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VN22L cutterhead and gear noise?

Brandenberger

Hot Rolled
Joined
Sep 19, 2017
Hi,
Finally got the spindle motor and cutterhead turning on my VN22L for the first time today. I had previously removed the cutterhead and cleaned out the grease and old oil (submerged the entire cutterhead in diesel for a few weeks).

I did not pull the spindle assembly apart, other than cleaning out the rear bearing cap and removing the front bearing cap as far as it will come, to allow washing out the bearings.

The ram gears themselves were similarly filled with diesel for a month or so run slowly, then drained.

Cutterhead bearings greased and both cutterhead and ram filled with ISO68 oil.

Now, I'm getting a fair bit of rear bearing noise from the cutterhead, and from the frontmost shaft in the ram (which drives the ram), in the top two speeds. The front spindle bearing isn't noisy.

The noise is quite a bit less when running the spindle in reverse. Which suggests to me perhaps this is just normal gear wear?

The cutterhead on mine is a more modern sort, NMTB50.

Thanks,
Phil
 
Having the NMTB version makes life much easier than having the B&S13 version - I can't imagine what that must be like when trying to source tooling.

Just thinking out loud here: It seems that if a gear is noisier in 1 direction than the other, then it must be wear on the certain face of the teeth that correspond to the noisy direction.
 
Having the NMTB version makes life much easier than having the B&S13 version - I can't imagine what that must be like when trying to source tooling.

Just thinking out loud here: It seems that if a gear is noisier in 1 direction than the other, then it must be wear on the certain face of the teeth that correspond to the noisy direction.

Yes, that was my thinking too. But curious from other VN 22 type owners whether their top speeds are much more noisy or not?
 
Pulled off cutterhead and measured backlash in gear train in the ram,
with the drive pulley immobilized.

vn head gear - 1.jpg

In lowest spindle gear speed (40rpm) backlash is about .008". In highest gear (1100rpm) it is about .060".

There are 3 shafts in the ram, the driven shaft with pulley, a countershaft, and the shaft that drives the cutterhead via the spiral bevel gear shown. So I guess not surprising the backlash increases at higher gear ratios, and/or perhaps the higher spindle speeds were used heavily on this machine and the gears are worn?

I was planning on adjusting the backlash out of the cutterhead / bevel gear, but now that I found this other backlash, I am suspecting that's the source of all or most of the noise.

One other question for you other VN owners-- I had the head in the vertical position for about 1-2 months, and in that time all the oil drained out the front. Obviously these machines have a reputation for leaking oil out of the cutterhead... I have pumped the front bearing full of one of the recommended greases expecting that to function as a oil seal of sorts.

Anyone ever taken the cutterhead of a VN22 apart to replace the oil seal? Of the various manual versions I can find online, none have exactly the head from my machine, so I'm not even sure there is an oil seal without taking it apart.

-Phil
 








 
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