Hi, All,
I rarely work with bearings, other than car bearings when I was much, Much, MUCH younger. I have a pair of bearings (about 1 inch OD) on a shaft (about 5/16" OD). The bearings are in contact with each other, and there is only about a .032" gap between the first bearing and the gear at the end of the shaft. The gear is slightly larger than the bearing OD, so I can't support the bearings so I can press the shaft out. (See photo.) One or both of the bearings are bad. (This is part of the carriage transport on a Real Bull Mini-Lathe.)
My problem is that I can't figure out how to get the bearings off the shaft. At the suggestion of a friend, I tried making up a couple of 30° wedges and used my one-ton arbor press to try forcing them between the bearings. This didn't work at all, plus the wedges weren't hard and got dinged up pretty thoroughly. Since the bearings ARE bad, I'm now thinking of using a Dremel to cut off the outer races, and then scoring the inner races in the hopes of relieving the tension and somehow working them off. My concern is that it's almost like brain surgery to avoid nicking the gear shaft, which I will have to reuse.
I know many/most of you have a lot of experience with this sort of issue, and was hoping to get some advice. Any thoughts? Thanks for any input!
I rarely work with bearings, other than car bearings when I was much, Much, MUCH younger. I have a pair of bearings (about 1 inch OD) on a shaft (about 5/16" OD). The bearings are in contact with each other, and there is only about a .032" gap between the first bearing and the gear at the end of the shaft. The gear is slightly larger than the bearing OD, so I can't support the bearings so I can press the shaft out. (See photo.) One or both of the bearings are bad. (This is part of the carriage transport on a Real Bull Mini-Lathe.)
My problem is that I can't figure out how to get the bearings off the shaft. At the suggestion of a friend, I tried making up a couple of 30° wedges and used my one-ton arbor press to try forcing them between the bearings. This didn't work at all, plus the wedges weren't hard and got dinged up pretty thoroughly. Since the bearings ARE bad, I'm now thinking of using a Dremel to cut off the outer races, and then scoring the inner races in the hopes of relieving the tension and somehow working them off. My concern is that it's almost like brain surgery to avoid nicking the gear shaft, which I will have to reuse.
I know many/most of you have a lot of experience with this sort of issue, and was hoping to get some advice. Any thoughts? Thanks for any input!