Ok mechanical engineers, tell me how many years does a man have to crank that music box until that kind of a "ruined" bearing actually fails and music box stops working? A century...? ;D
For you skaters out there, there's orders of magnitude more rotational friction from the rolling compression of your polyurethane wheels than there is in the viscous fluid movement of the grease in your bearings and the slight touch of the rubber seals. And that is smaller yet than the friction of the balls crushing silicates in the raceways as your really cool skate oil attracts dust and becomes a lapping compound. Your bearings will last a hundred times longer if you leave the grease in them. The friction is psychological. Unless your goal is to have the wheel that spins in the air longer than your buddies, save your bearings by keeping them packed with a lithium soap wheel bearing grease.
I think you're wrong. If i leave the grease in i can do a spin test that ends at a halfway decent minute and a half. If i skate them for 15 minutes clean the bearings amd use my "cool bearing lube" it can go for up to a 5 minute spin. You aren't a skater so don't try to tell us what is good or not good.
+Zach Krantz look free spin means nothing, this is something the "skater" doesnt understand because he's not an engineer, bearings work the same whether its for skating or for a piece of machinery and trust me the ones being paid 100k up to use and design bearings know more than some 14 year old with wd 40.
Actually, it's already gone viral for that reason. But I wouldn't change the name since it really isn't just for fidget spinners. However, good idea so I just added fidget spinners to the video description and tags. It has worked for some people.
You want to remove the grease from your skateboard bearings if they have any actually. You just need to replace that grease with a high-speed lubricant. I use liquid bearing or bones speed cream. Both are very quality thin lubricants. (liquid bearing is much cheaper though and its the same thing.) When it comes down to it. It's all about maintenance. After every ride on your longboard or skateboard, you want to wipe clean the outside of your bearings so less of a chance all that gunk will get inside of them. No matter what some will get inside though and that is why, depending on how many miles a month you put on your longboard you will want to open them up and clean them out. I put about 70 - 90 miles a month on my longboard on average. Sometimes much more if I have someone to go out cruising with. I ride every night. You can buy or make your own bearing cleaner kit. I make my own, it's easy, google it. I use 91% or higher isopropyl alcohol to rinse the bearings rather than water. And I highly recommend you do as well as you don't want to tarnish the track of your bearing its best you dont use water and if you must, use a hairdyer or a compressed air blower of some sort to dry them 100% And do it right away. Certain bearings use steel that is very high in carbon and will literally tarnish within minutes. Any sort of tarnish at all will slow you down ever so slightly and once the bearings start to tarnish the next thing from there is rust. If you do happen to go through water or get stuck in rain. Be sure to open up and either lube the crap out of and spin your bearings ASAP and clean / lube them soon as you have acess to what is needed to do so. Please do not stress too much over this though as in don't let it ruin your day, thinking your bearings are tarnishing. If you have been keeping up with matanince you should have more than enough lube in there to withstand repelling a little water for a short moment. And thankfully bearings are not too expensive these days. I remember for a good set of bearings you were looking at $70 bucks. You can get the best there is for 20 bucks and for 30 you can get the bearings with built in speed washers and spacers (Bones Red Race bearings is what I use) They are the best I have used so far. Don't fall for the swiss and ceramic nonsene they are made in china and even if they are swiss made, it doesn't make them spin faster or longer lol. The ceramic is coated in steel anyway... The only difference that would come from it is heat and trust me if you are skateboarding you are not even close to coming anywhere near max ABEC 7 heat tolerances. Let alone Abec 9 or even better Bones Reds that are made for skateboarding and dont even use the ABEC system as it doesn't apply to skateboard bearings. Also, don't use WD40. If that is all you have then sure it's better then water but the best thing you can do is use 91% or higher isopropyl alcohol. If it is anything less than 91% I wouldnt use it. With 91% or higher, you don't have to worry about tarnishing or blow-drying the bearings afterward as it wil all evaporate. And if you are going to use citrus cleaner (that is the usual stuff that comes with skateboard cleaning kits.) Be sure to immediately after taking them out of the citrus solution and shaking most of it off, rinse them in 91% alcohol. Because if that stuff is left on the bearings it can do the same damage as water if not more. If you have made it through this to the end of this comment, congratz I hope I could help you learn something. If you think I did well please give me an upvote. If you think I did poorly please comment as to why. I would like to learn from my mistakes and I would like to know if I am spreading the wrong infomation. Thank you!
Have you looked into getting your parts of your board coated in tungsten disulfide? There are a couple of example videos on RU-vid showing how slick the material is. I add it to my gun greases and oils. Back to the videos, there's a video of someone free spinning skateboard wheels (forgive me if my terminology is incorrect, as I know very little about skateboarding), one side is not coated in tungsten disulfide and the other side is. There is much less friction on the one with the special coating. I could see where this application would not only reduce wear but also make your riding smoother. I'd you're interested let me know and I'll send you links. I just found the video. In the RU-vid search bar type "tungsten disulfide truck spin" and the video should be at the top. A page called Applied Tungstenite posted it.
+Harvie Depends on what you need it for. For my electrostatic motor it was just what I needed. The 2nd half of the video is to explain why you might not want to do this.
+RimstarOrg surely. i've been looking at it from skateboard bearing maintenance perspective. electrostatic motor sounds more like something of laboratory experiment, where durability is not real concern. anyway, if there's somebody that is going to use the bearings for skating, this is like worst thing you can do except for putting sand in the bearing :-)
In my early years (1990's), I raced R/C buggies on an indoor dirt track. Pulling the plastic seals was the first thing we all did with a new set of bearings. We used W-40 to blow out most of the grease. Then we would fill an empty oil bottle with a needle tip. I would fill the bottle with Marvel Mystery Oil. It's a very light oil that gave just enough lubricant to make the bearings spin for minutes. At least for the entire length of this video. Of course this require cleaning and re-oiling every race, but that's what we had to do to cut that 10 seconds off our lap times. We also notice our electric motors batteries ran much cooler at the end of the race. It prolonged the life of both the motor and batteries.
You just saved me $25 and a trip to...wherever these can be purchased. I ordered 20 bearings from Amazon and my son said they weren’t spinning fast enough for his science project. Thank you!
Accidentally ordered the wrong kind of bearing and this helped me convert it into a free spinning like I needed, thanks! I didn't have any paint thinner, but a quick 2 second dunk into gasoline cleaned it up extremely well.
Get some tungsten disulfide powder and add some to rubbing alcohol. Spray a liberal amount of the mixture to your dry bearings then once it evaporates it should leave a very dry but slick surface. I would think it would spin even more freely.
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Josh Baldwin Hi Josh, I think you'd still need a lubricant of some kind with skateboard wheels. There's a lot of weight on those bearings and with the metal balls against metal they'd get damaged. The lubricant gets between them and prevents that. I see this as more useful for things like electrostatic motors where there's almost no weight.
This is a fine example of doing what's appropriate for your intended use. Even without using graphite lubricant this is fine. You're not going to much affect the life of the bearings by using them in a virtually zero load low RPM demonstration motor. In fact, once you're done using them for that, you can re-pack them with grease, throw the sheilds back on, and they'd be good as new. And in terms of skateboards, the instant you land your first Ollie you've already done more damage to the bearings than I'm sure these would have in entirety of the time these were used in the motor.
@@notyouraverage1saiah660 take a 5/8 dowel rod put in drill, take bearing and put it at the end, grab the outer ring of the bearing with pliers or something and spin the drill keeping the outer ring static while the center spins.
Follow up - I did indeed clean the grease out of the MANY bearings in my invention and YOU DID save my invention! The bearings are spinning like crazy and I couldn't be happier! The only thing I'm confused about is that many people here said that WD-40 is NOT a lubricant, but it says right there on the can that it is. It specifically says "LUBRICATES moving parts such as: Hinges, Wheels, Rollers, Chains, gears". One of the comments here said they follow up by re-lubricating with sewing machine oil. But I opted to just follow your tutorial and not add any kind of additional lubricant because I had so many bearings that it took a long time to clean out all of them and so I didn't want to add anything before seeing if it might be needed. As it stands now, I see no need for any lubrication, so I'm leaving it as-is. I do have bicycle type chains involved in this thing and I might try using this for them too. Again - Thank You!!!
I thnk a lot of people think WD-40 isn't a lubricant because it has other uses. For example, in this video I didn't use it as a lubricant but as a decreaser to remove the grease. While it is a lubricant, I find that it doesn't last very long so for lubricating my bicycle chain and other parts on the outside, I use an oil instead. When I open up the bike's bearings I put grease for the reasons given in the second half of this video. What I did learn after this video is that a good follow-up after cleaning out all the grease is to then add graphite lubricant. It'll still spin fast but will also have the protections for the reasons given in the second half of this video. But whether you need to or not depends on if those things matter. I originally did this for my electrostatic motor and none of those issues applied.
I also thought of using graphite lube but the bearings I have have nylon spacers and I wasn't sure if that might create an issue. I've only used graphite lube for all-metal joints so I decided that 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' was the best approach. I'm using V-groove bearings and although I did find many options for buying 'dry bearings' I need a very specific size and I definitely need that V-groove because my bearings are running along a track. All the V-grooved bearings I found have grease in them so, I'm committed to using those. Your video saved my butt because my bearings were moving so slowly that the motor driving them began smoking! My invention involves bearings being used as guide rollers running at a fast speed. (like train wheels) I'm not a machinist, I'm a special effects artist, animator and part-time inventor so, my skills are many but never enough. Sometimes a tutorial like yours is the very thing that saves the day. I've been building this invention in my head for years and finally knuckled down to building the first prototype and it was working splendidly but, not nearly at the speed I needed it to. I Googled "make bearings spin faster" and the first result that popped up on my screen was your video... you made my week, you made my month, THANK YOU! :)
The thing is that wd 40 will ultimately dry out the bearing since it isn't viscous enough, it's so thin I strips grease then either flows out or evaporates out causing the bearing to rust and seize. If you use wd 40 you should follow up with a slightly thicker lubricant such as sewing machine oil.
Awesome video, I'd like to share some knowledge on this topic also. If you don't know who Gentry Stein is he's the Yoyo World champion and as you know, yoyo's are heavily reliant on insanely good bearings and some can even spin for 40 minutes. According to him, and the majority of the yoyo community, Lighter Fluid is the best way to clean a bearing. Pour some in a cup and shake for 15 seconds, or you can soak for 15 minutes. After that, put your bearing on a pencil (or whatever fits snug) and spin it out a few times or use a lighter and light the bearing which will instantly remove the lighter fluid remaining in the bearing. After cleaning the bearing with lighter fluid, put only 1-2 drops of thin yoyo lube on the bearing guard which will seep into the ball bearings then spin it a few times. Yoyo lube is designed for bearings that are constantly spinning at high speeds. The lube does not technically make it spin better/faster/or for longer durations, however, it does spin smoother and like greese it preserves the lifespan of the bearing and keeps it spinning as it should for longer use before wearing down. Hope that helps too! 👍
Here's what I did to clean my skateboard bearings when I skated.... bro they have bones bearing container.... take seals off... put in container... use citrus clesner... shake the crap out of it... open container pour cleaner out then put water in it... shake the piss out of it again to get the liquid to wash away all the guck whatever... than water is enemy to steel so... grab a blow dryer and literally blow dry all 8 bearings till there hot... than put seals back on they spun like crazy no oil or grease but that means u would have to this frequently cuz like the guy said metal on metal is not ideal for bearings but this was the method I chose and I had fun learning it this was like 10 years of trial and error than I watch a youtube video of some little kid like 17 or 18 telling how it's done like a master I first used gasoline just to say the least alright peace man
" than water is enemy to steel so... grab a blow dryer and literally blow dry all 8 bearings till there hot." Just a tip if you need to be so paranoid regarding water, maybe you're using sponge balls ones magician use, try using the ones made of metal instead.
@@trinidad17 hey dude... I'm long passed my skateboard yrs I put my board up 5 yrs ago when I was 28yrs.... that said I was reading ur post I'm like dam I hope all these years I for sure knew metal is able to rust when to contact with water if not dried properly so I googled is heres a copy paste of googs: Rust is the byproduct of a process called "corrosion." Metal corrodes when it goes through a chemical reaction involving the oxygen in water. If the metal is kept dry at all times, it is much less likely to start rusting than if it is constantly being exposed to rain or to high humidity that condenses on the metal.
as a longboard enthusiast for those using bearings for riding i would advise against using metal to touch the ball bearings, fashion something from plastic if you must, like a guitar pick cut in half but its not needed at all. also never run without the shields. paint thinner will work to remove, i like 50% rubbing alchohol because its more forgiving and let it dry fully before lubrication. Use a thin lubrication for longboards and do it every 150km or less. If you get them wet clean them asap because unlubed bearings get destroyed. Remember that how a bearing spins freely is not an indicator of how it performs under load, it will always appear to spin better before you add the lube but it wont perform better.
if you want to win one skate race do it, he is right if you want your bearings to last for two years leave the bearings the way the manufacturer supplied them
I actually don't think the actual drag would be felt by someone running them side by side. I did that test once and no one could tell the difference. The fact is, drag between the wheels and the ground is greater than the bearings. If you want to win races, use harder wheels.
the best way to make a bearing spin faster: 1. take out the cover(seal) of the bearing 2.spray WD-40 on the bearing balls and try to spin it for a while to make the WD-40 spread on the grease 3.put the brearing into a container and put some alcohol and shake it for 1minute 4.put the bearing on a container again and put some hot water(not boiled water)and shake it for a minute again 5. get some towel,tissue, or hairdryer to make the bearing dry before it get rust and then your now ready to roll like a pro
Thanks, this is just what I need. I've got a small toy that I've 3D printed and need less friction from a brand new bearing so that it'll spin freely for longer. It's not load bearing, won't see much use and I don't have to worry about dirt or water ingress. This worked perfectly. Thank you!
For in door hobbies that don't require high RPMs, dirt in the bearing is not an issue and the gritty sound it will soon obtain is not a problem , then GO FOR IT !
Great idea for the hip pocket of my brain.! May I suggest that a great way to frame it would be: "Adjusting Small Heavy Duty Bearings to Light, Free Spinning Applications" OK, I didn't say it would be a snappy title, just descriptive. Really liking your channel (brand new subscriber); a whole attic full of really cool junk (that's "junk" in the laudatory male tinkerer meaning).
Glad to hear it but jeep in mind what I say in the second half of this video. Since it's a skateboard, you'll likely start having problems due to wearing out your bearings for those reasons. You may want to add back some sort of lubrication.
goddamn, i just watched this video and went on to read some comments, people really miss the point of this video its not to make a bearing "better" or "more effective", this is purely for slow speed smoothness and performance, hence the goal of low friction". its a decent way to reuse besring for DIY but goddamn people, give this man a break
I've been in the bearing business for 25 years. First, that is a radial ball bearing not a roller bearing. You are making it a "free spin" by taking out any grease and replacing it with oil. Just because it doesn't spin freely doesn't mean it won't perform excellent. If you're a skateboarder and think an ABEC rating will make you faster that's really not the case. The bearing is higher precision and can go faster in let's say a high speed tool but once your board hits the pavement hard there goes any precision.
My application was a very low torque electrostatic motor, purely an indoor, science project type thing. But I've found that most people who come across this video are looking for it for skateboarding, definitely the wrong audience.
Hair clipper oil literally makes a bearing spin out of heavens gate! I use it a lot in my gyroscope fidget bearings and they spin so fast and flawless! One time I spun a fidget after relubricating it's bearings and it literally spun for a full 4-5 minutes and I was super shocked!
If you have a plastic bearing cage inside your bearing make sure the paint thinner doesn't affect the plastic. Isopropyl alcohol is a good alternative. I know some types of paint thinner damages plastics.
I tried using simple green all purpose, but while it works to have it spin really well at the start, if I let it dry they tend to seize up. Any suggestions?
You can clean the grease out with brake cleaner. I would do it outside though as the stuff is stinky. You don't need to rinse after using brake cleaner.
You can do this and still have the bearings by using a thin high quality oil. Like a fully synthetic 0W30 or a 5W30. The oil gives you free movement and still keeps the bearing balls lubricated. The seal removal depends upon conditions of use. If the environment you are using the bearings in is dusty or unclean for any reason, you'll be better off replacing grease with a synthetic oil and put the seals back on. But if the bearings are inside an enclosure where almost no dust or other particles get in and the bearings aren't going to be running high rpm, then you can live with the seals removed. For example, if the enclosure's air inlet and outlet ports have filters on them.
Don't ever use water on a bearing. Clean the F'n things when shields removed with gasoline and a toothbrush.... let air dry in the sun or forced hot air......and then regrease to about 2/3's quality grease ... and then replace shields.
I always wanted to connect a music box to a regulated speed wind driven fan. Everyone loves wind chimes but I think it would be awesome to hear a melody when the wind blows. I bet you are the man that could do it.
I was cringing this whole video until he explained this wasn't intended for most applications. Thanks for adding that last bit. Wouldn't a drop or two of a very light oil be beneficial in your case through? Mainly for noisy bearings on your music machine and just to help protect from oxidation? Probably smoother operation on your machine also? Good vid.
Thanks. Yeah, that last part of the video was definitely necessary. Regarding oil for reducing sound for my music machine, this whole thing isn't needed for the music machine since it's hand cranked and spins very slowly. For my electrostatic/corona motor (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9uEjXsX1F14.html), I'm told there's some form of graphite lubricant that won't slow it down, and may even make it spin faster yet.
DO NOT SKATE WITHOUT SHIELDS ON YOU BEARINGS. Any moisture will make them rust easily and the lubricant inside will collect ALL of the dust and dirt that goes by them. This is for quick, often one-time uses. Do not use this for skateboarding, please: your wallet will thank you.
@Normified that's the caveat. You have to clean them more frequently. They roll faster though, or so they say. That's like a secondhand anecdotal statement though cause I've been riding reds with the red shield on the outside for years haha
@@kotymccallister5150 Even just having dirty bearing shields is a no-go for me, cause that dirt is going to eventually find its way past the shield. I guess I'm just picky about maintaining my setup lol
Alex Lastivka I've since found out that you can buy dry ceramic bearings, dry in that they have no lubricant. I have some smaller than in this video which I bought on ebay and they spin for around 5 seconds. I'm using them in my new corona motor which I'll be releasing a video about later this week. They're pretty amazing.
You're welcome. Make sure you watch the second half of the video where I point out the conditions where you won't want to do this (e.g. don't do it for skateboard wheels since they're exposed to water and dirt). I did this for an electrostatic motor so none of those things were an issue.
A roller bearing is a category name. A ball bearing is one of them, a cylindrical roller bearing is another one in the same category. There is lots of info on the internet about bearings.
Suggest shooting a bit of dry PTFE lubricant into them. I've got some by Ballistol that's an ether based spray, the liquid evaporates very quickly and the part is left with a thin coat of dry PTFE flakes. Other dry lubricant is graphite, but it's not nearly as slippery and is nasty to work with for the kinds of projects you're after.
I think you need some mineral based coating. RUST! I live near the coast. That bearing would be all brown in 48 hours of onshore wind... Especially after being handled with bare hands, which I notice you where careful to avoid. You can get almost as free with just the spray lube (I like Lanolin, or CRP7 over wd40) with seals still in place. if you spray and spin a lot. Its a halfway measure I guess, less spin but more protected than no lube, and still a lot faster spin than new grease.
It depends on the application. I really can't say. In my case I was doing this for a low load, indoor, electrostatic motor. It could have benefited from graphite lubricant.
so what happened is that the 'skate-bearing-cult' found the video and they're freaking out... apparently one of the big NO-NOs is touching a skate bearing with WD40, and god-forbid water :} WD40 is great for cleaning purposes, but it's intended as a Water Displacement agent. anyways, this is a great video showing what creates friction in a small bearing. depending on the application, a dry lubricant can be used, such as PTFE or DRY Silicone (not all silicone lubricants are dry).
Anyone who's watching this video for use with skate's should realize from the second half of this video that this is not for them. This works fine for things where the seconds half of this video doesn't apply, like my indoor, lightly loaded electrostatic motor. Having said that, yes, a dry lubricant would be an improvement even for that.
Wd-40 is not a lubricant that lasts. It dries up. Great short term, and cleans them pretty good though. Do this, but give them a drop of bones speed cream. You can get it for about $10 at a skate shop You can also clean them with windex fairly well, and hit them with speed cream. 3 in 1 oil also works pretty good
Thanks. Yeah, I didn't know about it at the time I made this video but learned about it from these comments. One of the perks of making educational videos is you also learn from the responses. I later bought some ceramic bearings containing dry lubricant.
They get rusty only if the bearings stay wet. They dry off pretty quickly, partly from my drying them with a paper towel and partly from evaporation. If you're really worried then you can also run a hair dryer over them to evaporate the air faster.
@@RimstarOrg A quick rinse in some isopropyl alcohol will also flush out the water, and any alcohol remaining on the part will evaporate much quicker than water.
I don't recall what happened when I tried with the shields back on. My application was an indoor one, and electrostatic motor, and so I didn't need the shields. As long as they don't touch the moving parts then they should affect anything.
James Johnston You're welcome! But for skateboard bearings, if you're using them for skateboarding, then you'll want to add some lubricant back if there was some. The lubricant would make the bearings last longer by keeping dirt and water away from the parts and reducing friction from the parts contacting each other. Whether or not you need lubricant depends on the application and my _guess_ is that bearings used for skateboarding would benefit from it. In my case I originally did this for an electrostatic motor which didn't need lubricant.
use chain lube as a lubricant, it's a can of spray, you can keep it all spinning nice and smoothly without the rust and heat problems and the bearing will last longer than no lubricant. you may have to spray the bearings everyday.
yeah this may work for a bit , but soon as oil drys or water gets in you will have same problem , might as well buy a new bearing , we use white grease at the plant I work at, most bearing after they lose all their lubricant and heat up it's to late, this may work if you notice the bearing is starting or drag or make a loud noise
@@RimstarOrg were you sure to take it fully apart and clean off the individual ball bearings and the as well as the inner and outer raceways? cause if not you are leaving water in there to oxidize and rust the bearings especially after you scraped them with a metal needle tip like that scratching any protective coating up allowing for further oxidization. realistically you should clean bearings with an alcohol based cleaner like 99% isopropyl alcohol or similar percent acetone more commonly called nail polish remover.
@@twilightsparkle75 You realize that is not even remotely needed. Hell most bike chains dont rust after being touched by water as shown. You dont have to be that precise in it.
after putting it in the thinner dont put water otherwise it will rust. but you can use any citrus cleaner to remove grease in any bearing. i learned this technic on skateboards.
A lot of ignorance in the comments. Bearings this size are rated for 30,000+ RPM and 300 lbs static, 600 lbs dynamic load. His use case is .01%-.001% of that bearing’s capacity. Everyone quick to naysay “bUt tHaT’s bAd fOr tHe bEaRiNg” without thinking about the application. Aerospace bearing? No I would not remove the seal/lubricant. Bearing with 90% duty cycle? No I would not remove the seal/lubricant. Bearing for a music box? That turns maybe 5 rpm with about 4 oz total radial load on it and a .01% duty cycle? Bruh, stop overthinking it. It’s operating at 1% of its design envelope. Besides, if it fails, nobody dies, dude replaces a bearing that cost $0.80. WOW. You’re arguing about misuse of an 80 cent part. 🤔 🤡
Once you clean your bearings, use graphite or a dry lube containing PTFE. Graphite is good where an aerosol, dry lube w/PTFE is not available or suitable. These 2 DO NOT attract dust, dirt or other contaminates like WD-40 or oil!
Be careful. I'd think that the bearings in fidget spinners would already be optimized for speed so doing this may make matters worse, though one person in the comments here reported that it improved it. When you remove the seal for your bearing, if you don't see any grease like you see at the beginning of this video, then you're probably already optimized for speed. If you do do this for a spinner then I'd recommend a final step of adding lubricating dry graphite powder. The problem with leaving a fidget spinner with no lubricant is that it'll be noisier and the bearing may wear down faster for the first reason I give in the second half of the video. None of the reasons not to do it that I talk about applied to my application which was an electrostatic motor (low speed, small load, indoors, no water).
The thing with a lot of oil like wd-40 is that it attracts dust, you might not want to use it in open conditions especially from a skateboarding sense because it can cause grime and dust to get in the bearing. as for shieldings, if the shielding on the bearing is preventing it from spinning its most likely dented, in which case the best option would be to get a new bearing because once again without shielding it can attract grime and dust.
