| 摘要 |
A bearing and bearing load maintaining device which provides the stiffness of a duplex set, that is, a hard preload when new, but which maintains the required internal load over an extended life to preserve alignment precision in spite of wear or differential thermal expansion. The latter is provided by a compliant spring preload configuration which takes effect only after the bearing begins to wear or otherwise unloads due to differential thermal expansion. In one embodiment, the present invention comprises a flanged bearing which applies a hard preload against an outer sleeve which in turn abuts a more conventional bearing. The outer sleeve is provided with at least one recess or shoulder at an end face. The bearing set is assembled with a spring such as a wave spring positioned in the recess or annular space at one end face of the outer sleeve. When the internal load becomes equal to the axial force developed by the spring, the force in the spring causes the outer bearing race to separate from the outer sleeve and the bearing set internal load is maintained by the spring.
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