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A ball bearing is an engineering term referring to a type of roller-element bearings which uses balls to maintain the separation between the moving parts of the bearing.
The purpose of a ball bearing is to reduce rotational friction and support radal and axial loads. It achieves this by using at least two races to contain the balls and transmit the loads through the balls. Usually one of the races is held fixed. As one of the bearing races rotates it causes the balls to rotate as well. Because the balls are rolling they have a much lower coefficient of frictions than if two flat surfaces were rotating on each other.
Ball bearings tend to have lower load capacity for their size than other kinds of rolling-element bearings due to the smaller contact area between the balls and races. However, they can tolerate some misalignment of the inner and outer races.
Compared to other bearing types, the ball bearing is the least expensive, primarily because of the low cost of producing the balls used in the bearing.
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