Linear Recirculating Ball Bearing

This recirculating ball bearing uses 3/16 bearing balls and is designed to run on 1" ID PVC schedule 40 pipe with an OD of 1.315". The parts are held together with #8 bolts. 3 bolts are used horizontally to allow for adjustment of clamping pressure on the pipe. 2 countersink bolts on each side are used to hold the stack of 4 parts (parts 1 through 4) onto the main body of the bearing (part 5).

I had not seen any recirculating ball bearings for PVC pipe on this site. The reason for using PVC as a rail material was primarily cost. I need roughly 130 feet of rail, and PVC is more cost effective than conduit, though this design can easily be modified to work on steel conduit.

The bearing allows the PVC to be mounted flat onto a surface as the bearing does not completely encircle the pipe.

Video of a CNC controlled positioning tool utilizing these bearings can be found at the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNWGr0d5u3Y

This machine uses 6 of these b