Prevent Cage Creep and Manage Heavy Loads with Advanced Crossed Roller Linear Guides
- IKO CANADA
- Sep 27, 2024
- 1 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
When machine designers incorporate crossed roller linear guides into their systems, they often encounter a trade-off between ensuring load capacity and managing the risk of cage creep. This article examines effective strategies to address these challenges.
Crossed roller guides utilize alternating cylindrical rollers housed in cages, positioned between V-shaped track grooves, enabling loading in multiple directions. The cage maintains separation between the rollers to minimize friction, ensuring smooth and precise linear motion.
However, in traditional crossed roller assemblies, cage creep can become problematic over time. This issue is particularly prevalent in vertical setups, where gravity causes the cage to drift, leading to skidding, contact with end stops, or potential damage to the machine. Such drift can result in cage wear, bending, cracking, or unexpected machine downtime.
To address cage creep, many linear guide manufacturers have introduced anti-creep mechanisms. A common solution is the integration of a rack-and-pinion system to maintain the cage's position, which also facilitates higher speeds. However, not all crossed roller guides are designed to accommodate heavy loads.
IKO has advanced this design by enhancing the rigidity of its bearings, making its CRWG…H Series crossed roller linear guides capable of supporting greater loads. By reducing the pitch between the rollers, more rollers can be incorporated into the assembly, increasing overall rigidity. This results in dynamic load capacities ranging from 525N to 35,700N, depending on the size.
With IKO’s innovative design, machine designers can now use crossed roller linear guides that prevent cage creep while simultaneously supporting greater loads, minimizing machine size, and extending operational life.