Diagnostic System for Ball Bearing Quality Control

This paper describes the test and construction of a bearing analyzer which employs the High Frequency Resonance Technique (HFRT) for fault detection and identification. The analyzer consists of a mechanical console on which the test bearing is mounted, loaded, and brought up to speed, and an electronic console which receives bearing vibrations via an accelerometer mounted on the bearing retainer, and processes same to provide a digital unit readout indicative of bearing condition.

Preliminary testing indicates that the bearing analyzer as hereby presented can distinguish between “good” and “bad” ball bearings. The results obtained on the bearing analyzer were found to be in excellent agreement with those obtained through manual inspection techniques. Further testing and evaluation, however, is necessary before the analyzer can be fully qualified as an inspection tool. Tests are presently in process at CCAD.