Selecting and buying the right bearings

Everyday, everywhere in the world machines are running to make our lives easier. And to keep all these machines running and rotating, they need good maintenance. But as a maintenance expert... how do you know which machines need maintaining? And just as important, what’s the right way to maintain them? 

You know the bearing is the heart of the machine. But every bearing has a certain service life potential. However, research has shown that, for various reasons, not every bearing achieves it. Important stages which have a major impact on a bearing service life can be recognised during the bearing’s lifecycle. These stages are selecting and buying a bearing, mounting, lubrication, alignment, basic condition monitoring and dismounting. The next 6 weeks SKF will take you through the six stages of the bearing life cycle. 

The stages in a bearing life cycle are extremely important for achieving the maximum service life of the bearing. By selecting the right bearing for the application, applying the right maintenance practices and using the correct tools, you can considerably extend your bearing’s service life, reduce energy consumption, increase plant productivity and efficiency and last but just as important, the health & safety environment will considerably improve by less accidents and thus absenteeism due to illness. 

Principles of rolling bearing selection

When selecting bearings for any purpose, ultimately you want to be certain of achieving the required level of equipment performance, and durability, at the lowest possible cost. There are key factors you must consider when determining the necessary specification for an application. To help you evaluate these key factors, we provide our recommended selection process, as well as supporting information and examples. For more information click here. 

Bearing selection process

When selecting bearings for any purpose, you need to be certain of achieving the required level of equipment performance – and at the lowest possible cost. Durability is also very important because the conditions in which your equipment is assembled, operated and maintained may not be precisely known and may, in fact, vary over time. 

Go to Bearing selection process

Bearing Select

Use our online bearing selection tool, SKF Bearing Select, which has a fully updated, clean and user-friendly interface. Calculation results can be obtained quickly and are presented back close to the input data. SKF Bearing Select has been designed to align with the steps in the Bearing Selection Process. 

Go to Bearing Select tool

Buy genuine SKF products

SKF Authenticate is an easy-to-use app that allows customers to send photos of SKF products to SKF to verify authenticity. SKF will analyze the photos and revert with a conclusion regarding the authenticity. So you prevent preliminary bearing failure by buying genuine SKF products.

Download SKF Authenticate App 

To be sure that you buy genuine SKF products, always go to your SKF Authorized Distributor

Quick performance evaluation of your bearing arrangements with SimPro Quick

SKF SimPro Quick is a single-shaft bearing simulation software that has been developed to quickly evaluate the design of bearing arrangements and their field performance, based on relevant application requirements and conditions. The tool aims to provide you with more SKF engineering knowledge and autonomy, in order to accelerate your design process and optimize your choice of bearings.

E-learning Bearing Basics

This e-learning course helps the delegate to be able to describe the three primary functions of a bearing, and to correctly identify the component parts of a standard bearing. The learner will also be able to list the most common bearing types and describe the main characteristics of each. You will also be able to explain eight factors that will affect the choice of bearing for a particular application. 

Get in touch with the team to learn more about the benefits of how to prevent premature bearing failure.