Making Female Spheres

[awemawson]

Not so much  'How do I?' as 'How do They?'

Prompted by my repairs to the steering ram on my Thwaites 4WD dumper, it prompts me to ask how the female half of a spherical bearing is made, and how do they put them together 

[Joules]

Feed em on chocolate   

[krv3000]

brill

[Lew_Merrick_PE]

Not so much  'How do I?' as 'How do They?'

Prompted by my repairs to the steering ram on my Thwaites 4WD dumper, it prompts me to ask how the female half of a spherical bearing is made, and how do they put them together

Heat the outer race and chill the inner race.  Heat being about 600°F.  Chill being liquid nitrogen.  Then, act speedily.

[Manxmodder]

To dismantle turn the inner sphere so the inner and outer bores are at 90 degrees plane from each other and there is usually a pocket or flat on one side of the outer where the inner ball can be extracted/inserted. Much the same way that the bearing insert fits into a pillow block assembly.....OZ.

[RobWilson]

The outer ring is split ,look close , they just snap together      ,,,,,,,,,,,,,but its an interesting point how are they made 



Rob

[modeldozer]

Most of these are made from sintred steel and are formed in a mould under pessure.  The outers normaly have a crack so the inner can be fitted.

Abraham

[awemawson]

Yes certainly the new ones have a single crack running in the bore direction.

[NeoTech]

Look att "Uni balls" and you can make something that replaces that and is serviceable.
With two halfs that is holding the center part and two outer screwed in rings.

Otherwise you can do spherical milling with a bit of a weird setup like this.


What you need to consider is offsetting it below the surface and go in with a smaller tool, then cutting half of the hemispherical "groove" on each side.
A form tool in a lathe could maybe work as well.

This how i did the first tests for this;


That resulted in a "receiver cup"


It really helps to make some drawings on either paper or in cad.

[awemawson]

Nice one Neo 

[Arbalist]

Yes indeed, nice one Neo. 

[micktoon]

Hi NeoTech , very interesting and nice set up plus job 
  Cheers Mick

[NeoTech]

you use the same setup for making spherical surfaces or make "large" parabols in a thin sheet, and at the same time make matching spherical surface..  drill a hole in the center of the parabol of those to pieces and voila.. airbearing. =)

[howsitwork?]

awesome set up and explanation.

I'm, currently looking at a much simple set up for turning internal spheres in wood, but the way I'm checking can only cut limited sizes or the overhang gets too big.