Sleeve vs. Ball Bearings - Short 127
HVAC School - For Techs, By Techs
Bryan Orr
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 31 August 2021
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today's short podcast, Bryan explains the differences between sleeve and ball bearings. Techs often make some avoidable mistakes because they either don't know the difference between the two or don't notice the bearing type on their equipment.
On a basic sensory level, ball bearings tend to be louder than sleeve bearings. So, if you replace a sleeve bearing motor with a ball bearing motor, then excess noise may not indicate any problems after all. Lubrication is usually more consistent with ball bearings; those bearings have a far smaller contact area than sleeve bearings.
Sleeve bearings don't usually have the best longevity; they have a larger contact area and can burn out quickly, so they are more common on smaller equipment where they will experience less intense axial forces. Those sleeve bearings also aren't as effective as ball bearings in variable-speed equipment. When techs put in a motor speed control and don't pay attention to the bearing type, they may end up burning up the motor if it has sleeve bearings.
To determine which type of bearings your equipment should use, you can take note of a few different things. Ask yourself if there are motor speed controls or any sort of motor speed variability. When the answer is yes, you'll be better off using ball bearings. If longevity is a concern, then ball bearings are almost always the ideal choice.
If nuisance noise and inexpensiveness are greater issues than longevity, then you'll be better off replacing a sleeve bearing motor with another sleeve bearing motor than a ball bearing motor.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, this is the HVAC School Podcast. I'm Brian. This is a short episode. |
| 0:08.0 | We're in we are going to talk about two of the most common types of bearings that we run into in motors in our trade. But before we do that, we want to thank our sponsors. |
| 0:19.0 | Refrigeration Technologies at refriggedech.com. carrier.com. |
| 0:26.5 | Big thanks to Zoa and Haven I-A-Q, the measurement solution for I-A-Q problems for both contractors and customers to better |
| 0:36.2 | diagnose these issues. Go to haven IAC.com. |
| 0:41.8 | Also need to thank Mitsubishi Electric. Go to Mitsubishi Comfort |
| 0:46.8 | to find out the full line of products. We often will call them duckless product but, Mitsubishi's making a lot of really great |
| 0:54.0 | ducked in mini splits nowadays. Some of them low static, some of the medium static, their product |
| 0:59.1 | line is just enormous. They have a really great grouping of products that you can do many different things |
| 1:03.5 | and many different applications. |
| 1:05.4 | If you haven't taken a look at Mitsubishi in quite a while, go to Mitsubishi Comfort. |
| 1:10.0 | Come and find out more. All right, so two different types of bearings, sleeve |
| 1:15.8 | bearings and ball bearings and it's something that texts don't often pay attention |
| 1:20.4 | to. There's not a whole lot to cover here but it is important to notice which attention to |
| 1:23.4 | notice which is which and one of the most common things that come into play here is |
| 1:30.2 | ball bearings tend to be louder they They don't have to be. There are certain types of ball bearing |
| 1:35.8 | design specifically preloaded ball bearings that can have low noise, but they do tend to run |
| 1:42.4 | a little noisier. It's hard to describe the noise but |
| 1:44.8 | there's definitely more of just an abrasive sound with ball bearings and so if you replace a |
| 1:49.6 | sleeve bearing motor with a ball bearing motor you are going to notice generally that it's |
| 1:53.3 | noisier and so in cases where that's a problem then I would suggest not doing that. |
| 1:58.0 | The other thing with sleeve bearings versus ball bearings is sleeve bearings just tend not to last as long. |
... |
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