bushing

Pluralbushings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A cylindrical lining fitted inside a hole to reduce friction and wear, often serving as a casing for a shaft, pin, or hinge.

   Engineers specified a bronze bushing to support the rotating shaft.

   Over time the worn bushings allowed the pin to rattle in its housing.

   Similarsleeve, liner, bearing

   Note

   The machine sense the word was built for. Bush already named the metal lining of a wheel's axle hole or a gun's touch hole, and -ing turned it into a noun for such linings. Engineers class it as a plain bearing: a sleeve with no rolling parts, often bronze or polymer. It is meant to take the wear itself, so the shaft and the housing around it are spared.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An elastic bearing, commonly made of rubber, that sits between two parts as a vibration isolator, damping movement and the energy transmitted across them.

   Mechanics replaced the worn bushing to quiet the rattling control arm.

   Rubber bushings in the engine mounts keep vibration from reaching the cabin.

   Note

   Rubber turns the bearing into a cushion. The bronze sleeve lets a shaft slide freely. This kind instead lets two parts flex a little against each other and soaks up the vibration between them. It is the sense most drivers meet, in control-arm and engine-mount bushings and in the clunks and rattles that follow when those bushings wear out.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A pipe fitting that adapts between pipes or threads of different sizes, letting a smaller line join a larger one.

   Installers threaded a reducing bushing into the tee to accept the smaller branch line.

   He kept a few brass bushings on hand for joining mismatched pipe diameters.

   Similarreducer, adapter

   Note

   In pipe work the word usually appears in the phrase reducing bushing. The fitting is typically threaded on the outside to screw into the larger opening and on the inside to take the smaller pipe. Because it sits inside the fitting it adapts, it takes up less room than a bell reducer, which does the same job as a separate piece.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A fastener element inserted into an object, usually to add a threaded hole in a softer or thinner material than would otherwise hold a screw.

   A brass bushing molded into the housing provides durable threads for repeated assembly.

   Engineers added threaded bushings to the aluminum panel to keep the screws from stripping.

   Similarinsert

   Note

   A fix for materials too soft or too thin to hold a screw thread of their own. The bushing, often brass or steel, carries the thread instead. Screws can then go in and out repeatedly without stripping plastic, castings or sheet metal. In this sense the word usually travels with threaded, and the same part is often simply called a threaded insert.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   An insulating sleeve fitted into an opening through which an electrical conductor passes, protecting it both electrically and from mechanical damage.

   The transformer's bushing insulates the high-voltage conductor where it exits the tank.

   Failed bushings are a common cause of flashovers on aging transformers.

   Note

   Electrical engineering borrows the lining and makes it an insulator. A bushing carries a conductor through a grounded barrier, such as a transformer tank or a wall. It keeps the two apart electrically while holding the conductor steady. On high-voltage equipment these are large porcelain or composite housings, and their failure is a common cause of flashovers.

6. 6
   verb

   Present participle of bush.

   The machine shop is bushing the connecting rods to bring them back to size.

   Workers were bushing the joints all afternoon to reduce play in the linkage.

   Note

   Two quite different verbs share this -ing form. One belongs to the garden and the field: plants bushing out, or land being harrowed with a bush to cover seed. The other is the workshop verb meaning to fit a lining, as in bushing worn connecting rods. That workshop verb names the action whose result is the noun bushing in its machine senses.

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