Race (bearing)

"V" groove raceways distribute the load evenly over the balls as they travel on four points of contact, creating a straight line rolling effect and decreasing the amount of friction created by a full contact round groove design.

In some applications the two races may be arranged on plates parallel to the plane of the balls, rather than on inner and outer sleeves.

Bearing casings are introduced to the grinding action via means of a transfer from the delivery system to a pair of infeed rollers, these infeed rollers are tapered to a certain angle so that the casings are driven forward until the regulating wheel and grinding wheel catch them and slow them to their grinding speed which can be altered by speed control of the regulating wheel.

Each casing exits the grinding zone onto a high speed conveyor that delivers them to whatever storage and/or inspection arrangement a manufacturer may have, inspection is also carried out by the operator of the centreless line, by checking finish appearance, diameter, squareness and roundness by use of a dial test indicator in varying configurations, size allowances are permitted but are extremely tight depending on the customers requirements and can vary plus or minus within micrometres of finish diameter, Sizes can be adjusted on all grinding stages via a compensation button which can be pushed to remove extra material in varying micrometre units, the grinding wheel can move away at the same compensation to make the casings bigger if so required if the casing size moves from the operators target, and as the grinding wheel wears.

Safety features include an emergency stop button which immediately moves the grinding wheel away from the ground rings on its revolutionary axis.

After the emergency stop is activated, the size of the workpiece must be re-established before the line can be reactivated into production mode.