Originally Posted by
Ti473
Yes but are you talking about a cup and cone bottom bracket? This a sealed cartridge bearing BB.
Also in that gif I'm assuming the orange gear is the spindle, the light green are the ball bearings and the dark green is the cup, correct? Except that in that illustration the green gears are spinning around fixed pins, while in a bearing the balls just roll forward
A spindle, cup and cartridge bearing BB behaves the same way. The cartridge races essentially become fixed extensions of the spindle and cups that they are pressed into. The physics don't change, but the friction forces are different than steel on steel on steel. Like the large bearing seals.
The gears behave just like bearings - they are similarly trapped and turn in the same plane. The difference is that the outer gear ring - the cup - is not allowed to rotate, so the balls don't purely roll, but backslip. The gears illustrate what would happen if the cup had no friction and was threaded the wrong way, like Italian fixed cups.
If bearings have too much preload, that slipping becomes that much harder and the bearing have greater traction on the cups, increasing the transfer of motion to the cups.