Ball bearing disc springs slotted and plain
This two types of disc spring are designed to be set up allong with the ball bearings to act as an elastic support which allows it to absorb vibrations and to compensate thermal dilatations produced by the heating/cooling of the axis where the ball bearing is set up. Which results on a longer life and on a reduction of the noise produced.
Plain
This ball bearing disc spring results in the following graph:
Lo que se logra es un muelle que para una gran variación de desplazamiento dado experimenta una variación de fuerza comparativamente muy inferior al que nos daría un muelle lineal. Por lo tanto con este tipo de arandela podemos proteger un cojinete de bolas.
Slotted
This discs are an improvement over the plain disc. The slots contribute in making a much more interesting Force-Stroke diagram. As you can see the spring reaches a point where with a constant force, there is a stroke. Due to its properties this spring protects the ball bearing preventing consecuences from a thermal dilatation.
Slotted discs are less rigid and taller. It must also be mentioned that slotted disc springs can be stacked in parallel to obtain a given desired force.
Materials
Ball bearing disc springs are manufactured from high quality spring steel; they can also be made to order in other materials e.g. corrosion resistant or non-magnetic steel, spring bronze Cu Sn 8, copper beryllium alloy Cu Be 2, Nimonic 90 and others.
List of ball bearing disc springs