Oil Cups: Why Tobacco Pipe Cleaners In Them?

[ascending]

Both of the two used mills I have purchased have had tobacco pipe cleaners in the oil cups that lead to the spindle bearings or quill area of the machine.

Is this common practice and does it work to slowly feed the oil to the bearings?

Also, will replacing the X/Y lead nuts on a worn mill help to reduce backlash much?

Dean

 

[snowman]

Also, will replacing the X/Y lead nuts on a worn mill help to reduce backlash much?

Yes and no.

Try this test. Measure the backlash at the left, middle and right side of the travel. If these numbers match, your new nuts should help with the backlash. If there is more wear in the center, the screw is worn. Yes, replacing will still help, but not as much.

-Jacob

 

[Milacron]

Re pipe cleaners, what should be in there are "wicks" that retain oil and feed it at a slow rate. I presume previous owner used pipe cleaners with "better than nothing" theory, but I would think proper wicks would work better. McMaster Carr has bearing wick material as I recall.

 

[precisionworks]

Brand new Gits oil cups come with the wicks (pipe cleaners) installed. They gotta work, Gits installed the oil cups on Noah's Ark.

Barry Milton

 

[machtool]

Gentlemen.

I swear black & blue that pipe cleaners work in those oil feeders. The big fluffy white ones are best. (We all know oil wont capillary flow up a green one). Done it myself a few times. Didn’t invent it myself, one of the old guys in that vintage of machine showed me it. I recall seeing some of the original wicks, having a small copper strand of wire included in them, with the cotton string woven / wrapped around that, so that they could be shaped and hold there form.

Regards Phil.

P.S (On Edit). That didn’t answer you original question. We all got thrown by the mention of pipe cleaners.

Once upon a time, that kind of oiler used to use a length of cotton string, called a “wick” dipped into the oiler and up and over, and down into oil port. So it was very common. You had to “wet” the wick when you installed it. I never quiet understood the science of it. But it was called capillary action, where the length of string / wick was longer going down into the port, than the height of the head it had to draw the oil up. I imagine it like siphoning.

It was also considered that the string acted as some kind of filter to the oil, where heavy particles would get trapped in the fines of the string. That’s why they were replaceable.

It was also considered that when you forgot to lubricated the machine, that the residual oil in the wick would prevent a bearing from running totally dry.

It does work to slowly feed the oil to the required point. The other ones, just the plain spring lid cups, you gave them a shot of oil, and it went away immediately.

Barry Mentioned Gits http://www.gitsmfg.com/gits-catalog.asp

There’s some information about wicks and oil feeders there.

 

[jim rozen]

The trouble with the wick feed oilers is, you
can't shut them off!

The machines in question are undoubtably B'port
M heads, that's how *all* the bearings in that
are lubricated - by that single oiler.

The oil gets fed first to the pulley bearings
at the top, then down the quill to the two upper
bearings, and by then it's pretty ugly and nasty
so it's fed to the bottom two precision bearings.

If those machines don't have oil dripping out
the bottom, something's not working right.

Jim

 

[surplusjohn]

we used to use pipe cleaners as wicks in sewing machines, made feeding them into the channels easier. Some machines had wicks that were a foot long, worked great, amazing the amount of oil they would transport. the newer machines had oil pans and the wick oilers that kept the workigns pretty wet

 

[E-Stop]

White pipe cleaners were standard equipment for paper folding machines we used to build. It was listed in the parts catalog as a wick, but we bought regular pipe cleaners by the gazillion, used them in the original build and repackaged them for service parts. They were used to keep the gears and rollers lubricated since they were not enclosed in an oil bath. When folding heavy card stock, they were also used to drag an alcohol solution on the fold mark as the paper entered the machine to break down the fibers and make a crisper fold.

 

[TheMetalDoctor]

Machtool,

A small piece of cotton rope will empty a pail of water .. just get it soaked and hang it over the side. Will take a little time, but will suck the pail dry.

TMD

 

[Tak]

On the subject of pipe cleaners, does anyone know of a source for the “normal”, plain cotton type? All I can seem to find these days in stores are the synthetic, multicolored ones for arts & crafts type uses. I doubt they will soak up any oil.

 

[Bass_Player]

I quit smoking about 5 years ago (YEAH!) but never had trouble finding pipe cleaners at just about every grocery store. Otherwise, most malls around here have some sort of tobacco shop with everything you could want at only 2x the regular price!

 

[Tak]

You would think that they would be easy to find (I used to buy them years ago in those small, yellow, cardboard containers), but I guess nothing can be easy anymore. I’ll try the tobacco shops.