I have been in contact with a company that has been making high precision bearings for a lot of different uses. I originally talked to them when silverfish was still around but figured I would bring the opportunity here.
This was copied from an email that the representative has I have been speaking with said. Originally was looking at it as getting them for my custom boards but figured I would open it up to anyone interested.
Zealous bearings have a precision rating of A0, while our precision rating is A3
We offer a TECAPEEK cage for our current 608 bearings which is a fiberglass reinforced cage.
The description of the Zealous bearings on the link you provided does not mention anything about the cage material. This is why the TECAPEEK cage
We also have two options for the 608’s—Steel
To be honest I’m not sure they actually would make a huge game changing difference it the eskate world. They would more likely make a difference in the push skating world because higher precision and the peek cage. Add a nice lubricant and you have a bearing that will spin for a long time.
These are true abec3 bearings not the Chinese abec 9 bearings that are actually zero or less
What Eskate needs from its bearings it turns out is simple endurance.
People here put down the miles on their setups that are almost unbelievable.
The other thing I think is for the bearings to be fail safe. For that a Fiber re-enforced cage might not be a bad idea. I have no idea if thats common or not.
How do they handle saltwater? 100 miles of saltwater? Is the failure mode “slowly getting hard to turn” or “ball exploding and abrupt stoppage”?
Because if a bearing checked off all the boxes except “balls exploding”, that’d be a “Shut up and take my money” item
The ceramic ones seem really good until you experience a failure…
The idea is that we need real innovation where the grease type is not the only thing between them and failure. Because enough miles will cut through ANY grease type. What about making the ball from something that is inert to saltwater? Something that doesn’t explode under duress like ceramic does?
How do car bearings deal with this? This is apparently a solved problem already, we just need to apply it to esk8.
What you need for your saltwater situation is a hollow axle with positive pressure system to deliver dry air through your bearings and keep moist sea air out.
It’s when it snows and they throw salt all over the street, then the snow melts. You’re rolling through a street covered in dirty black brine half of the year.
Cars don’t have that – and their bearings aren’t exploding – so we are missing something here…
I’m not sure what other companies use for ceramics but these are silicone nitride which are used in the automobile industry and have been used by NASA. The company that I have been in contact with has been doing business with companies that need higher performance bearings than the needs of skaters.
Skate bearing companies like to use light seals because they free-spin better, and the self proclaimed skaterbois like to see their wheels spin longer than other skaterbois setups.
Essentially the bearing is the only weak part left – I know how to brine-proof the rest of the esk8. Except the bearings in the motors and wheels, which just need to be replaced periodically.
Suspension for one thing.
I guarantee a car driving w/o suspension would wreck its bearings fairly quickly.
Also I think scale is working in cars favor here.
How small of a defect will stop a tiny skate bearing ball from rolling? how man micrometers of wear before there’s dangerous slop?
Also the fact that cars don’t really care at all about how much seal drag or grease drag there is, and skaters are resistant to both those things.
I’m with @TowerCrisis here. It’s the contact-seal that is the key to longevity. HCH bearings are my personal favorite atm. Double lip contact nitrile seals, abec 3 tolerance and pretty damn cheap on Ebay. Got em in my motors, wheels, and as idlers
Those are not true abec 3 bearings though China will print anything on the bearings to sell them most skate bearings are not abec rated because the precision is so low
