Fabricating an FP2 lower chip pan?

Hey y'all,

My FP2 leaves me little dribbles of way oil on the floor. Mostly this is a nuisance on the operator's side where I get drips from the Z-axis handwheel. The oil does seem to make its way into the Z-axis dial, where it also makes a mess whenever I adjust the zero.
Now, I didn't get a chip pan with my FP2 and I wonder how much trouble it'd be to fabricate one. I searched around a little bit, but I didn't see any good photos of how the original is constructed.
I wonder if any of you who have an original chip pan would be willing to take some pictures and take some measurements for me?

Siggi

If you want to use flood coolant then having a chip pan makes sense. But if the only reason is to stop oil dripping off the Z-axis handwheel and dial onto the floor, there must be better solutions. Ideally you'd like to stop that oil from getting through, so you don't get it on your hands. If you fit a chip pan, you'll be hitting your shins on it for quite some time.

My FP2 also has oil coming out there. One of these days I might try and fit some kind of seal to stop it. Doe anyone else here suffer from this?

Looks like a design flaw to me.....The oil leak that is. Early FP2's had the hand wheel angled down somewhat.
That means that the shaft points down from the bevel gear that drives the screw. There is oil present at the gear end and it can run down the shaft to the hand wheel.
Further the parts book shows that shaft as having nice oil grooves in it to help the oil on its way....
Later machines (square head) changed this to make the shaft run horizontal. To get clearance for the hand wheel they added a second shaft to drive the bevel gears and an idler between the hand wheel shaft and the bevel gear shaft...all using anti friction bearings...plus a snubber (friction device) to help hold the hand wheel position....Lots of complication to get away from the angled shaft.....

Difficult to fit a seal to this configuration as one end has a solid flange/shoulder and looks like the shaft runs directly in the housing. Can't cut the shaft down on the output end to get under the oil groove as you would nave no way to install the shaft on a smaller seal ...Could add a sleeve to get over the oil groove, but the housing is not too thick...little room there for a seal and to retain the thrust washer.
Maybe a seal that had its own housing that fit on/over the shaft housing that applied the seal to the OD of the flange on the end of the shaft....have to see how much room is there...

Cheers Ross

Hi Ross,

AlfaGTA said:

Looks like a design flaw to me.....The oil leak that is. Early FP2's had the hand wheel angled down somewhat.

Click to expand...

Yes, that's certainly the case here.

Later machines (square head) changed this to make the shaft run horizontal. To get clearance for the hand wheel they added a second shaft to drive the bevel gears and an idler between the hand wheel shaft and the bevel gear shaft...all using anti friction bearings...plus a snubber (friction device) to help hold the hand wheel position....Lots of complication to get away from the angled shaft.....

Click to expand...

I didn't realize that, nor did I suspect that this was all just to eliminate that annoying oil drip. But it makes sense.

Difficult to fit a seal to this configuration as one end has a solid flange/shoulder and looks like the shaft runs directly in the housing. Can't cut the shaft down on the output end to get under the oil groove as you would nave no way to install the shaft on a smaller seal ...Could add a sleeve to get over the oil groove, but the housing is not too thick...little room there for a seal and to retain the thrust washer.
Maybe a seal that had its own housing that fit on/over the shaft housing that applied the seal to the OD of the flange on the end of the shaft....have to see how much room is there...

Click to expand...

I pulled up this old photo from years ago, thinking that this looked pretty easy to seal, the groove doesn't come out here.



But now that I think about it, I am wondering if the bore that this shaft rides in is sealed all the way in, or if it's open under the support. Will have to get under it with a flashlight one of these days to take a look.

Cheers,
Bruce

Don't have any specific info on the shaft, too long since i have been inside an FP2 (witness to their build quality)...
Just judging from the drawings in the parts book, which shows the groove going all the way out to the thrust (plain) washer.
The shat is made necked down in the center with plain bearings at each end....
There is a ball thrust bearing to take thrust from the bevel gear mesh. The plain washer at the opposite end looks to be there to set the end float on the ball thrust....

The part you see in the photo up to the housing is the outboard shoulder, part of the shaft, but larger than the shaft bearing diameter. The plain thrust washer is just behind that shoulder bearing
against the end of the housing.....Book shows the housing as solid, and that makes sense in order to keep the end bushing bores aligned....

Might be possible to replace the washer on the outboard end with an engineering plastic, like "Rulon" If fit properly it could effectively reduce the oil leakage there without dramatically increasing the friction of the hand wheel movement.
Cheers Ross

I can't actually recall having had issues with oil from there on my machine. It does drip oil, but it all falls inside the base most of the time.