Inspired by b264’s difficulties in finding bearings that can survive long term use and abuse through weather and salt, I’ve been spending some time thinking about bearings over the last year or so.
Cars can go years and years without needing new bearings, why are our bearings such a consumable?
From the “Best bearings for our boards” topic.
For real right?
Why can’t bearings just be reliable?
So I’ve been suspecting for a while now that maybe skate bearings are just too small.
Skateboarding can pretty much trace its standardized bearing size all the way back to its origin, when people were taking roller skates, unbolting the trucks off of the boot, and sticking them on a plank of wood.
So we’re taking bearings sized for wheels like this:
And sticking them in wheels like this:
Then whipping them around fast corners at 30+MPH.
So maybe the answer is just, bigger bearings right?
But there’s no way you could just make a new wheel around a new standard and expect it to succeed.
Every truck out there is designed for 8mm axles and a 10mm spacing.
It would be suicide to try and make a wheel that would fill the same part of the market as those trucks, because it could only be compatible with new trucks designed around a new standard. Its just not going to work.
Unless of course… You make a wheel core that’s backwards compatible.
So a standard wheel looks something like this.
So what about a wheel that could do this.
or this
As it happens, the spacers for standard 12 X 28mm bearings have the clearance to fit inside a lot of wheel cores anyway. And with a 24mm spacer, they’re able to fit on the same core.
Far as I can tell the only drawbacks are a missing fillet to help the smaller standard bearings distribute load from the full width of the core, so the 8mm bearing performance is theoretically not as good as it would be with a standard core. That might not matter much in the first place, but with a really good core material it might not matter at all.