| 摘要 |
A method and apparatus is disclosed whereby there is an improvement in the construction of the housing for the balls of a bearing. The benefit of this method of construction is that under certain loading forces, the ball cage, now termed a retaining disk, does not bind the balls. The retaining disk is designed with an elliptical hole that spaces the balls apart but allows them enough freedom to rotate without any binding. More concisely, the ball bearing includes an inner race and an outer race with a plurality of bearing balls movably retained therebetween. A split retaining ring, having upper and lower annular rings, forms a plurality of bearing ball housings. These ball housings include a substantially spherical cavity which is elongated in an arc, or a short linear path, about a rotational center line of the ball bearing. The cavity has slightly flattened surfaces in a plane normal to the bearing plane (formed by the entire ball bearing) thereby permitting the balls to linearly move in the elongated cavities. The annular rings are mounted together by rivets or other mounting mechanism. In a further embodiment, the annular rings are radially spaced apart from the inboard edge of the inner race when the outer race is fixed and the inner race moves with respect to the fixed outer race. In another embodiment, the outboard edge of the annular rings are spaced from the inboard edge of the outer race when the outer race moves as compared with the fixed inner race. Therefore, dependent upon which race is fixed (stationary), an engineer would use one type of annular ring or retaining ring or the other type of ring.
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