Remotely oiling a workshop of line shaft machinery

A local museum has a spinning display of line shaft and associated machinery running 6 hours a day 6 days a week. Lathe, shapers, miller, etc all running on total loss lubrication and no one is allowed near them while operating for obvious health and safety reasons. Something like 30-40 oil points on the machines with tiny or no actual oil reservoir. Plus near 30 pillow blocks on the line shaft that also seem to run on oil but at least have a reservoir.

A small legion of drip feed oilers would be simple, relatively historically accurate and last a day of oiling but having someone available every day before opening to oil might not be doable. The line shaft pillow blocks are also a pain for requiring a step ladder in a place with no room to set one up, uncertain how often they would need topping up.

I know heavy industry has lubricators that would dwarf a workshop but the operating budget is £2.50 and a pack of smarties. I figure one shot lubricators can't handle more than one machine. There's some "CNC Automatic Lubricating Oil Pump"s on Aliexpress that might be good but I think an instruction manual in English rather than Mandarin is a reasonable request for a proper business and not one that these would meet.

Does anyone have a cheap and cheerful but legally responsible supplier or oilers or other inventive ideas?

I think HGVs. have some system of multipoint auto lubrication. Could this be adapted?

Edited By Jim Young 2 on 17/04/2023 20:07:39

How about a gravity fed system? Have a header tank, witha manifold plumbing into each oiling point with a tap to control the flow rate. The header tank could be topped up daily from a hand pump. Also have an overflow pipe back to your source, so no need for any level monitoring on the header. Just pump until it overflows back down.

Rainbows, as Jim mentioned, trucks and fork lift trucks have a centralised lub system, if you can find someone scrapping these vehicles you may be able to scrounge a couple of systems. You may need several, as these units may not pump from one end of a factory to another. I have used the individual pump elements to make Traction engine lubricators.

Chris Gunn

Bearing in mind the budget, could something like a garden micro drip watering system be adapted using a header tank. Plastic tubing and adjustable drip nozzles, starter kits of 20-30 nozzles and tubing seem to come in at <£20.

Try a local or national company for assistance and advice; ..er, anyone from AdamsLube to SKF to BP/Shell..?

Edit; by assistance, I mean material help in realising the project.. ..will they supply the wherewithal..

Edited By DiogenesII on 18/04/2023 07:34:35

Sounds an interesting museum

please give location and link

I fancy some smarties

+1 for an HGV chassis auto lube system - all the design and development has already been done. Don't know if those systems use grease or oil though.

You might be able to get one from a breakers yard, and rescue all the lube injectors from around the chassis, and then buy a reel of the plastic hose to plumb in your workshop.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 18/04/2023 10:17:36

Good morning Rainbows,

I don't know if any of these companies still exist, but they all provided "centralized lubrication systems" some time ago.

Tecalamit, Lumatic, Bielomatic & Trabon.

Yes, HGV's would be a good start, but don't forget the AG industry with Combine Harvesters, Forage Harvesters & Balers, etc. Not to mention production machinery.

Good luck. Preserving the past deserves it!

Search Grease-O- Matic . They were available with different grease types and oils . We used the oil types on the Hunts bearings on our slow revving extract plants and the grease types on the supply plants as well as laundry equipment . Highly cost effective . We ordered ours from a bearing supplier ( Wyko or City Seals I think ) .

Trevor beat me to it. They have a grease or oil reserve and slow reacting chemicals that force rhe lube out over a period.

Martin

Further food for thought . I eventually replaced the large (leaking ) brass Hunts bearings with Cooper bearings ( they were in Kings Lynn I think ). Basically rather than the shaft having to be machined , they have a split precision machined collar which bolts onto the shaft on which the roller bearings bare between it and the housing . Reliable , long trouble free life , better speed tolerance ( so as to allow easy use of VFD's ) and no hazardous oil deposits on the dark plant room floor.

Plastic tubing will be somewhat out of keeping with the equipment you describe, using bundy tubing to bring the oil points to a central point could simplify the task and was used to simplify the lubrication of some of our old overhead conveyor systems. Battery powered and timed lubricators are available but these probably fail the cost test of your application. It sounds like you require an automatic timed system and it is difficult to imagine how this could be achieved at low cost. There are plenty of solutions where cost is covered by labour saving but for a volunteer labour force it is difficult to offset the cost against labour saving. Getting the balance right between over and under lubrication is difficult, over lubrication is messy and under lubrication can be disastrous Manually visiting each point does give feedback on the situation of each lubrication point.

Mike

30-40 oil points would be a huge ammount of pipework, I would try and make larger oil cups and have an adjustable restrictor on each one.

The Grease -O-Matics are available with different feed rates . Am sure consultation with the company coupled with variable and logged initial manual monitoring would result in an eminently suitable solution in all facets.

Lots of expensive suggestions but has everyone read the budget for the project.

Operating budget is £2.50 and a pack of smarties.

Making 30-40 larger oil cups with adjustable restrictors would be a much bigger task than routing and cutting thin black plastic pipe - each run of which would only take a minute or so to install. And once installed the pipe system will not need every lube point to be individually checked daily, which I think was part of the brief.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 19/04/2023 09:34:08

Maybe worth approaching various suppliers concerned or the museums trust ( or whatever it's called these days ) , or the local council ( providing some child education can be proven ) for some degree of sponsorship ?

Not sure to which museum Rainbows is referring, but Kelham Island in Sheffield has a similar display and is well worth a visit; if you can find the best route to the entrance via the new low traffic planters.
https://www.sheffieldmuseums.org.uk/visit-us/kelham-island-museum/

I was there yesterday, as the host a series of lunchtime lectures.

Bill