Replacing a Discontinued Sealed Bearing Without Changing the Housing

The original part was a 6205-2RS1 with a C3 clearance, running in a pillow-block housing on the outfeed conveyor of a carton erector. The bearing ran at about 900 rpm in an ambient of 35 °C with flour dust present, and the OEM had replaced it in the catalogue with a different housing design that would not fit the installed machines.

• The part number omitted the clearance, so the original specification was only recoverable from the OEM's old drawing.
• The application ran hot — 75 °C at the outer ring — because the housing was close to a heat tunnel.
• The dust was fine and abrasive, which rules out any shielded substitute.
• The user had been offered a 'equivalent' bearing by a local distributor that was CN clearance and polyamide-caged.

The substitute was ordered with the clearance and cage written explicitly in the designation, from a maker whose seal code differs but whose construction matches. Three machines were converted first and inspected after 500 hours; the remainder followed. The lesson is not about the brand — it is that the part number as written was incomplete, and the incomplete version is what got quoted.