Designing a bearing cage

andreas_kurka

Hello everyone.

I just found this 3d printable bearing on thingyverse. I thought I'd give it a try, but unfortunatelly I don't have that size of steel balls. So I decided to quickly design my own version of it. But after around 6 hours I have to give up. I have no idea on how to design the bearing cage. My head revolved around the revolve feature too many times   by now.

Any ideas on how to design that? Any help greatly appreciated!

tim_hess427

Hi @andreas_kurka - I haven't tested this method, but here's how I would think about approaching the bearing cage. 

1. First, create just a single "ring" by either extruding a circular profile or using a revolve.
   
2. Model a single steel ball in position so that it intersects with the ring (but make sure the parts do not merge). 
3. Use the "circular pattern" feature to replicate your steel ball in a pattern around your ring with as many balls as you want. 
4. Use the "boolean" feature to subtract the balls from the ring. 
   
5. If you want to recreate the "cutout" between all the balls like the thingivers model has, you can repeat steps 2 through 4 with the shape of your cutout. 

I hope that helps a little bit!

bruce_williams

@andreas_kurka

Not sure where you are having problem.  Please share your document per the instructions here and it will be easier to help.

Revolve requires an axis and a closed sketch or face for profile.

I started the design here.  The first step was to import the mesh, then use that as reference to make the sketches.  

john_mcclary

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/17ed8cc618a401e2c2675331/w/e891548b7dbb0c5c203b7cef/e/ced12697feb16c22c12158ea

Try this

andreas_kurka

Wow, thanks for all of your replies. For now I used the boolean approach from Tim.

See here: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/51c090666affe0dfd9aa68d2/v/79d66fc6140f3e2d2aa7aedd/e/0cc17875ac5da461db01e42a