home made roller bearings

[darryl]

We discussed this a few weeks ago, with somebody bringing up the use of spiral wound rollers in an axle. Couple days ago while cleaning out Dads place, I came across some motorcycle cable sheath. Behold and lo, underneath the vinyl covering is a flat wound sheath, and it's fairly springy. I'm thinking that might be ideal for some applications where you might want to make your own bearing parts. You're not going to be able to make a long-lasting bearing for high speed applications using this 'technology', but it would be great for making your own low-profile machine skates for instance, or any other slow speed load-carrying application where you need to minimize rolling friction.

[krutch]

It would crush too easily. Those cable sheaths pinch and drag the inner cable when an outside pressure is applied. If any significant weight is applied the housing collapses. Or the spiral crimps and the housing distorts, rendering it useless in your application. This will happen even if the inner core is left in place.

[darryl]

Well, that would certainly make it useless in that application. I had thought about that, and I did figure that if you filled the center with a piece of music wire (a force fit) that it would eliminate the crushing problem.