Oiling High speed bearings

[tinker]

Does anyone know of ways to lubricate high speed bearings ( 50,000 to 110,000 RPM)? The bearings are small .125 ID x .3125 OD. The system is in a dirty environment and I plan on misting with oil and purge an area outside the oil system with air to keep the bearings clean and alive.
Does somebody know of a speacilist that designs bearing/oil systems?
Thanks
Blessings to you in Christ
Tim

 

[butelja]

Oil mist lubrication is pretty much the best way to go for any rolling element bearing, and is the only way to go as the speed (d*N) is pushed to the limits. Heinz Bloch has written several good equipment reliability books that address oil mist and other "best practices" as they relate to the refinery and hydrocarbon process industry. One of the best reference books available on the subject is at the following link:

http://www.pearsonptg.com/book_detail/0,3771,0139752102,00.html

You may want to check with companies such as Trico, Alemite, Oilrite, etc. for the mist generation and classification hardware.

 

[Texaco]

Back in the late 1930's, the fibers industry was having trouble with their high speed spindles. Grease would not work and liquid oil ran too hot. To solve the problem, Sweeden invented oil mist. Oil mist didn't make it to the USA until the mid 60's but is now used in literally tens of thousands of bearings. Since oil mist functions at 20" of water pressure, the bearing cavity is pressurized excluding contaminants. These systems are available from Lubrications Systems Co. in Houston.

 

[unclesyd]

We ran some very high speed bearings (60,000 RPM) of about your size on about 240 positions. The lubrication of the bearings was the biggest problem. Bearings of this caliber can not be tend to by the average mechanic. We lost I don’t know how many bearings from mishandling, over lube, under lube, and the wrong lube. We ended up using a lubricant from Germany that we applied when the part was off the machine about every 200 hrs of operation . I’m sorry I don’t have the name of the oil. We were dissuaded in using a mist system on these bearings.

Our larger spindles lubricated with equipment from:

http://www.lubriquip.com/

Our other high speed spindles were mainly Pope Spindles or in house design and were lubricated with equipment from:

http://www.vogel-lube.com/website.nsf/Brochures?OpenView

 

[EnglishMuffin]

These days, oil mist has mostly been supplanted by oil-air for critical high speed bearing lube situations. Both methods tend to prevent ingress of contaminants, but much smaller and more precisely controlled amounts of oil are possible with oil-air, in which very finely metered quantities of oil are transported down the walls of a supply tube by a high pressure air stream. Vogel makes such systems, but SKF have one that meters much smaller quantities, which might work for such small bearings. However, since you appear to be considering a separate air exclusion system, you would probably be better off using grease for such small bearings - contact Kluber for example.