Spindle lubrication on small Chinese bench lathes.

Hi all,

I recently bought a Chester DB8 lathe and although I haven't had it long I haven't as yet lubricated the spindle nor am I sure how often this should be done, the manual is a bit sketchy in parts and there is no mention of how to do it and how often.

Is it something I should be doing on a machine 3 mths old and light use ?

How do I lubricate the spindle ? having removed the gears cover I can see no obvious lubricating point.

The machine is running fine but I don't want to be running without lubricating if I should be doing it.

Many thanks

Peter

I would say it has taper bearings on the spindle and they would be greased so you won't need to touch them for a long time .

My chinees made lathe ran for many years with the stock bearings without even adjusting the spindle and only got a new set of timken bearings because i had to strip the carriage down to sort some issues there so i though i may as well do the head up as well.

My suggestion would be to leave them alone unless you are having problems like overheating or the spindle is loose etc .

Ian.

Thanks Ian,

I'll leave it alone then, the machine runs fine I was just worried incase I should be lubricating it periodically.

Peter.

The bearings will be essentially the same as car wheel bearings, so good for about 250,000 miles without special attention...

Neil

Best bet is to give Chester a call....I would have thought they would be the best folk to advise on how often the bearings need lubricating and how to do it...

the bearings on my lathe are taper rollers, they need lubricating weekly with oil via ports on the headstock...

Edited By John Rudd on 18/09/2015 08:22:03

You may want to look at the last few posts about bearings on teh Warco 250 family thread!

That is good. Doncaster is about 40 miles nearer to me than Harrogate.

That must be one messy lathe !

What brand / make is it John?

.

So when it needs greasing, they will happily sell you a new one

Seriously though:

... do they mean the life of the lathe or the life of the bearing?

MichaelG.

It is one of the Chinese imports from SPG tools.....My Chester 9 x20 has exactly the same arrangement......

As for the mess, well it only takes a minute to wipe up any excess....its not as if the Tory Canyon landed here.....

Edited By John Rudd on 20/09/2015 16:09:09

Some lathe have points to grease the bearings so some is added every now and again to sort of refresh it. Wabeco suggest every 8 working hours for one of their lathes with a MT3 spindle. They include all of the bearings with rotating parts in that take loads such as the rack feed and main lead screw bearings. Oil on slides etc same period but as usual no oil points for the cross and compound slides.

It's probably a good idea to use grease on lead screws but not if swarf can get on them as it collects the stuff a lot more than oil does and makes it difficult to get off.

I meant to add some are sealed for life which basically means they avoided the cost of putting them in. On the other hand bearings should be run mostly empty of grease so if some is added now and again .............................

My Boxford ME10 is sealed for life so I remove the bearing covers and poke a bit in. AUD's etc same basic head stock usually have grease points.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 20/09/2015 20:33:48