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Caster Bearing Life (L10)

Estimate how long a caster bearing will last at a given load and speed from its published dynamic load rating, and read the result in million revolutions, miles, days, and years.

The standard basic rating life equation answers how long a bearing lasts at a load, and a caster converts that into service the way a facility measures it. Enter the dynamic load rating, the applied load, the wheel diameter, the travel speed, the hours per day, and the bearing type, and the calculator returns the load ratio, L10 in million revolutions, and the equivalent miles, days, and years.

The verdict bands on years map the arithmetic onto a maintenance interval, and the load-ratio note fires when the applied load exceeds the rating, so an overloaded bearing is identified rather than quietly given a life figure.

Inputs

Bearing and load

Range: 20–40,000 C

Published as C in bearing catalogs. It is the load at which the bearing reaches a nominal one million revolutions of L10 life.

Range: 1–40,000 P

Wheel and duty

Range: 1–20 in

Range: 0.1–12 mph

Range: 0.5–24

Result

L10 life (million revolutions)
8.0
L10 life (days at this duty)
83
L10 life (miles of travel)
1,983
L10 life (years)
0.2
Load ratio C/P
2.00
Verdict
Under a year of calculated L10 life. That is far short of a practical replacement interval: move to a higher-rated bearing, a larger wheel, or a lower load, because the bearing is the part that will set the maintenance schedule.
Load ratio note
The applied load is within the bearing's dynamic rating, so the life figure is meaningful.

What to check

  • Take the dynamic load rating from the bearing maker's datasheet rather than the caster catalogue.
  • Use the load one caster carries, not the total cart weight.
  • Treat the L10 result as an upper bound and shorten the interval for shock, grit, or washdown.

Related calculators

ISO 281 basic rating life assumes a clean, correctly lubricated bearing under a constant load. Real caster bearings see shock, grit, water, and variable speed, all of which shorten life, so the figure is an upper bound in practice. The life modification factors for reliability, lubrication, and contamination are not applied, side and thrust loads are not combined into the equivalent load, and the wheel-diameter conversion assumes the wheel rolls without slipping.