inner (1st) and outer (3rd) layers.

The purpose of the 'rolling cage' middle layer isn't just to keep consecutive rolling elements in the other two rows separate. It is also load bearing, as it conveys the load the bearing is supporting from its inner layer of rollers to its outer one.

Other envisaged and expected benefits of this bearing concept are that it should automatically and inherently accommodate rolling elements of slightly different radii occurring as a result of manufacturing tolerances, should inherently and implicitly balance load evenly across its rolling elements (despite possible unevenness in roller diameter as a result of manufacturing tolerances) and (I believe) it should also be self-centring.

I did attempt to submit the idea to various corporations which operate in the fields of mechanical engineering, machine, vehicle or device manufacturing or the manufacturing of components thereof.

I'm fairly sure I submitted detailed documentation outlining the concept to at least Bosch and the Schaeffler Group but the idea didn't seem to garner any attention or interest from any of the companies I tried conveying it to. The design has never been patented by myself and I was not demanding compensation in exchange for it, only asked to possibly be considered for hiring or reimbursed collaboration. Unfortunately, that did not come to pass.

Perhaps the design is fundamentally flawed or unavoidably impractical and therefore worthless and I just didn't realise this myself, not being trained or formally educated in mechanical engineering or any other field of engineering.