Flange design with bearing housing

[HousTX89]

Hello,

I am a recently graduated engineer and my first project is to design a flange that couples a gear box to the back of an industrial saw machine. The flange has a shaft that runs through the middle of it which provides torque transmission from the gearbox to the main drive wheel on the back of the saw. My boss would like me to add a groove inside the flange to house a bearing. My question is, are there recommended procedures/standards when designing the space to hold a bearing inside a flange or some kind of book, website etc. that would give recommendations in the design of this component?

Thanks

 

[MikeHalloran]

Get some catalogs for mounted and unmounted bearings.
I prefer printed material, but PDFs are more easily acquired these days.
You specifically want the catalogs that would be very thick in printed form.
They contain an 'engineering' section.
Read every one from cover to cover.


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[Tmoose]

what Mike, said X 2

Too many ( more than 2, as a start) bearings on each shaft can cause huge problems, so requires careful evaluation.
The manufacturing tolerances recommended ( and required ) for bearing bore co-linearity can be crushingly tight for bearings without some internal self aligning capability

Then there is the selection of appropriate coupling device connecting two shafts.

 

[Jboggs]

Why does your boss want a bearing in there? What would it add? The reason I am asking is that if a shaft is already fully supported, adding another bearing on that shaft is just asking for trouble. The reason is that it im possible for all the bearings supporting the shaft to be in perfect alignment.

How are you connecting the driver shaft to the driven shaft? The most common arrangement within a flange drive type arrangement like this is to have a coupling inside the flange. That allows the driven shaft and the driver shaft to have a slight misalignment, which will alsways be there. You sure he said "bearing"? He might have said "coupling".

As another poster suggested, get your hands on some old Browning, Morse, Boston Gear, Dodge, or other power transmission catalogs (or websites if you must) and absorb the Engineering sections at the back of the book.

Check "

http://www.bsfinc.net/"

 

[geesamand]

The SKF catalogs do a nice job of describing bearing mounting methods and requirements. Usually the rotating part of the bearing is tightly clamped or shrink fitted to the assembly.

The others bring up a good point: mounting 3 bearings on a radial shaft will require exceptional accuracy between the bores or else the shaft will be forced to rotate around 3 misaligned bearings. Generally speaking all bearings are misaligned to some measurable amount, so two radial bearings is the limit. That commercial gearbox will almost certainly have two bearings already on the output shaft.