Ah - my comment was slightly ambiguous - what I meant was that you could certainly buy cycle bearings other than from specific cycle bearing emporia (we have a bearing supplier locally that stocks quite a few bike compatible bearings - headset, BB & wheels)
There is a reason why bearings have a course of its own in mechanical engineering school. They are quite complex. Complex to design for, complex to source and complex to diagnose when failing prematurely.
You say you have a bearing shop that stocks compatible bearings for bike wheels, headsets and BBs. I don't doubt what you say, I just wonder whether they don't just stock bike bearings as well as automotive/engineering bearings. The two are very seldom the same.
For instance, the code itself - say 6085, only gives dimensions. An alphabetic suffix, say ZZ, tells you there are two steel dust seals on that bearing and a RR tells you there are two rubbers seals of a specific type of rubber. LLB seals would be a different type of rubber. These vary depending on the temperature and/or contaminants they will come into contact with.
Then there are suffixes for grease type and grease volume. A bearing could have as little grease as 10% or as much as 90% of interior cavity.
On a bike's rear hub where there could be as many as 6 cartridge bearings, you don't want 90% fill because then the freewheel wouldn't freewheel, it would continually turn and wind the chain up.
Yet, the 10% and 90% fill bearings are both nominally 6085 (or whatever).
Bike suspension requires full-fill bearings. This is because these bearings don't rotate, they oscillate, and quickly become grease-starved.
Bearing companies typically just look at the first four numbers and hand over what looks compatible.
Further, I can't see how they can supply BB bearings (if we're talking cartridges here) because those are non-standard and made specially for Shimano or Campag, even though they have industry standard number designations. For instance, Shimano is, say a 6085, but if you compare, you'll find that the Shimano bearing is 1mm narrower than industry standard. I suspect they simply use the seal that fits the diameter and have never made new ones specially for Shimano.
I believe that there some "mobile benches/cradles" used by car plants that have wheels in a bike-fork-like set up that use headset style bearings.
Rob
I can't picture those but it sounds to me like it is just a trolley made from bicycle parts. Or something designed around existing bicycle parts.
Headset bearings are unique. They were invented by the bike industry for the bike industry. The inventor of the threadless headset designed the first ACBs (angular contact bearings) for headsets and took a patent on it back in the early 1990s. These bearings are intended to move inside their frame sockets to prevent dimpling. They are not intended to press-fit and will rotate at the outer race when used in rotational applications such as motors.
The patent holder was Aheadset, a company later bought by Cane Creek. This bearing revolutionised bike forks.
I have not seen this adopted anywhere else in industry, but I don't see everything. I am not Argus.
These bearings are not in the SKF, NTS, Timken or IKO catalogues. They are in FSA and Cane Creek catalogues.
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