how to grease precision spindle bearings?

I rebuilt a K.O. Lee grinder spindle once. They were still in business at that time. I called and they sent me the factory procedure. It called out some grease that was something like $500/pound. I visited my local machinery rebuilder (now gone, of course) and bitched and he gave me a little bit of the good grease. I remember I had to inject it into the ball bearings with a needle. I don't have the factory procedure anymore, and I don't remember what kind of grease it was.

Today I am cleaning and relubricating another K.O. Lee spindle. It is from a motorized workhead for a tool & cutter grinder. It is shown here:

http://nwnative.us/Grant/page7.pdf

I have completely disassembled the spindle. I have cleaned one bearing 100% and the other is soaking in solvent now. The PLY-A seals at one end were corroded around the steel retaining ring. I cleaned those and they are now soaking in Metal Rescue, an Evaporust-like derusting fluid.

The spindle bearings are Fafnir 2MM9112WICRDU. Outer ring, spider, 19 balls and the inner ring. They come apart with a little push. They had some issues but I am going to try to reuse them mostly because I don't feel like buying another set right now. K.O. Lee is long gone, so no factory support. I have a variety of greases, but I am not inclined to buy hundreds of dollars worth of grease for a few grams, so I the grease I use will probably come from my collection.

This spindle is a low speed spindle, 250 rpm tops. It looked to me like the bearings were filled full of grease last time.

I'm not working on this spindle because of noise issues - rather, when I turned the spindle by hand it felt crunchy. Dried grease? Dirt? don't know.

Do you have an opinion on what kind of grease I should use, and/or how full I should pack the bearings?

Thank you,

metalmagpie

At that low speed, and assuming no other issues, a premium automotive wheel bearing grease would likely be fine. Just make sure it doesn't include any additives that could attack copper, if your retainer is bronze. If it's a polymer or phenolic no need to worry about that aspect.

Shoot for 20-30% fill, just work it in well to the race grooves and retainer. Any excess will be pushed out.

One thing I would suggest is replacing the balls. You should be able to either send a few to a place like Boca Bearing for them to measure and sell you the right size, or, measure them yourself (using stacked gauge blocks as go/no-go gauges) and order them in.

Balls - Steel, Ceramic, Plastic & Glass by Boca Bearings :: Ceramic Bearing Specialists

At that low of speed, pretty much any grease would be OK but................I would avoid wheel bearing grease! It is generally very thick and not very oily as it is designed to not melt when your brakes are red hot. Any other automotive grease would probably be OK.

Fafnir has this to say

Lumley used this brand



and they are still around !

Lubriko

It was the one that is a reddish / amber color ... they have a phone

Cheap and good for this sort of thing is Chevron SRI grease.

If you take them apart, assuming you want to maintain the original bearing precision (and it's not already damaged) lay out the ball bearings in order, and put them back same way. They are graded by size (microns).

Grease - make's little difference at that rpm, and "fill" is almost as unimportant. Clean quality NLGI2 or 1 weight grease will be fine.

I have that exact tin. Bought it back in the 60s. Walked into a local bearing shop and asked for a grease for a high quality, high speed ball bearing spindle. That is what they handed me.

I don't remember what I paid, but that was my college days so it was probably around $5 or $10. I can guarantee you it was not even $100, much less $500.

It is still good in the sealed tin. I have used it for every bearing packing I have done over the years and never been disappointed.

Good stuff!

EmanuelGoldstein said:

Lumley used this brand

and they are still around !

Lubriko

It was the one that is a reddish / amber color ... they have a phone

Click to expand...

EPAIII said:

It is still good in the sealed tin. I have used it for every bearing packing I have done over the years and never been disappointed.

Good stuff!

Click to expand...

Out of curiosity - how do you keep the contents clean? When I have a premium grease I'll use a clean plastic spoon or similar to take out the needed amount and place it in a disposable lab scale dish, then recap the tin. If I need more I get a fresh spoon and dish, doing my best to avoid contaminating the main supply.

Are others this fussy, or am I nuts? [That last bit was rhetorical]

Milland said:

Are others this fussy, or am I nuts? [That last bit was rhetorical]

Click to expand...

I was, pretty much .... bought a can of it to rebuild a Heald Red Head, 17,500 rpm, asked Lumley what to use, they recommended this. Seemed to work. Like EPA, kept the rest of the tin for thirty years, then handed it on. New owner still has 1/2 of the can, probably

I don't think I had the M6 tho, the stuff in my can was a reddish color.

You're not entirely nuts, but it is time to give up on the Pox Americana schtick. Wolfowitz is a disgusting fascist turd (I had a crush on Claire Selgin once upon a time.)

Milland said:

Out of curiosity - how do you keep the contents clean? When I have a premium grease I'll use a clean plastic spoon or similar to take out the needed amount and place it in a disposable lab scale dish, then recap the tin. If I need more I get a fresh spoon and dish, doing my best to avoid contaminating the main supply.

Are others this fussy, or am I nuts? [That last bit was rhetorical]

Click to expand...

Yes this fuss is well justified. Contamination and debris is one of the primary causes of premature bearing failure. Look at any used bearing race under magnification and you will quickly conclude there’s no such thing as “too clean”.

Robin Renzetti has a video about rebuilding a Bridgeport spindle and he covers greasing the bearings and cleanliness etc.

For a low speed spindle I would agree with others fill percent isn’t important.

I think K.O. Lee is now owned and supported by Leblond both in parts and tech support. Call them......don't guess.

steve-l said:

I think K.O. Lee is now owned and supported by Leblond both in parts and tech support. Call them......don't guess.

Click to expand...

Do you honestly think some fifteen year old in Mombasa is going to know anything about bearings ?

I have to say I don't grease a lot of "precision" bearings. I have been greasing bearing of one type or another for fifty years or so however. For general purpose greasing the best thing to use in my opinion are tongue depressors. They are so cheap that you can just toss them so they never enter your stock grease more then once. They are really good as a spatula to apply the grease where you want it as well.

Whatever grease you use it's good to use clean grease, not grease from a can opened a hundred times and often with dirty hands, or left open for a time.
Wash and dry your hands. to clean new and used bearings hand slosh them about in new solvent, then dip in clean spindle oil then set them on /between clean towels for a time to drip near dry, tipping to rid most (near all) oil. Never/Never air blow them to make them spin or to make balls spin.
Fill about 1/4 to 1/3 full and slow roll to spread the grease. Best to do this out of the grinding room.

The fluid in a sealed bearing pack is a rust preventer, not the best oil for running. The quick dip in spindle oil is to avoid any rusting after the solvent cleaning. long soaking in some solvents can cause rusting.

Better grease will last longer. A heavy preload is hard on bearings.

I used to palm fill them but nowadays I would wear the thin rubber gloves and palm fill them.
This is one of many good quality low priced greases.
MOBIL GREASE 28 | Aircraft Spruce
I used to use Kluber with good results.

QT Op: [when I turned the spindle by hand it felt crunchy. Dried grease? Dirt? don't know.] g\Grease can evaporate and dead cats get in a spindle seems like fuzz that somehow gets in from the air???
to make a spindle last longer jog start to 1/4 1/2 speed= let slow to stop or near stop and then fore up

Any sat for a few weeks or cold spindle turn it by hand a time or a few..then jog start.

*Be sure bearing rotation marks are in line so to avoid wobble end to end..'

Good that the center point runs zero, so grind it in place with adding a line-up mark. Part ground with an off-center will be off double. 60* Fishtail is Ok for checking taper.

Grinding fluted OD grind into the wheel to +.002 then back grind to size.

EmanuelGoldstein said:

Do you honestly think some fifteen year old in Mombasa is going to know anything about bearings ?

Click to expand...

What? Are you speaking English?

Speaking of Mobil Grease 28. Compare the Spec's for 28 with standard off the shelf Mobil 1. The difference in Spec's doesn't support the difference in price and Mobil 1 works great for spindles.

I rebuilt three Spindles for KO Lee T & C grinders earlier this year. I don't know what that grease was they used, it was all crusted up, dark brown looking, and obvious not working like it should. Oh yeah, these spindles are over 45 years old, too. Only one spindle appeared to been rebuilt at one time. All sorts of beaver marks on everything plus, the bearings were not installed in the correct direction. Anyways, went back together with new bearings, packed with Mobil SHC100 grease. Cleaned up all of the beaver marks as I could, got all of the alignment marks in align the best I could. Interested that KO Lee used a little Loctite red on the bearing nuts in installation. I had heck getting the spindles apart because of it. And I'm not a person that likes to use heat to free things, especially in a spindle assy. Did use a dab of blue loctite on the nuts. Last, I put the spindles up in the lathe and spun them at about 1000 RPM for about 30 minutes to let the bearings seat and check for over heating. So far, the one spindle I have installed is running just fine, and boy, I can tell the difference in the grind finish!

As for bearing replacement and lubrication on the motorized work head and sensitive work head. The motorized one, I have not touched it since I bought it. It came with the grinder. Maybe time to check it out, maybe some of the reason I'm getting rough finishes using it. The sensitive work head, I did have to rebuild it. Instead of high dollar spindle bearings, I used sealed deep groove bearings. Since they are pre-loaded in the assembly, I haven't had any issues with endplay or runout. Just my two bits worth!

Ken

For $17.50 you can get a 5# can (albeit empty) on Etsy

Vintage Advertising Tin Lubriko M6 Grease Tin circa 1950-s | Etsy

You can buy a tube of Kluber Isoflex on line from Amazon or directly from Kluber. Seems I paid about $40 for a tube 6 months ago. I agree- for a work head, clean grease is more important than what grease.