Thrust Ball Bearings
Balls run between flat or grooved washers rather than between rings, carrying load along the shaft axis and nothing across it. Radial load must be taken elsewhere, and a separate radial bearing always sits in the same assembly. SES holds the range as an authorised SKF distributor, covering bore range About 10 mm to 500 mm; designs Single direction (511, 512, 513, 514) and double direction (522, 523); washer forms Flat seating or sphered seating with seating ring; cages Pressed steel or machined brass. Executions include single direction thrust ball bearings, double direction thrust ball bearings, sphered housing washer execution, with seating ring, among others. It is specified most often into vertical pump and mixer shafts carrying rotor weight and machine tool tailstock and quill assemblies. Every part is genuine SKF through official channels, with designation, specification and options confirmed against your duty before it ships — supplied from Kolkata and our branch network, with breakdown cover that does not sit in an inbox.
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From integrated steel plants to power utilities and EPC majors — the works that cannot afford a counterfeit part specify through SES.
Load
Axial only, no radial capacity
Directions
Single or double acting by design
Speed
Limited, centrifugal force on the ball set
Minimum load
Required at all times to avoid skidding
Where it runs.
You will find Thrust Ball Bearings in the parts of a plant where this particular duty actually occurs. In practice that means vertical pump and mixer shafts carrying rotor weight, machine tool tailstock and quill assemblies, crane hook blocks and swivel joints, and equally screw jack and lifting spindle assemblies, turntables and light rotary index tables, valve actuator and damper drive stems. What links them is the duty rather than the machine name — load: Axial only, no radial capacity. If your installation is not on that list it matters less than you would think: the operating condition decides the specification. Send us the load, the speed, the running temperature and the environment it runs in, and we will match it to the right execution in the SKF range and confirm what is in stock.
Specify it against the duty.
Specification here follows the operating condition, not the catalogue. Thrust acts in one direction only under all running conditions — A single direction bearing with a shaft and a housing washer. A double direction unit here adds width and cost for nothing. Thrust reverses in service, for example on a reversing lifting screw — A double direction bearing with a central shaft washer, so both directions run on ground raceways rather than on a face abutment. The supporting face cannot be machined square to the shaft — A version with a sphered housing washer and a matching seating ring, otherwise the ball load concentrates on one arc of the washer. Where two of those apply at once, specify for the harsher of the two — under-specifying is what puts the part back on the bench a month later. Send us the duty and we will confirm the execution.
Ordering this from SES.
Thrust ball bearings need a minimum axial load at all times. A vertical shaft that unloads at idle will skid the balls and smear the washer faces long before anything approaching a fatigue limit is reached.