The first thing that strikes the eye when looking at bicycle bearings is the difference in price between steel bearings and hybrid ceramic bearings.
Ceramic bearing vs hybrid ceramic.
Hybrid bearings are a mixture of ceramic and steel materials.
Hybrid bearings are often considered the perfect choice for spinners and with good reason.
As the bearing race rotates it causes the balls to rotate.
This is mostly due to the additional time spent to perfect a quality ceramic ball.
In addition to being excellent electric insulators hybrid bearings have a higher speed capability 1 2 1 5 time limit of rotations compared to steel bearing and will provide longer service life lower friction and a lower level of energy consumption than all steel bearings.
Full ceramic bearings can run without lubrication.
Below we go into a brief description explaining the role of ceramic bearings and then compare hybrid vs.
When most people think of ceramic bearings they are usually actually referring to hybrid.
Hybrid bearings sit between full ceramic and steel options.
They are much like ss bearings in that the races and cage will be stainless but diverge by employing ceramic balls instead.
Hybrid ceramic bearings have traditional 52100 steel or stainless steel rings with ceramic silicon nitride si3n4 balls.
While they use ceramic balls these bearings are paired with metal inner and outer rings.
Bearings are an important component of bikes their overall quality and design can mean a lot if you are customising your bike and looking for a superior performance.
This is achieved by using two races to hold the balls and to spread the load through the balls.
Using this combination allows for higher speeds than full ceramic options as the less brittle metal rings are not as prone to sudden catastrophic failure under high speed or load.
Because of the ceramic balls hybrid.
The bearing balls are almost always either silicon nitride si3n4 which are black ceramic balls or.
Hybrid ceramic bearings are the equivalent of trying to run a locomotive on an asphalt road the hardness differential causes the road raceway to become damaged.
Total power saving the graph below shows how much power could be saved over 1000km between different bearing brands and their seal types.
The purpose of a radial bearing is to reduce rotational friction and support loads.
In addition to being excellent electric insulators hybrid bearings have a higher speed capability and will provide longer service life than all steel bearings in most applications.
Mrc hybrid ceramic ball bearings use a combination of traditional 52100 steel rings precision matched with silicon nitride ceramic balls.