These ball bearings are compatible with VEX High Strength Shafts, and come in a pack of 11. (Includes all bearings, housing assemblies, and inserts)
Unlike traditional Bearing Flats, Ball Bearings achieve a lower rotational friction through the use of rolling balls that are built into the Bearing. Great for high speed mechanisms, such as shooters and intakes!
These are now available on the US store, and will be available internationally over the next few weeks.
A separate 1/8" Bearing Block Insert would be nice, but using the existing high-strength shaft adaptor will work fine.
Edit: After taking another look at the parts, I see that it is already designed to support a large or small shaft. For a 1/8" shaft, you would use the Bearing Block Square Insert, which is a 1/8" square. And for the HS shaft, you would not use any insert because the diameter of the hole is .302"
In addition, there is a round insert designed for #8 screws.
Awesome! Iâm sure many of us students have been waiting for ball bearings to be used in VRC for a while. Canât wait to see what everyone does with them this season!
I have a sneaking suspicion that they intentionally released ball bearings that only fit in 3 wide cchans so they have some sort of a trade-off to using them and you canât just slap them anywhere you want
Well, it likely wasnât âto add another engineering restraintâ and more so that wealthy teams couldnât just abuse them and use them absolutely everywhere on their robot. I bet the intent is that most teams use them on flywheels and sometimes intakes, and thatâs about it. I know I have talked to several top tier teams who all agree that it generally isnât worth it to use these on your drive, and sometimes even intakes. They are too expensive and would require either the use of 3 wides on the drive/intake or a whole lot of custom machining. I personally like this decision and I think if vex ever releases ball bearings that fit into a 2-wide cchannel, they will likely look like regular 3 hole long black bearings but with a special section in the middle for one of the small bearings that @YesSir posted, and they will be cheaper. But as long as these bearings are this expensive, I donât believe it is the intent for them to be used everywhere on the robot.
These bearings can be used on 2 wide drives, you just have to attach them to the wheel and use a rounded standoff joint. Theyâre probably more useful on drives than on intakes considering drives are under a lot greater load.
And here we get to the next Q&A question that needs to be clarified:
The bearings in this kit are the exact same âThunderSquareâ flanged bearings available in the âPROâ section as SKUâs 217-5830 for 1 or 217-6722 for 11. Is it legal to use these bearings separately (by drilling a 0.875 hole and simply inserting the flanged bearing)?
