Angular Runout Test Setup for High-Precision Ball Bearings

摘要

Ball bearing runout error is generally a limiting factor for the precision of pointing systems and astronomical instruments, A test setup was developed to optically measure the angular runout of a series of off-the-shelf duplex angular contact bearing pairs each having the same cross-section, but different ABEC ratings and manufacturers. A total of 6 bearing sets ranging from ABEC 3 to ABEC 7 were tested. The repeatable. synchronous runout generally improved with higher ABEC quality bearings as expected, although occasionally significant variation were observed with bearings of the same ABEC ratings. Less significant differences were observed for non-repeatable runout as a function of ABEC quality rating. A major finding is that strictly relying strictly on ABEC rating may be insufficient for applications where bearing runout plays an important role.