What the thread found

• The main pan bearing is the part of the gimbal the operator actually feels. Slop in it is audible and detectable by hand, and a damaged race shows up as trouble in dynamic balance rather than as an obvious fault. Operators describe a rig that statically balances perfectly and then misbehaves in a whip pan, and a bad race in one of the two bearings is one known cause.
• PRO's own product description states that the main pan bearing of the PRO gimbal was designed specifically for PRO by Kaydon. That is the origin of the question of what it means if a maker stops using that supplier: it was not a catalogue part chosen for convenience, it was a custom specification.
• Kaydon and Silverthin are makers of thin-section and angular-contact bearings, the type this application needs. Their catalogues are large, so for a given size an alternative usually exists. The practical obstacle is not availability but terms: in one-off quantities these bearings are described as very expensive and as taking months to arrive.
• That supply reality is the useful part of the answer. A maker moving away from a custom bearing is not automatically a drop in quality — the same geometry from another maker of the same class can be equivalent. What does change is the repair path: a catalogue part can be measured and replaced from stock, a custom part generally cannot.
• The bearings in older gimbals are identifiable and replaceable. For the EFP and IIIA the pan bearing is a thin-section type, given in the archive as part number SSRAI3026ZKERA5P36L02P, with dimensions around 1.625 by 1.875 by 0.155 inches, and New Hampshire Ball Bearings is named as a source. Anyone with a failed bearing is advised to get the old one out and measure it before hunting for a replacement.
• The documented failure is mechanical, not wear of the balls. In one dismantled gimbal the brass separator ring of a Kaydon bearing was visibly deformed, could no longer seat in its channel, and that in turn stopped the inner race running freely. The symptom the owner noticed first was noise and friction.
• The standing advice on buying used is to replace the bearing races unless you are the original owner. The cost of a set is small against a gimbal that slows down in the middle of a shooting day, and it resets the one part whose history you cannot see.
• Bearings are also what a wrongly loaded rig destroys first. Exceeding the weight the machine was designed for is described as over-stressing the gimbal bearing races together with the arm bearings, the dogbones and the vest spar. A gimbal that has gone rough on a rig that was flown heavy did not necessarily have a bad bearing.
• Cleaning is disassembly, not spraying. The described method is to take the gimbal off the post, remove both races, dissolve the old lubricant in denatured alcohol, wipe the housing out with a lint-free cloth, and put a few drops of fresh lubricant back. The test for a damaged race is to hold the inner ring between two spread fingers and spin the outer one: it should run freely for several seconds, and anything that grinds or sounds wrong means a new race.

Depends on

• The archive cannot say what any maker fits today. The Kaydon attribution comes from PRO's own product text as it appeared in the forum, and the question of whether a current gimbal still uses that bearing is not answered anywhere in the material.
• It therefore also cannot answer whether a change of supplier has affected quality. That question was asked in a Facebook group in 2026 and received no answer there either; the person asking said he would test it himself and report back. What is offered here is the background needed to judge such a report, not the report.
• Part numbers, dimensions, prices and suppliers are as posted by operators, in some cases well over a decade ago, and were not verified against a manufacturer's datasheet. Measure the part in hand before ordering.
• Whether a gimbal should be lubricated at all is genuinely disputed in the archive — some operators argue the bearings run a long time dry and that the loads never approach their design specification, others regard a drop or two of oil as part of normal service. Both positions are held by experienced people.
• Dismantling a gimbal is reversible only if the order of parts is recorded as they come out. Several accounts stress writing it down first.

Parts

Gimbal Bearing

Same gear or parts

1. 2026PRO-Pan bearing sourcing change and specification differences between PRO and Tiffen gimbal bearingsFacebookThe Steadicam Group
2. 2026Pan bearing replacement for Steadicam® PRO gimbal: manufacturer change from Kaydon to SSB and supply implicationsFacebookSteadicam operators group
3. 2026Gimbal bearing lubrication: oil quantity, product selection, and the performance versus protection trade-off.DisputedFacebookThe Steadicam Group
4. 2026Pan-bearing friction and image oscillation in Tiffen gimbals with Volt power cable: root cause and acceptance criteria.DisputedFacebookThe Steadicam Group