But they feel much too tight for my stainless steel tubing, couldn’t get them on and ended up popping out some of the bb’s. Did I get the wrong thing or is the precision of these such that my tubing is beyond their tolerance?
I just can’t imagine regular stainless has a chance at working for that. Those bearings need a very precise surface or they get crunchy. And the balls are hardened, so they will start to wear a groove really fast. I don’t advise this at all.
I think the adjustable bearings would work as long as you didn’t crank them down too hard. Basically the same we do with the current parts, but the contract area will be spread out over the length of the bearing. You definitely want stainless or DOM tubes for this.
Ryans advice is solid, unless you are using hardened and ground chrome bar (hydraulic ram shaft basically) they will just get eaten up, and you would have $500~$600 in the shafts alone.
So I got some IGUS l150 filament and printed a pair of IGUS style bearings that fit perfectly and I’m using adjustable pillow blocks, going to give them a try and see how they work out.