Appropriate grease for milling Spindle

Oh and yes I think originally the term 'anderon' came from the company that first developed the vibration measuring equipment. But it's now become an industry-wide term used even across the far east.

G.

I was many years ago the chief engineer at a grease manufacturing plant. The principles involved with grease are simple. Grease is a thickened oil designed to keep the oil in contact with the part to be lubricated. There are many thickeners in use. Some have been mentioned, lithium and calcium soaps, polymers, clays even materials like carbon black and graphite. The most common general purpose thickener is Lithium soap. The figure in the name is usually the stiffness of the grease. Number 2 being general purpose, lower numbers being a less stiff grease and higher numbers obviously being thicker. So a general purpose grease would be called L2, LS2 or something similar. This would be a straightforward lithium thickened grease of Number 2 consistency. You may come across a universal grease, this was often an LSEP2 type. That is an LS2 grease with some extreme pressure additives added. Either would be fine for spindle bearings. In use the oil migrates from the grease to lubricate the bearing, the thickener usually plays no part in lubrication. Over time as the oil is gradually lost from the grease it becomes thicker and dry which is what you see when looking at an old bearing. It is possible at our amateur level to thin a grease by simply adding more oil and giving it a stir. To an extent the soap thickener absorbs the additional oil. I find this useful sometimes if I want a thinner product. My experience with greases relate to mineral oil based lubricants. I have no doubt that nowadays there are more exotic products using synthetic oils but for our rather traditionally designed equipment these would be overkill.