Small bearings are simply another name for miniature ball bearings. Miniature ball bearings are typically very small, smaller than an inch or two, or smaller than 20 millimeters under metric measurement standards

 

Miniature ball bearings are composed in a variety of parts, including an outer and inner ring, balls, retainers and snap rings. They may also have shields or seals, flanges and steel ball cages. Miniature ball bearings come in a number of different types. They can be radial ball bearings, designed for radial loads, which will be either deep groove or angular contact bearings, or they can be axial bearings, designed for thrust loads. They can have flanges for stability or no flanges. They can be shielded or open. Shielded small bearings offer additional protection in both directions, as they help prevent contamination into the bearing and also help prevent lubrication leakage from the bearing into the application.

 

Miniature ball bearings, or small bearings, are specially designed to reduce friction between moving parts in various industrial applications. Since many applications require large parts and may be subject to a limited amount of space, the reduced size of small bearings can be ideal.

There is a wide variety of applications for miniature ball bearings. Small bearings can be used for medical applications, in anything from dialysis machines to medical robotic devices. They may be used in office products such as check and money sorting machines, or in computer peripherals like hard drives.

 

It's not enough to know that you need small bearings for your applications. Ball bearings come in a wide variety of combinations, types and styles, and you will want the bearings that will provide the greatest efficiency for your applications. There are different materials, such as chrome and stainless steel, available. NMB small bearings are generally manufactured with DD400 stainless steel material. This reduces noise for applications that are noise sensitive and provides superior corrosion resistance and hardness. However, chrome material ball bearings are also available. There are the different types discussed above, open vs. shielded, flanged vs. not flanged, radial vs. axial load ball bearings. There are also different types of shields and seals to consider. Finally, there is the actual size of the bearing.

 

Bearings can be measured in inches or metrically in millimeters. There are three main dimensions along which bearings are measured. These are the bore, or inner diameter, the outer diameter, and the width. There are standard designations given to ball bearings to indicate their bore size. For the standard series bearing, a 00 designation indicates a 10mm bore, 01 indicates a 12 mm bore, 02 indicates a 15 mm bore, 03 indicates a 17 mm bore, and 04 indicates a 20 mm bore. For larger ball bearings, the measure of a standard series bore in millimeters is five times the numeric designation.