Jones and Shipman 540 Column Rollers endplay

Hi all,

During the lockdown period I stripped my J&S 540 to the bone, the previous owner did not tend to the machine as one would have hoped (did not cover all the parts, worked with the machine without the covers on the front side under the spindle etc) which resulted in grinding dust entering all the cavities and doing damage to the column guides predominantly.

I have replaced the column guides and obviously cleaned everything and gave it a nice new coat of paint.

The question I have is the followin: The column rollers have three parts, the outer ring in which the column rollers run, one inner race for the roller bearings and cylindrical bearings and then one cone which only presses against the roller bearings solely. Between the two inner races there is a spacer and according to the parts manual there may or may not be a shim. It had two shims on the right side of the machine with two spacers and on the left, only the two spacers. However, nothing is the same thickness and I did not measure each part, cone etc when I stripped it which in retrospect, would have been the clever thing to do if they were then also marked.

I have assembled everything and all the rollers as assembled have 0.12mm of axial play, which to my mind is not correct (and way too much) as the column head will not be stable and that would introduce error.

Does anyone perhaps have specifications on allowable endplay, axially or what it should be?

If I remove the spacers then there is no play but seeing as the manual states that there should be spacers, it makes me wonder. the manual is silent on the allowable play. (PS,I hate shims). My logic tells me that the endplay should be at a minimum.

Any advice will be appreciated.

Just out of curiosity, do you have the belt attached And tensioned on the spindle? On a good machine I’m used to seeing 0.005mm total endplay or less. Plus how much force are you using on the spindle to measure?

However, You may be worrying about nothing.

From my experience, even well serviced machines get a Heavy build up of dust inside the column/base.

Worst case i think, is that you’ve cleaned all the crap out which was taking up the space in the Column rollers.
If you had 0.5mm I would have suggested a mis-assembly. Although I agree that you should have measured each spacer upon removal.

Remedial work I reckon is to remake or weld up some spacers to remove that slack.

Hi Luke,

Everything is still disassembled, to get them out when everything is in is a pain. My concern is that if the column is installed with the motor etc that there might be a bit of "drift" on the Y Axis which is equal to the play on the roller assemblies. I am thinking of just making shims the thickness of the measured play in order to take up most (leave a tolerance of say .05) of the play.

I might be concerning myself about something that could possibly have little to no impact but I would prefer to do it properly the first time around.

I remember reading in the manual that "adjustments to the column rollers should be carried out by factory-trained personnel" or something of that sort.

With so many J&S540s still in service, I am hopeful that there is someone here (Tyrone, Mark?) who has done these adjustments and can explain the procedure.

The only adjustment I have done on my 1400 so far, is to verify the fit of the rollers by adjusting the eccentric bolts/mounts of the rollers to give zero play.

When I actually rebuild the machine, I will be trying to get it perfect, but I haven't started that project yet...

Excuse my typo, I meant 0.005mm not 0.05mm but regardless, the proof is in the pudding. If it grinds well, then it works, just no guarantees for the longevity.

Luke.kerbey said:

Excuse my typo, I meant 0.005mm not 0.05mm but regardless, the proof is in the pudding. If it grinds well, then it works, just no guarantees for the longevity.

Click to expand...

Well, I assembled and shimmed everything last night, got all 4 rollers to .02mm endplay. They are back in the column and all that will then remain is the alignment with the eccentric bolts and to verify that everything is perpendicular to each other etc. The proof will be in the grinding...