Cageless Roller Bearing

thingiverse

This is a simplified version of my cageless bearing that's much easier to assemble. Although it's not completely cageless since the rollers need to be constrained, it can be manufactured easily with 45° angled rollers at each end to contain them frictionlessly. This design serves as a proof of concept only. I used only 0.2 tolerance for the mounting aid, but more tolerances are needed and the print is currently in progress. UPDATE: Apparently, I should have added more spacing. The inside and outside fit over the rollers in the mounting plate, but they don't fit together because the pins are slightly pushed inward or outward. It's difficult to dial them in since it should be a press fit. If you've managed to dial it in, please let me know. UPDATE 2: I fixed an error where the tolerance was not added to the outer ring. After printing and measuring, I corrected the spacing accordingly, so in theory, it should fit better now. However, a deviation of 0.1195 in radius resulted in the roller formation collapsing. UPDATE 3: I noticed that when the bearing is loaded, the rollers at the bottom are pushed away, pushing the rollers above together. If this concept works, it might work best with a 45° roller angle since then the movement when the bearing isn't spinning won't cause the roller constellation to collapse. To print, flip 180 degrees. I used 6x14mm dowel pins as rollers. Unfortunately, the customizer can't load the attached libraries, so it doesn't work. Shortcut functions and other libraries are courtesy of OpenSCAD master parkinbot.