Mark Williams Enterprises (MW) has put the final engineering touches on their newest aluminum gear case, featuring a large 4-inch bore and accompanying bearing, which they’ve unveiled here at PRI. With the new 9-inch case, MW is able to place angular contact ball bearings in both the spool and pinion support, improving performance, efficiency, and bearing life.

MW typically utilized angular contact bearings in the rear of the pinion support, which was necessary for the 8,000 rpm that it would often see that would burn up common tapered bearings. With the new case and support, the case features angular contact bearings front and rear, as well as for the spool support.

MW has modified the case as well, with enough clearance for 9-, 9.5-, and 10-inch rings gears.

Williams walked us through the angular contact bearing and its benefits, sharing “the most common application for them is machine tool spindles, where you have to have thrust control but you need rigidity both ways. Instead of the ball just having a groove in the bottom and a groove in the top, it’s a groove thats 45-degrees on both the inside and outside race, and each race pushes against the other, thus taking the clearance out of it. The advantage of this is, of course, there’s less friction, but you can also set the preload very light because there’s not any movement.”