Application Notes
Evaluating the Roughness of Raceway Grooves in the Inner and Outer Rings of a Ball Bearing
Ball bearing
Application
Bearing balls roll at high speed through the raceway formed by grooves in the inner and outer rings of a ball bearing assembly. In quality control, it is important to accurately evaluate the roughness of both the balls and the grooves.
If a conventional microscope is used to evaluate roughness, the working distance of the objective lenses may be too short to allow clear focusing on the bottom of the grooves, which can prevent accurate measurement.
Solution
The LEXT OLS5000 laser scanning microscope enables clearly focused, 3D measurement of roughness on raceway grooves over long working distances.
LEXT OLS5000 product features
The LEXT OLS5000 microscope is equipped with dedicated long working distance objective lenses suitable for roughness measurement on grooves up to 6.5 mm deep.
Images
Bearing inner ring
Bearing outer ring (side view)
Bearing outer ring (cross-sectional view)
An example of roughness measurement on the groove of an inner ring
(long working distance 100X objective lens; 4x optical zoom)
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LEXT OLS5100
The LEXT™ OLS5100 laser scanning microscope combines exceptional accuracy and optical performance with smart tools that make the system easy to use. The tasks of precisely measuring shape and surface roughness at the submicron level are fast and efficient, simplifying your workflow and delivering high-quality data you can trust.