Member postings for Lex Davis

Correct, it comes down through the spindle bearings, the outside of the quill is dry.

Thanks for your reply Peter, there is an oil seal (item 40, Gaco Seal #MIS20) in the deep recess of the casting but it is not doing much in my case, the oil is definitely coming down through the spindle bearings, there is no leakage anywhere else. The sight glass is stained but still readable and until I can find an exact replacement it will have to stay there.

My VBRP - 2 seems to have a lot of oil passing down through the spindle from the back gear housing, the diagrams in the parts manual are not very clear as to the sealing arrangement in there, has any one resealed one of these machines?

Nearly four years ago I made some enquiries in this thread regarding the dimensions of the Y axis gib strip to allow me to make a new one and I finally got around to making it yesterday, I used a piece of flat cast iron bar and milled it to approximate size then ground it to fit. I will now finish the contact faces by scapping for a perfect fit and a bit of oil retention.

The top one is the gib that was in the machine when I got it.

The oils specified in the 1970"s operation manual are no longer available, although alternative oils of equivalent specification are. I just use ISO68 hydraulic oil as most of it leaks out anyway. Any oil of roughly the correct viscosity is probably better than running it dry.

A handy addition to the Beaver that I have been working on for the last few days. I think it looks a bit "agricultural" but it is very useful and easily removed if required.

Before I start making a new dial, as one of mine is missing,though I would ask the question here first - what are my chances of finding one of these anywhere around the world? I need the 0- .200" dial for the x axis.

Thanks for the information DC, I completely missed the spring in the parts manual but it definitely is in the down feed handle gear as you and Mark suggested.

It's not a simple matter of rotating the pinion a bit because that will move the position of the dowel pin that acts as the Zero position stop. There must be some way to apply more tension directly to the spring but I think that the spring is either in the Quill casting or the feed gearbox housing on the left, it is not on the handle side of the head.

Edited By Lex Davis on 04/09/2020 04:37:46

Does anyone with a Mk2 know where the return spring for the quill is located, the parts manual does not show it.

I need to get a bit more tension on mine somehow but I don't want to start pulling things apart until I know how the spring is set up.

This photo shows the #40 spindle bore and face after grinding, run out on bore and face is now less than .0001" (.0025mm). The picture does not show up very well but the finish produced by the TPG is very good.

I didn't take much notice when I took the Quill assembly out Mark, but I did notice that there were burrs on the driven side of the splndle spline which I had to stone off. I have almost finished regrinding the spindle taper now so I will check the fit of the splines when I put it back together soon.

Lex.

Any photos Mark, I think I will need to make a new splined bush as well.

The spindle is back together and feels quite good, I have it set up on my lathe ready to regrind the #40 taper with a Toolpost Grinder.

This is the Bearing Preload Fixture that I made to simulate fitting the bearings and spacers into the Quill/Spindle assembly. It allowed me to quickly determine the difference in spacer height required. I found that a small change in spacer height (3 microns) makes a big difference to the torque needed to rotate the bearing assembly.

I now have a small amount of preload on the bearings with the inner spacer now measuring .0031" (80 microns) less than the outer spacer. I don't think that these bearings were a matched set of Duplex bearings with the correct amount of offset ground into the faces.

Hi Brian, the Bull Gear etc will be the next area that I delve into, I wonder what I will find in there. My machine is a Mk2 so I don"t have any info on the Mk1.

I have now realized that the bearings were set up in the DF configuration but from the information in various bearing books I have decided to set them up as DB and after grinding the spacers in small stages I am now at a point where the 2 spacers are nearly identical in height and preload is nearly correct which brings me to believe that this is the way they were intended to be fitted.

Regards,Lex.

Edited By Lex Davis on 14/06/2020 13:38:09

I have finally had a chance to remove the bearings from my spindle and I am not impressed with what I found. Someone has obviously been in there before and really made a mess of it. The outer bearing spacer has been surface ground to about .005" less than the inner spacer and both spacer are out of parallel by at least .001".

There were also burrs and dings everywhere, not to mention that the two top locknuts were loose.

There are no actual seals on this spindle just a type Labyrinth setup at each end.

I can't help with that one Brian.

Regards, Lex.

You are correct Mark,the N9126 bearings were a special size made specifically for the Beaver milling machine.

It's a pity that the Beaver manuals did not keep up with the changes made to the various models over the years, the manual that I have does not show these bearings at all and other parts are completely different to what is shown in the manual.