Pillow Block Bearings are popular because of their highly calculated and balanced engineering design that has been successful in the industry for quite some time. Pillow Bearings come with straight forward design with little or no effort while installing and deliver high performance as well as durability. These Bearings are also known as Plummer Blocks yet there is a slight difference between these two. These Pillow Block Bearings are mostly used in less industrialized environments while Plummer Blocks are used where high performance and high load capacity is required.
Design
As these Bearings are used to support rotating shaft, they are made with cast steel or cast iron because of their strength and durability. In some cases, these Bearings come in a single piece while in some cases these bearings come in split able pieces. The mounting surface aka housing surface is used to mount the whole apparatus with a plain surface while the other element supports shaft and housing surface.
These Bearings do their job effectively and keep the outer ring of bearings stationary while providing moveable space to the inner ring. Amazingly there are no special skills needed to install this device because of their perfect constructions that makes it easier for users to mount the housing surface without any trouble.
Variations
As mentioned above, Pillow Block Bearings is quite different than Plummer Block, the later one is used in heavy applications that are mostly used in mining, constructions and heavy manufacturing. Split Bearings allow the shaft to split for various reasons like replacement.
Material
Pillow Block Bearings is usually made of aluminum that offers high loading carrying capacity and heat conductivity. On the other hand, pressed steel is used in low load carrying applications yet it offers high performance with precision. Stainless steel is used because of its ability of corrosion resistance.
Bearing Types
These Bearings have several different types of bearings that are used according to their need and application.
Plain Bearings
These are widely used in linear applications that need frictionless motion with high performance. This type of bearings are usually constructed with bronze, metal alloy or plastic based on the requirements. Metal bearings need proper lubrications to work efficiently and the same goes for bronze bearing too.
Ball Bearings
These are widely used to provide high load carrying capacity at high performance because of their frictionless motion that is made possible by set of balls between inner and outer ring. These balls are separated with the help of rib or cage that also places those balls properly.
Roller Bearings
These are suitable option for rotary motion application because they use cylinders or rollers between inner and outer rings. Roller Bearings have different types that come with different specifications, structure and applications.
Needle Roller Bearings
These are quite similar to roller bearings but they use smaller cylinder like rollers to separate inner and outer rings.