FP2 Spindle Overhaul (lots of photos)

Been doing some overdue work on my FP2 Aktive machine and thought it might be of interest here.
It is my opinion and practice to clean and pack the spindle of any machine (Deckel) hat comes into my hands. Been pretty delinquent about doing this machine until now.
This is a late square head machine but the process ans general parts are pretty much the same on the earlier versions.

First thing is to remove the spindle/quill assembly form the vertical head.
While it might be possible to remove the spindle while the quill is fitted to the vertical head i do not think this a viable option as it would be impossible to get everything clean enough .

All manual "FP" quills come out in almost the same way.
The first requirement is removal of the draw bar.

Early machines use a flat thick threaded washer at the top end of the draw bar. It is secured from rotating with a taper pin through the washer and draw bar. Removal is simply to drift out the taper pin, and unscrew the washer while holding the draw bar. Once the washer is removed the bar will drop from the bottom of the spindle.
The reason the draw bar must come out is that the washer overhangs the drive slots in the spindle and will not allow it to slide out of the driving gear in the vertical head.

Being a later style machine it has a different retaining arrangement on the draw bar.
In this case the retention has three main parts in addition to the draw bar.
There is a snap ring nested inside the outer body.



Held i with the snap ring is a flanged circular part with the internal hex used to tighten the draw bar.

Pulling the top inner part up reveals the draw bar with its hex end, and two dowel pins that couple the top to the lower outer body (see holes in the floor of the outer body).
The outer body is threaded to the draw Bar and can be adjusted for backlash using the coupling dowels to the top part.
This system allows adjustment of the clearance between the spindle end and the top nut while providing a replaceable part where the wrench (allen key) is used to tighten the draw bar.



Removal of the draw bar is same as with earlier machines. Unscrew the washer (outer body) and the bar will drop out the lower end of the spindle.

Next thing required is to pull the hand feed shaft.



Both late and early machines are pretty much the same here.
Photo shows the wrench side of the shaft. Late versions have a hex socket to allow use of the Allen key to position the quill. Earlier machines have a square.

Shaft passes all the way trough the head casting. The side away from the operator has the return spring.

This view shows the spring housing already with the center retaining screw removed.
The housing is coupled to the cross shaft through a fine toothed spline.
Once the retaining screw is out the shaft can be pushed out of the head. The gear on he shaft that drives the quill is helical so it requires rotating as it is pulled from the head. I use a ling screw in place of the retaining screw to ease pushing the shaft out.





More to follow.................
Cheers Ross

With the cross shaft out, the spring cover should just pull off....it just hooks to the spring inside the spring body.
Do not remove the spring, it is not necessary and will complicate things getting it back into the housing.



If desired (i wanted to clean things up a bit) you can easily remove the main spring housing...it just fits to the head with a shoulder in a bore and two roll pins to stop it from turning.
You could as easily leave it in place.



One needs to know that the thrust of the helical gear is taken via a needle thrust bearing that lices between the spring cover and the spring body. Keep track of the bearing, the hard washers that the rollers run on and the shims if any that are present.



Here is a view of the hand feed cross shaft with spring housing and screw.
Also shown is the quill lock assembly.

While i believe one can remove the quill from the head without removing the lock assembly i pulled this one as i wished to inspect it and clean and lube it.
This machine has the late style clamp just like the FP-NC's.
This clamp rides in the slot in the quill and is expanded to grip the slot sides when the handle is tightened. It uses a wedge bolt to expand teh ears that run in the slot. The entire unit is made to fit into a bore ion the head casting.



This view shows the clamp removed. You can also see the wedge that expands the ears to grip the slot sides. This assembly is retained by a single screw, but it can be difficult to remove as the fit of the body to the housing is quite snug.

Earlier machines that use a band style quill clamp require no action to remove the quill.....They wave a fixed key wiath a slot in the quill to preent rotation, and are made in a way that allows the quill to drop out once the draw bar and feed cross shaft are removed.



Once the above has been accomplished, the quill assembly can be dropped out of the vertical head. It is removed by moving the assembly down and out of the vertical head.

More to follow.........................

Cheers Ross

Once the quill assembly is out, you can now do the spindle.
Here is what this one looks like.
Felt ring above the nut is a sort of bumper to cushion the quill return i think..also i guess helps keep dirt out...maybe.



With the felt removed the top thrust adjusting nut.

The Allen bolts draw the nut together across a groove in the body, compressing the top threads relative to the lower threads and making the nut "lock ". Earlier machines have different setups which may include a double adjusting nut coupled with a lock nut.
The later system i more accurate i believe and easier to adjust.



One of my rules is to try and always use a proper wrench for any special adjusters/nuts etc.
When you get to this point it is important to have a good method of removing/installing and adjusting the thrust nut.
I did not have the correct tool for this nut so i took a bit of time out and made one..............



Make this sort of wrench pretty often here. (lots of old cars use spanner type of nuts).
This one was made by turning a sleeve of 4142HT steel and tig bronze welding a mild steel handle to it.
The pins were then fitted by drilling and reaming through holes to fit 4mm hardened dowels....(light press)
If a pin gets damaged it can easily be replaced bu pushing it out the through hole.



With the tool made and the clamp bolts loose it is easy to remove the adjusting ring.



Once the ring is off, the entire spindle can be gently pushed out the bottom of the quill. Use care here not to beat on the end of the spindle...impact on the spindle will translate to impact to the precision trust bearings....

Cheers Ross

So far, but for the felt ring and the spring (oh, and the hydraulic drawbar), the setup is practically identical to the horizontal quill on my flip-head FP2NC. For us lazy sorts, McMaster has nice made-in-Germany adjustable face spanners for the lock nuts. Facom (France) has an even nicer one that has replaceable tips, but I find the ends are too fat and interfere in many applications.

Rich:
Yes this head is almost exactly like the vertical of my non flip head FP4NC with the exception of the hydraulic draw bar and the size of he parts.
Sort of fun to see the progression...done several of these both early and later like this and it is nice to see the advances in design.

Cheers Ross

More of the lock assy, if anyone cares -

Exploded view:



Close-up of the assembly:



What you see when the lock is removed, the slot in the quill through the
housing:



Looking forward to the full monty of the bearings!

With the adjusting nut off the entire spindle can be pushed out of the quill. Use care here to not damage the thrust bearings....



Roller cage of lower bearing just exiting the quill.....
Nice thing about needle rollers is that there is no pre-load between the spindle and quill so the parts will come apart without huge force and the chance of damaging a bearing is pretty low if you are careful.
There is some interference on the thrust bearings both to the spindle and quill so things will not just fall apart.

View of main spindle bearings and where they ride on the spindle.



The thrust packages...requires two sets. One for each direction. Each thrust bearing has a race that fits to the OD of the shaft and one that fits to the ID of the quill..be sure to keep everything just as it came out of the spindle. Note i have everything tagged and labeled. Don't mix up any of the parts.
Further i use a cute little "Suhner" air powered engraving pen to mark the races and cages ...mark the races on the outside edge away from the working area....I mark the parts as to location and direction. This is no place for guess work.



View of spindle upper bearing race. Showing the threads for the adjusting ring and he two OD seats (smaller ground bands) for the thrust bearings.
Larger ground band is the race for the upper bearing...this one is in very nice shape....no problems as far as i can tell...
Pattern in the center of the race is what i would expect...needle rollers are made with a very slight crown in the center and that gives the pattern shown...



Spindle nose and lower bearing race...again a pattern running in the center...surface in near perfect condition.
Tapered ring at the nose of the spindle forms the "seal" for the spindle to the quill. There is a projection in the face of that ring that runs in a mating groove in the quill...that is it...
Should note here as well tht i believe tht seal ring/cone is replaceable. It is just shrunk on to the spindle nose.



Stay tuned.............
Cheers Ross

Additional parts: this is the upper seal and spacer washer for the toip of the quill.
It goes between the adjusting nut and the thrust bearing. It is cup shaped with a flange. the cut extends into the quill while the flange almost touches the top face of the quill. It rotates with the spindle and nut. It must be very flat and i will use a fine stone to be sure there are no burrs on top of bottom face before fitting final.



OK here is the big picture....all teh major parts in the spindle.



Close up of the upper roller cage. Note the 3 lines on the cage...
These are not my marks, but the size code for the roller diameter.
Almost impossible to measure the differences of the sizes so the code marks tell the story.
If the spindle and quill failed to meet clearance tolerance a different needle roller would be chosen to correct the problem...I will go over how i check the installed clearance later....




Lower quill view showing the mirror like finish of the race and the seal groove of the end.



View of upper end of the quill. face ground surface is the seat for one of the thrust bearing races.
Below and not really clear is the upper needle bearing race....



Ok, enough for now...the spindle is apart and the task now is getting everything clean...like spotless. All grease remains must be removed from the needle cages and surfaces as well as the thrust bearings....
Will return to this thread when everything is ready to assemble....
Cheers Ross

Jim:
Thank you for the addition..nice detail, thanks for adding detail to the content and making that part clear for everyone.
Cheers Ross

AlfaGTA said:

.....
Nice thing about needle rollers is that there is no pre-load between the spindle and quill

Click to expand...

Hard to believe for me there won't be any preload.It's just not much, I would think it has to be 2-3 mikron negative .
What is the max RPM of this spindle?

Unlike angular contact ball bearings, needle roller bearings are too stiff to accept radial preload. Ball bearings rely on essentially point contact and a line of action that is at an angle with respect to the radial direction to give slight compliance to the assembly. Needle bearings have line contact and the line of action of the force is in the radial direction. Hence, in needle bearings, tiny amounts of interference result in intolerable forces because the stiffness is so high.

In any event, when a needle bearing rolls, there is a trapped wedge of lubricant at each roller that takes up the clearance and stiffens everything up, somewhat analogous to what happens in a journal bearing.

Great photos!

I'm frankly amazed that the needles ride directly on the spindle on the inside,
and directly on the quill on the outside. This means the mfr MUST create
the parts with the correct heat treatment, the correct geometry, and they
all must fit together with the specified clearances.

This cements in my mind the idea that, I must *never* remove the quill from
my machine at work!

Just out of curiosity, are all those needles lubed by the oil fitting at the top of the
housing?

Jim

jim rozen said:

This cements in my mind the idea that, I must *never* remove the quill from
my machine at work!

Just out of curiosity, are all those needles lubed by the oil fitting at the top of the
housing?

Jim

Click to expand...

Jim, the needles are grease-lubricated. Hence, you must disassemble the quill once in a while to clean and regrease. You cannot avoid disassembly. My FP2NC manual does not say how often to do this. My Aciera manual says to regrease its quill every 10,000 hours. Assuming 8-hour days, that's about 5 years.

Interesting. Then what is *this* thing for??



Thanks - jim

Oiling the top bevel gears. Look at Ross' images- there is no way that nipple would provide any access to the spindle itself.

Makes sense - thanks guys.

I suspect this machine has no more than 100 hours, *total* on it since its
manufacture.

Grease degrades slowly over time, so regreasing depends on more than just total operating hours.

jim rozen said:

I suspect this machine has no more than 100 hours, *total* on it since its
manufacture.

Click to expand...

As an example of how anal I can get about these things sometimes.... I found it most curious the green paint on the top front of your FP2 vertical head, including the cap screws. Every other late Deckel head I've seen in that style had no paint there. But even if there was paint on some, I couldn't imagine Deckel also painting the screws !

So I looked thru brochures and sure enough Deckel did paint that portion on the FP2 in my 1979 brochure. But not the screws. But wait...they did paint the screws on the 1979 FP3L ! (which has the exact same vertical head)

So, I guess it just depended on the mood of the Deckel paint booth person the day it was painted !

Looking at 1980's brochures, they stopped painting that area on the vertical heads...so that explains the difference I guess.

Deckel trivia for the day...

Interesting point about the paint....The machine i am working on looks to have original paint, and it had bolt heads painted..no primer on the fasteners, just the top coat.
I like the black oxide contrast against the green, so i removed all painted bolts and removed the paint..just makes the machine look more finished IMHO. Besides the paint was not terribly well adhered to the bolt heads and anywhere there had been a wrench the paint was coming off....made it look a bit shabby to my eye.

Cheers Ross

Yes, definitely painted there:



And yet, the large flat area on the front of the vertical head - left unpainted.
I'm sure it's supposed to be for something important, just have not figured it
out yet.

Good point on the mean time between overhauls. The spindles on this
machine *seem* to perform fine - but who knows what is really in there.

Jim