Cnc turret lubrication question

Kallam · Nov 2, 2017

I have a Clausing Storm 80 cnc lathe with a Fanuc 21tb control 12 station hydraulic and servo driven turret. The machine is about 20 years old.
The turret has a 2 stage gear reduction and has become very noisy.
The manual says use grease for the gears.
It quiets them for a few hours and I have tried 10 different types of gear greases and the noise is back in a few hours.

So today out of frustration I pored a half quart of mobil shc 634
gear oil down the vent tube filled the gear box about half way i think.

Now everything a nice and quiet.
It takes the turret a little longer to unclamp.
so i had to adjust the proximity sensor.
The turret would start to turn before the couplings
were fully disengaged, it works fine now.
I don't know why the hydraulics unclamp the turret.

Can any of you think of a reason this would be bad for the turret?

Also is there a chance oil could get into he fanuc servo motor do the shafts have seals on them?

Thanks
Tim

Ox · Nov 2, 2017

Heck, I don't even know what you are lubing.

"Gear reduction gear box" on a turret?

Whatever it is, it's prolly not the gears that are causing the noise.
Prolly a bearing going out, and the gears are now meshing in different spots that normal.

Lucas (STP?) additive, or stop by your Harley dealership for some strait 50.

--------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

ewlsey · Nov 2, 2017

Many lathes have a gear reduction in the turret. In most cases, it's geared to 1 rotation of the indexing motor for every turret station. So, if you have a 10 station turret, the gearing is 10:1.

On larger lathes, I have seen double gear reductions to give 2 or even 3 rotations of the indexing motor per tool station.

I'm not aware of any turret gear assemblies that run in an oil bath. It's a super low RPM setup that makes maybe 1 full turn per cycle. Ox is probably on the right track. Could be that the turret shaft bushings have worn and you are not getting good gear tooth mesh.

cwtoyota · Nov 2, 2017

Kallam said:
I have a Clausing Storm 80 cnc lathe with a Fanuc 21tb control 12 station hydraulic and servo driven turret. The machine is about 20 years old.
The turret has a 2 stage gear reduction and has become very noisy.
The manual says use grease for the gears.
It quiets them for a few hours and I have tried 10 different types of gear greases and the noise is back in a few hours.

So today out of frustration I pored a half quart of mobil shc 634
gear oil down the vent tube filled the gear box about half way i think.

Now everything a nice and quiet.
It takes the turret a little longer to unclamp.
so i had to adjust the proximity sensor.
The turret would start to turn before the couplings
were fully disengaged, it works fine now.
I don't know why the hydraulics unclamp the turret.

Can any of you think of a reason this would be bad for the turret?

Also is there a chance oil could get into he fanuc servo motor do the shafts have seals on them?

Thanks
Tim

I haven't seen many without, at minimum, a rubber-lip dust-seal.
They had options like keyed shafts, taper, sealed for oil inside gearboxes, etc.
I believe that information is all encoded in the servo part number on most Fanuc servos.
Post your servo part number, maybe someone here can decode it for you.

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Cnc turret lubrication question

Kallam

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Ox

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ewlsey

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cwtoyota

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