What grease to use for Deckel dividing head?

Hey y'all,

I got a dividing head with my FP2, and this weekend I tore into it to clean it up. It was stuffed with dried-up grease, and everything felt icky and sticky. I got a grease gun with my FP2 with some old grease in it. The color matches what I found in the dividing head, but I don't know that I want to use that old gunk.

Are there any particular requirements for this? What's a good grease to use?

Incidentally, when I was disassembling the head, I dropped the gear and dinged up a couple of teeth. I could have kicked myself - this dividing head made it all the way here out of the sixties, and then I go ding it up. This resulted in a couple of tight spots, so I dressed the damaged teeth best I could by repeatedly fitting the gear and stoning off the shiny spots. This won't have done the precision of the gear any good, though I can't have removed more than millionths where the teeth had bulged from the bumping.
So, as a word to the wise, be careful with the precision gear - it's not hardened.

Siggi

sigurasg said:

Are there any particular requirements for this? What's a good grease to use?

Click to expand...

The Deckel manual calls for "general purpose roller bearing grease" at the two lubrication points of the dividing head. Since this is low-speed operation, provided that you are not flooding the dividing head with coolant, I think almost any reasonable lithium-based grease would be OK. That's what I use, in part because the lithium base is compatible with most other greases, so with whatever is already inside if you have not cleaned it entirely. The other good option might be a moly grease, since that's especially good for low-speed high-pressure operation.

If you are using flood coolant and that coolant might reach the grease, then ask the coolant vendor for advice on greases that won't be damaged by their coolant.