If you’ve visited our blog before and explored our content, you’ll know that bearings serve to reduce friction and allow for smooth, effortless, efficient and reliable rotation. This cuts down on energy consumption and improves performance for any number of components. This alone is the single most important function of bearings, however, there are so many different types. Bearing design is a very complex science. In this post, I’ll give you an overview of the bearings used in everyday devices and explain how to identify them. What are bearings? Bearings come in two types: ball bearings and roller bearings. The former is made from small metal balls arrays, held apart by a cage, which allows for free rotation around the bearing’s central axle. Roller bearings, on the other hand, have cylindrical outer...