YC’s self-aligning ball bearing has a spherical raceway in the outer ring and a double-raceway in the inner ring. This feature gives the bearings the self-aligning property, which can keep the machine operating well even when angular misalignment of the shaft relative to the housing occurs. Values of permissible misalignment errors of double row self-aligning ball bearings are given in the section “selection of bearing type”. The self-aligning ball bearing is mainly used to carry radial loads and light axial loads, but they can not carry pure axial loads.

Minimum Load-self-aligning Ball Bearing
In order to keep bearings working in a good condition, a minimum load must be imposed on bearings, particularly on bearings working at high speeds, high accelerations, or with the load direction changing frequently, because under these working conditions, inertial force of balls and cage and lubricant friction will have bad influence on the rotation of bearings, and detrimental sliding movement may be caused.