Chester 836/Warco WM20 Lubrication Query?

Hi all,

I was hoping someone with one of these machines could offer some advice.

I have recently acquired a similar milling machine made by Baileigh. With regards to lubrication the manual says to fill the oil cup in the head in order to lubricate the spindle bearings. However I don't see an oil cup, are the bearings sealed and greased in that case? And what about lubricating the quill? I was thinking if there is no oil point to simply drop the quill and rub some way oil on the quill periodically. It does have a one shot lube system for the ways however.

Any advice appreciated, thanks!

Like mini lathes, a lot of these machines differ only in their paint job and sticker name.

I have found that the US-supplied versions (JET, Grizzley, etc.) seem to have better manuals than our own.

Avail yourself of a list of likely manufacturers and then put 'xxx turret mill' into Google and look at images, where 'xxx' is the manufacturer name. That will help you find the model designation that manufacturer uses.

An original Bridgeport manual might also give you some pointers as the machines are close copies.

If you can find a suitable exploded diagram of the machine, that can help a lot with finding where to poke your oil gun.

Have a look at page 29. of this:

https://content.jettools.com/assets/manuals/690182_man_EN.pdf

Item 142 is the quill and it looks like half way up it is a drilling for an oil nipple, possibly for the lower spindle bearings.

If you lower the quill and smear with oil, it will come off the first time you retract the quill. Maybe lower it a little and introduce a thin oil from the top - it will be ground steel slowly sliding in cast iron so does not need much.

Thanks very much for the reply, I do appreciate it. I've scoured the internet looking for variations of this mill and in fact found the Jet manual for this model (they call theirs the JVM-836), before my machine arrived. The lubrication instructions describe an oil cup, and show it in the exploded diagram but as mentioned my mill doesn't have one or even a plugged hole where one might have been installed. It seems there has been a design change at some point and the manuals have not been updated.

I think I'll give Baileigh a call as they do have a UK branch, but I'm guessing their response will be to look at the manual

They may have simply moved to sealed for life bearings