Thrust washers are used with needle roller and cage assemblies as fatigue liners for soft housing faces. They can help prevent movement along the axis of a shaft bearing an axial load. They can also be combined with needle roller and cage assemblies to form complete needle roller thrust bearings.

Needle roller thrust bearings SKF needle roller thrust bearings are fitted with a form-stable cage to reliably retain and guide a large number of needle rollers. In applications where the faces of adjacent machine components can serve as raceways, needle roller thrust bearings take up no more space than a conventional thrust washer.