GCr15 Bearing Steel Inch Series Tapered Roller Bearing Cup and Cone Sets

Material specification page for inch series tapered roller bearing cup and cone sets in GCr15 Bearing Steel. Covers the grade designation (GCr15 (GB/T 18254) = 100Cr6 (1.3505) = SAE 52100, through-hardened to 58–64 HRC), what the material does inside the bearing, its temperature and environmental limits, the alternatives worth considering, and the sizes available to ANSI/ABMA 19.2 (TS inch series).

Why GCr15 Bearing Steel for Inch Series Tapered Roller Bearing Cup and Cone Sets

The default material for the rings and rolling elements of virtually every standard rolling bearing. In a inch series tapered roller bearing cup and cone sets it is the steel of the rings and, in most designs, of the rolling elements.

Through-hardened high-carbon chromium steel is what a raceway is: hard enough to resist the rolling contact stress, clean enough after modern vacuum degassing that the inclusions which start fatigue cracks are rare, and dimensionally stable after tempering so the ground bore stays the size it was ground to.

Material Properties

Service Limits

The limit that catches people is dimensional stability, not hardness: a standard bearing is heat stabilized for use to about +120 °C, and running it hotter lets the rings grow and lose their fit. Above that a stabilized ring — S1, S2 and upward — is ordered specifically, and it comes with a small reduction in hardness and therefore in rating. The steel also has no corrosion resistance of its own: the preservative it ships with is not a coating, and a bearing stored in a damp store rusts on its raceways before it is ever fitted.

Alternatives and When to Switch

Move to case-hardened steel where the ring section is heavy or the load is shocked; to 440C where the environment is wet or the part must not rust; and to a hybrid bearing with ceramic balls where the speed, the electrical environment or the lubrication regime is beyond what a steel ball will tolerate.

Fitting a Steel Bearing in an Aluminum Housing

Aluminum has roughly twice the coefficient of thermal expansion of bearing steel, so a housing bore machined to a normal H7 fit at room temperature grows away from the outer ring as the machine reaches operating temperature. The outer ring then turns in its seat and wears the bore. Where the housing is aluminum and the temperature rise is more than about 30 degrees C, tighten the housing fit by one grade — J7 or K7 in place of H7 — or fit a steel sleeve into the aluminum. Check the resulting internal clearance: a tighter housing fit takes clearance out of the bearing, which is often why C3 is specified alongside it.

Sizes of Inch Series Tapered Roller Bearing Cup and Cone Sets Available in GCr15 Bearing Steel