1. I've seen A LOT of spindle insides and on Deckel/Maho/Aciers you almost always see the front bearing outer cone/race blued.
That's news to me, and probably AlfaGTA and DeckelDoctor, too. I have not seen the issue with Deckel or Aciera spindles.
2. There is nothing wrong with overpacking the bearings with grease.
Okaayyy. Sure. SKF etc., would beg to differ.
1. I believe you but then, how many spindles have you seen opened ? Three ?? The overheating of the lower bearing on the vertical spindle was a very common problem with those machines in production. A homeshop machinist might never see this problem. I've no idea who are AlfaGta and DeckelDoctor but you shouldn't presume what they've seen or what they'll say. I am quite curious as to their experiences as Deckel and Maho changed the spindle grease a few times and I would like some info on that.
2. On low speed spindles like Deckel or Maho there is ample space inside the spindle for the grease to move. One fills the bearing with grease as well as possible, adds something over and under the bearing and then runs in the spindle at low rpm to distribute the grease. A lot of grease will just be evacuated. To my eye, aprox 1/2. Next time I'll service a spindle I'll measure. The SKF recommendations are generic i.e. the bearing may run up to nominal speed. That'd be around 4 times the rpm on a Deckel/Maho. And SKF uses way more grease than "a dab" inside their bearings with RS1 shields. That tells us something. This is a field where one shouldn't rely blindly on manufacturer's recoms - manuf is known to have made big cock ups with spindles.
The factory my dad worked for before retiring had a fair amount of M800s and the manner the Maho people serviced the spindles was nothing like the BS in the manual. But then, a mistake would've been very costly and swiftly recovered - that wasn't a plant tolerant towards suppliers and packed a big punch.