Axial-rotary ball-bearing guide element

Claim 1

A guide element involving ball-bearing contact on a shaft for unrestricted linear movement and/or rotary movement, which comprises an external sleeve that axially aligns an internal tubular housing that can rotate freely and comprises closed ball-bearing circulation circuits formed by two longidudinal sections connected to one another by curved sections at their ends, the said sleeve comprising a ball-bearing race positioning ball-bearings and having in its bore working sections that ensure contact between the said ball-bearings and said shaft and disengagement sections permitting an alternating recycling of these ball-bearings, the angular value of the working sections being smaller than the angle λ at the center defined by the two longitudinal sections of the same ball-bearing circuit and the angular value of a disengagement section being larger than the angle at the center defined by the two longitudinal sections of the circuit, wherein the said guide element is characterized in that the said ball-bearing race is provided with at least six closed ball-bearing circulation circuits arranged in groups of two, these pairs of closed circuits being distributed in a regular angular manner, the number P of pairs being half the number H of working or disengagement sections, themselves also distributed in a uniform manner in the bore of the sleeve, the angle α at the center defined by the two longitudinal sections of the same circuit being substantially equal to (360°/4P), and the angle β at the center defined by the two adjacent longitudinal sections next to one another in each individual circuit of a pair being smaller than and at most equal to the value of the angle γ at the center defined by a working section of the sleeves.