Compare ABEC 5 and ABEC 7 roller bearings

Any roller skates have sev­er­al bear­ings, the num­ber of which depends on the num­ber of wheels in the design: each has 2 pieces. All bear­ings used in roller skates are stan­dard­ized. Nev­er­the­less, it is worth hav­ing at least a gen­er­al idea about them, espe­cial­ly when it comes to the accu­ra­cy of their man­u­fac­ture — this is the so-called ABEC clas­si­fi­ca­tion. What is the dif­fer­ence between ABEC 5 or ABEC 7 and which is bet­ter? Our experts know the answer.

About quality bearings

All inline skates, with­out excep­tion, have bear­ings in their design, and bush­ings are locat­ed between the wheels, the main task of which is to tight­ly fix between the bear­ings, trans­fer­ring pres­sure from their inner rings to the frame. In prac­tice, it looks like this: when rollerblad­ing, the frame is alter­nate­ly piled on the inside, and then on the out­side. In this case, all the pres­sure is dis­trib­uted over the frame, and does not go to the bear­ing. As a result, the lat­ter ful­ly func­tions under such a load and does not fail.

Speak­ing of roller bear­ings, one can­not fail to men­tion the so-called Swiss cat­e­go­ry — these are high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts that dif­fer from clas­si­cal ones in high­er machin­ing accu­ra­cy and the use of improved tech­nolo­gies (in par­tic­u­lar, poly­mer cages, liq­uid lubri­cants, etc.). Man­u­fac­tur­ers some­times put the “Tita­ni­um” mark on such a prod­uct. The alloy of such prod­ucts con­tains tita­ni­um, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es their endurance. Accord­ing­ly, the cost of pro­duc­tion is high­er.

There is anoth­er type of bear­ings — ceram­ic, the main dif­fer­ence of which from the stan­dard ones is in the mate­r­i­al used. In the clas­sic ver­sion, the prod­uct is made main­ly of stain­less steel. The ceram­ic balls are cre­at­ed from sil­i­con nitride. The ceram­ic ver­sion has a stronger struc­ture and at the same time less weight. In gen­er­al, we can say that it is ceram­ic ones that com­pare favor­ably with the clas­si­cal ones. Their advan­tages:

1. Light­weight – On aver­age, a ceram­ic bear­ing weighs around 9g, result­ing in less cen­trifu­gal force act­ing on each ball. Accord­ing­ly, less ener­gy is expend­ed dur­ing fric­tion.

2. High strength — the steel ver­sion will last much less than the ceram­ic one.

3. A smooth sur­face — again, helps to reduce fric­tion.

4. Resis­tant to chem­i­cal attack — the mate­r­i­al does not oxi­dize and prac­ti­cal­ly does not need lubri­ca­tion.

About ABEC standards

Almost all man­u­fac­tur­ers indi­cate on the bear­ings they sell that they belong to a cer­tain class accord­ing to the ABEC scale. The larg­er the num­ber, the high­er the accu­ra­cy will be. It is not about the use of a spe­cif­ic mate­r­i­al. Bear­ings will be man­u­fac­tured with a cer­tain pre­ci­sion. The high­er the class, the greater will be the rota­tion­al speed of the ele­ment (at the same time with a low fric­tion index).

There are 5 accu­ra­cy class­es, among which ABEC5 and ABEC7 are con­sid­ered among the best. So, the first vari­ety is an improved ver­sion of ABEC3, which is suit­able for most vari­eties of high-qual­i­ty inline skates designed for skat­ing for fun with­out claim­ing to a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el.

The ABEC7 is a rac­ing vari­ant favored pri­mar­i­ly by expe­ri­enced rollerbladers who are metic­u­lous in their choice of prod­uct and sur­face. The prod­ucts have a rather high price, which is asso­ci­at­ed with the com­plex­i­ty of man­u­fac­tur­ing the prod­uct.

ON A NOTE. It should be not­ed that some­times the dif­fer­ence between bear­ings of dif­fer­ent class­es is not very notice­able. This is espe­cial­ly true when the roller speeds up to 20 km/h. Vibra­tion reduc­tion can be notice­able at about 10,000 rpm. For exam­ple: the roller usu­al­ly touch­es at a speed of no more than 2000 rpm. It is also impos­si­ble not to take into account that over time the bear­ing becomes clogged with dust, dirt, and wears out. There­fore, if you replace such a prod­uct with a prod­uct of a high­er class, it may seem that the rollers ride bet­ter. In fact, the absence of dust in the ele­ment, the pres­ence of clean lubri­cant, etc., play a role.

Comparison of bearing classes

Tra­di­tion­al debrief­ing. Our experts con­duct­ed a thor­ough analy­sis of both prod­ucts and made a brief com­par­i­son.

What to choose?

First of all, you need to under­stand and accept one fact: at a speed of 30 km / h, there will be no dif­fer­ence between ABEC5 and ABEC7. In this case, it is dif­fi­cult to say which ones roll bet­ter. If we are talk­ing about the intri­ca­cies of oper­a­tion, then ABEC7 will have to be ser­viced much more often than ABEC5. Sim­ply put, the high­er the class of the select­ed bear­ing, the more time and effort will be spent on car­ing for it to main­tain its work­ing con­di­tion.

If you are a pro­fes­sion­al inline skater and metic­u­lous­ly mon­i­tor the con­di­tion of the equip­ment, you should give pref­er­ence to the improved ver­sion — ABEC7. With care­ful and com­pe­tent main­te­nance, rollers with such bear­ings will pro­vide the desired speed and excel­lent rolling.

If you are just tak­ing your first steps in roller skat­ing or can call your­self a con­fi­dent ama­teur and do not plan to spend much time lubri­cat­ing and clean­ing roller skate bear­ings, ABEC5 is your choice.