Lubrication for a Burke #4 mill vertical head.

This last week I picked up a pair of Burke #4 milling machines. One with the universal table, and fairly complete, the other with no pedestal or motor but with the factory vertical head.

The vertical head was frozen, and after disassembly I found it to have been packed with now hardened grease. I've got the grease out and everything moves smoothly now, but I am wondering what would be the right sort of grease to re-pack it with, assuming that is what should be in there in the first place. I've got some red Mobile 1 bearing grease that i use for packing car bearings, but I'm not sure if that's too thick at cold temps and if i should use something lighter / oozier.

Thanks for your help!

I need to get the stuck vertical head arbor out of the spindle on one machine... and a 3C collet closer adapter out of the spindle on the other machine. I also need to find myself some horizontal arbors for the B&S 9 spindle, and see if i can find a Burke indexing head somewhere, One of the machines came with the Burke tail-stock but not the indexing head to match it. The one on the pedestal is marked 1946, the one on the angle iron cart, 1942.

the two mills
http://www.tharkis.com/images/tools/burke/IMG_0196.JPG

old mostly solidified grease
http://www.tharkis.com/images/tools/burke/IMG_0188.JPG

Mostly cleaned out now and everything spinning smoothly
http://www.tharkis.com/images/tools/burke/IMG_0190.JPG

Back "in the day", Burke packed the bearings on the Number 4 mills with "soap based" fiberous wheel bearing grease- the stuff garages were using into the 1950's. This stuff has a brownish color. The vertical head has no seals, and semi-exposed helical gearing. You will need a grease that is a true grease, rather than something semi-fluid. If you used an automotive wheel bearing grease such as is used to pack bearings on boat trailers, this grease has plenty of "cling" and is OK for roller bearings. It will be fine for the gearing.

Do not use any greases with molybdenum disulfide in them. This stuff, while wonderful in its own right, is somewhat debatable around roller bearings. I have a Burke Number 4 mill, and speak from experience about the old automotive wheel bearing grease being in the spindle bearings. I'll try to hunt up the Burke manual I have rat-holed down in my shop and see if any reference is made to lubrication.

The old soap-based greases did harden and look like a dry lake bed. The other downside to some of the older greases is they tended to "channel" when used in gearboxes, so the gears actually ran dry. Speaking from experience with grease lubed gearboxes on some powerplant equipment and a 1950's lube spec... I would avoid synthetic greases, and just get a tube of automotive lithium based grease as is used for general purpose lube of wheel bearings, U joints and suspension parts. These greases seem a bit more "plastic" than the old soap based automotive greases of the 1950's.

Thanks for the advise! I found a copy of of the army milling machine manual for the #4 Burke and it says to use suggested a grease that they haven't made in over 50 years. sounds like this Sta-Lube SL3330 "Moly-Graph" lithium grease should work then. Despite the name it doesnt actually have any molybdenum disulfide in it according to the MDS

distillates (petroleum), hydrotreated heavy naphthenic 60 - 70%
residual oils (petroleum), solvent-refined 20 - 30%
lithium hydroxide, monohydrate 1 - 10%
phosphorodithioic acid,o,o-di-c1-14-alkyl esters, zinc salts 1 - 10%
polyethylene 3 - 5%
distillates (petroleum), solvent-refined heavy paraffinic < 1%
graphite < 1%
quartz < 1%

I'll be out in your neck of the woods this coming weekend, down at the Ashokan center =)

Hello Justin:

Ordinarily, I'd put a visit into the Ashokan field campus (or whatever it's called nowadays) for the "Hammer In". Unfortunately, I can;t be in two places at once- my nephew from Wyoming is having an engagement party. He is marrying a lady from West Virginia, and the engagement party is down in Maryland in some little town called "Saint Leonard's". So, I am off to the races, taking my wife to go as the "senior man" in our family, armed with a good bottle of home made hooch from one of my buddies and planning to enjoy myself with my brother as he is coming in from Wyoming for this. Afterwards, I am taking my wife into D.C. for some sightseeing, something she has wanted to do for a long time. Needless to say, I wish I could have gone to the field campus this weekend. Some of my friends will be there, one of whom is Jonathan Nedbor, a very fine artist blacksmith, and my buddy Arthur Vogel will be there was well- a character with plenty of red hair and red beard. Jonathan Nedbor is kind of the "dean" of the blacksmiths in our area, and he is the fellow who has the Kuhn power hammer (or pneumatic hammer) in his shop. I am sure you will have a great time. Another fellow there is Tim Neu, who is one of the directors of the center. I helped Tim out with some engineering and stamping his house plans, and did some engineering for some of the buildings at the Ashokan Center years ago. There is always a nice "tailgate flea market" with all sorts of good stuff for sale, machinist tools mingled with smithing tools and books and supplies.

If you are trying to match an obsolete grease, you might look at what "Lubriplate" offers. They are a smaller firm and make a line of industrial greases and lubricants that is perhaps a bit more specialized than automotive greases.

Enjoy your stay at the Ashokan Center. They usually feed you quite well there, with some of the food produced right there. Time was that the meat & chicken served at the Center (back when it was part of the NYS University at New Paltz) was raised and slaughtered and dressed right there as well. Those days are long gone, but the food is always good, and in our area, there are plenty of vegetarians and people on all sorts of different food regimens. They do not go hungry at the Ashokan Center.

usually, on Friday Night when folks first arrive, as well as Saturday night, there may be a field trip to a local firm, or it may be to the current local watering hole. There's a good group that participates at the Ashokan Center and they get some very good "guest lecturer/demonstrators". Sorry I miss the chance to meet you.

BTW: I am making two small 24 pitch spur gears for my buddy's Rivett lathe- and he fixed me up with a nice jug of his special home made corn whisky. Not sure what he puts in his whisky. I will say that my sister and I had been at odds for 3 or 4 years, and when she got some of that hooch in her, she did a 180 and was apologetic, tearful and wanting her big brother back. We had a jug at a family reunion this past November, and the result was even more dramatic, people were really mellowed out and if they ever had differences, they got along like never before. Mom is now 99, still using a computer and still driving after a fashion. She tells me to be sure and bring a jug of the hooch to this event.

justin.mercier said:

got some red Mobile 1 bearing grease that i use for packing car bearings, but I'm not sure if that's too thick at cold temps and if i should use something lighter / oozier.

Click to expand...

That "channeling" effect Joe mentioned adversely affects the horizontal spindle bearings as well.

"Probable cause" the age of the design - inspired by, if not near-as-dammit copied from a Whitney mill.

Burke is older than many realize if you but track the county archives in history back where it began, circa 1903, IIRC. Thence several disolutions, re-novations, transfer, and more than one merger, de-merger and re-merger with U.S Machine Tool before the lot went into Houdaille's Powermatic Division.

Early # 4 & cousins had plain bearings and oil drip lubrication. Later ones had Timkens for the common low/medium speed, ball bearings for the less-common high speed optioning.

The cavities around the spindle bearings in the casting are just about right for oil lube, a good fill-line just above bottom of rolling-element rotation where it would be picked up and spread well, but not pumped, foamed, or overheated.

Note that they are plumbed just about right for that, but are no longer effectively sealed for use with oil, if ever they even were.

Said cavities are actually overlarge for grease. Great gobs of it are needed just to occupy space if purge by grease gun is to be of any use atall. Even then, one can confirm that it was NOT very effective. "New" grease easily bypasses "channels" rather than collapse them, exits directly around the alleged "seals" with too little resistance.

For the spindles one may as well "charge" the Timken's races by hand with Kluber Isoflex and trust that worthy goo to literally "hang in there" and live long even in an otherwise empty "cavern".

For your vertical head, I think I'd want that stringy high tackifier "adhesive" grease so it had a fighting chance of remaining where it did any good, too. Gears are whole separate animals from roller bearings.

As before, I would leave the "cavern" largely empty. Not a lot of point in "tankering" grease as never gets near the needy area at temps much below a shop on fire.

What "leaks" out?

Wipe-up and periodic replenish comes with the territory. A Burke never was a SIP Genevoise, Hardinge, nor priced like either to begin with.

"Contrary minded"? Well. No need for a consensus. As usual, we shall all roll our own dice as we see fit!

Seals that actually WORKED well would be a nice "project", though.

Hah I know exactly what you mean by the design changing, the latter #4 of the 2 I have is equipped with oil ports, oilers, and a big oil drain on the side, the earlier one has no holes for oiling the spindle, and instead is packed with grease. Both have an Equiped with Timken! label on the side though.

justin.mercier said:

Hah I know exactly what you mean by the design changing, the latter #4 of the 2 I have is equipped with oil ports, oilers, and a big oil drain on the side, the earlier one has no holes for oiling the spindle, and instead is packed with grease. Both have an Equiped with Timken! label on the side though.

Click to expand...

Timken themselves have always been up for pointing out that their bearings are happy with oil lube OR grease.

Churning, frothing, generating heat from too MUCH oil isn't on, but it is sore tempting to convert mine to oil lube, using the Monarch 10EE's oil levels as a guide for the Timkens needs.

FWIW not-much-dept? The very similar Hendey T&G doesn't use oil as the Monarch 10EE does. Would you believe grease-lubed spindle bearings on a super-precision toolroom lathe?

Doesn't seem to be "just one right answer"!



BTW - I'd sureley appreciate a good photo of that # 4 that showed the arrangment of its oil plumbing well enough to serve as a guide for copying it.

I've got enuf automotive fu to believe I CAN implent decent-enough oil seals.

Worst-case, I'll have to add oil often.

BFD. Once had a former VA State Police cruiser high-mileage MOPAR Corvette-hunter 440 CID V8 that seemed to toss oil out its 'sost piping still in sealed tins @ under a hundred miles to the quart.

So long as the Burke's oil ever and always gets to where it does good, it would be better than the grease as has been shown to fail at that.