Cam Followers Supporting Transportation and Industrial Applications
The biggest challenge for assembly lines is ensuring lines operate without unplanned interruption. Maintenance is one way of keeping a line moving. Another is ensuring assembly lines use high-quality components, from the belt to the bearings.
About Assembly Lines
Production lines generally feature parts moved on a platform (or cart) along a track. A motorized pulley system drives the line. To assemble the item, skilled technicians (or in some cases, automated machines) perform tasks at various stages. Each task must be completed in a timely manner before moving on to the next line.
Like any piece of equipment, assembly lines are made up of many components. The lines and their components require maintenance to ensure reliable operation. Because the line moves products continuously, the less maintenance needed, the better. Scheduled maintenance keeps the line moving. But unscheduled maintenance leads to delays, resulting in costly downtime for the factory.
Cam Follower Bearings
Many components keep an assembly line moving. Cam followers are roller bearings that support drag lines on an assembly line. They help transfer items traveling in a linear motion. Like any equipment, cam followers are expected to perform at peak production levels. Cam followers have a thick outer ring cross-section. This thick outer ring gives the cam follower the carrying capacity to roll a large item on a steel track from one station to another.
Vertical body assembly line
Cam follower supporting cart on linear track
The compact size of cam followers gives design engineers options when an application has limited space. High dynamic and static load ratings are ideal for supporting heavy loads.
Not all cam followers are alike. Two types of cam followers give users features and options to accommodate specific application needs. Yoke type cam followers require a customer-supplied shaft or pinto support the load. Thread stud-type cam followers are secured to a blind hole with a hex nut.
Yoke cam follower with pin in clevis installation
Stud type cam follower secured by hex nut
End users will get the best performance out of their cam followers for a particular application through proper design and size selection. Key factors affecting performance include applied load, speed, accessibility and environment. Other features also help increase a cam follower's useful life, including:
- Grease capacity
- Heat treat process
- Re-lube access
- Overall finish
McGill® Camrol Bearings
You can find McGill bearings and cam followers in elevator shafts, forklifts, scissor lifts, gantry systems, telescoping ladders and conveyors as well as many other applications.
Yoke type cam followers in Gantry system
Stud type cam followers in fork lift application
McGill bearings and cam followers are a robust, off-the-shelf selection of products, such as the CAMROL® roller bearing, plus we routinely supply custom-designed units. Made-to-order parts include options like:
- Dimensional changes to outer ring rollers;
- Bonded polymer tire to the O.D.;
- Differing lengths for fully threaded or unthreaded studs;
- Higher precision;
- Grease changes;
- Re-lube access; and
- Other custom options.
The application engineers at Regal Rexnord regularly work with customers to meet their needs.
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Additional Resources
John Mella
John Mella is an application engineer with the Regal Rexnord bearings group since 2006. He supports the inside and outside sales as well as distributors providing technical assistance with unmounted and mounted product lines. His industry knowledge and years of hands-on bearing experience helped provide OEM’s and end-users with application review, troubleshooting, training and inspection reports. He’s been involved in test lab supervision with operation responsibilities and test machine set up in support of new product development.