bearing without axial tilt

[wwwfarmer]

I am building a simple root crops harvester attachment. The attachment has cutting discs in front of it to prevent weeds from jamming it. This is the almost finished machine.

The problem that I am facing is that the bearings I used are not stiff. That is, they tilt on the shaft axis along with cutting discs. I want the cutting discs to be straight. To counter act that, I can use 2 bearing as shown in the image below. The problem with this approach is that my shaft is pretty short (it barely fits 2 bearings) and I lose the option to position the disc left and right on the shaft.

How do plows, harrows or potato harvesters attach cutting discs? Is there a special type of bearing (and bearing housing) that prevents tilting? Should a bushing be used instead? Thank your for your answers.

 

[jthibodeau89]

It sounds like you have self aligning bearings. The OD of the outer race has a spherical radius ground on to it that matches the spherical radius on the housing. In order to use a single bearing on one side of the disk, you need a cylindrical race OD. You also may want to consider a roller bearing instead of a ball bearing for greater radial load capacity. But i would caution you about the side (or twist) load on the bearing when mpuntide to 1 side of the disk. You may want to consider placing the ball/roller bearing on the centerline of the disk and retain with 2 half depth covers. In this case the hole in the disk is the OD of the bearing. But this may require making the bearing retainers.

 

[BravoXray]

On some plows, they use a spindle attached to the plow with a hub with a couple of tapered roller bearings that the disk bolts onto.
A cheap utility trailer axle spindle and hub would work fine for your application.