Stupid Newbie lathe oiling questions

[SherpaDoug]

I have an second hand Enco 9x20 lathe I am learning to use. I have lubed it as best I can but I have two questions.

1) I can't find any way to lubricate the main spindle bearings short of tipping the lathe over or squirting oil from below. Lesser bearings have oil holes or oil cups but these are conspicuously missing from the main spindle bearings. The thin manual doesn't mention them. Am I NOT supposed to lubricate them?

2) Many places have little "valves" of 1/4" dia. brass with a spring loaded steel ball in the center like McMaster item '1214K2'. The lathe came with an oil can with a plain pointed spout. I can use the spout to push in the ball and get a LITTLE oil in, but most of the oil escapes and it seems there must be a better way. I am thinking of making a 1/8" diameter syringe with a hard rubber nose so I can suck up a few drops of oil and force it under pressure past the ball. Nothing I see in the Enco or McMaster catalogs seems appropriate. Am I missing the obvious?

Thanks in advance.

[LarryinLV]

Whether there are any stupid questions or not has been a subject of debate for decades.

Indeed even this forum has not been devoid of discussion on that very subject. If they are newbie questions or not is completely irrelevent.

If you have lubed it the best you can is, again, not for us to say. Only you will know the answer to that question.

As someone famous once said: "The only stupid question is the one not answered."

Answers:
1) "Am I NOT supposed to lubricate them?" - I believe general wisdom is that YES, you are indeed supposed to lubricate them. This, of course, depends entirely on what "them" consists of.

2) "Am I missing the obvious?" - Well of course, the answer to that is obvious.

[SherpaDoug]

1) "Am I NOT supposed to lubricate them?" - I believe general wisdom is that YES, you are indeed supposed to lubricate them. This, of course, depends entirely on what "them" consists of.

They look like a tapered roller bearing on the chuck end and a simple ball or roller bearing on the tail end. I can see them only by unscrewing the nameplate with the change gear settings on it. The manual is strangely uninformative.

Years ago I occasionally used a tired WWII era South Bend lathe about this size and I think it had oil cups for these big bearings, but it had been heavily customized over the decades.

[lynnl]

Any question you don't know the answer to is a good one! Assuming the answer is worth knowing.

If there aren't any cups or other provisions for oiling the spindle, other than dismantling it, then that pretty much settles it. (...might as well wait til it fails and THEN dismantle) Is this a gearhead lathe? ...if so maybe just the splash from a reservoir of oil is serving the purpose. Tho my LeBlond has a cup oiler at each end of the headstock right over the spindle in addition to the oil bath the gears run in.

As for the spring-loaded ball oilers, I think there's some kind of wicking underneath those, and they only need a drop or so every now and then just to keep the wick saturated. I usually just depress the ball with a soft screwdriver or such, and give it a squirt, release the ball, and wipe off the excess.

[Peter N]

Doug, there is a very active 9x20 lathe group on Yahoo groups that is a mine of information on these lathes.
I joined up a few years ago when I was thinking of getting one of these, but got something different so don't visit there much.

However, at the time I did download the "9x20 lathe rebuild/maintenance manual" which was put together by a few enterprising members of that group, and I've just found a copy of it of my hard drive.

If you pm me your e-mail I'll send this PDF file over, it's about 3MB in size.

Peter

[LarryinLV]

Doug,
Try this site for a better manual. I believe the Grizzly is about identical to the enco 9x20.

http://www.grizzly.com/products/item.cfm?itemnumber=G4000

[BadDog]

My Griz 9x20 had the ball oilers on top of the spindle bearing for oiling.

[LarryinLV]

Baddog,
Does that mean you have to remove the chuck to oil the spindle?

[SherpaDoug]

Doug,
Try this site for a better manual. I believe the Grizzly is about identical to the enco 9x20.

http://www.grizzly.com/products/item...emnumber=G4000

That looks like a better manual for the same machine, Thanks. But there is still no mention I saw of lubricating the main spindle. I guess I will let it be unless Peter's maintenance manual says something.

[Mike W]

I don't know about those spindle bearings but on the ball oilers. I took a cheap mini grease gun and use oil in it. I took out the plunger and spring and use a needle attachment for the flush type grease fittings. It gets the oil in.

[miker]

Doug, could you just ring enco customer service and ask?

http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INPAGE?PMPAGE=CustomerSupport/Contact.htm

Also I noticed in the exploded view of the Headstock there are two items both labelled #21 called oil feeders. Maybe a clue.

Good Luck.

Rgds

[torker]

Doug...what's the Sherpa all about? Are you one of them old twinshock motorcycle freaks? (There's one of them old freaks hiding in my shop)(my wife hates him )
See how many posts I have? About 99% dumb questions...and they still let me hang out here. Don't feel bad. If you are afraid to ask a stoopid question...just email it to me and I'll ask it for you
Russ

[BadDog]

Baddog,
Does that mean you have to remove the chuck to oil the spindle?

I no longer have it. But the ball oilers were on the very top of the headstock, so very easy to get to and oil. You can barely see one on page 10 of the Griz manual.

On the ball oilers, I hate those too. I tried several different ways including custom machined tips on trigger oil cans and needles. All worked more or less, but all still made a mess and left me wondering if I got enough. In some cases, I couldn't tell if I got ANY in there, particularly on the ends of shafts and horizontal surfaces. The best, I suppose, was a conical brass tip with a point small enough to fit in the smallest of the oilers and (sorta) seal to the rim. The tip itself had a tiny slot across the edges of the hole to keep the ball from sealing it when you push in.

On my Rockwell, it mostly uses Gits type oilers, but does/did have some of the ball oilers. They worked MUCH better than the ChiComs, but some were damaged. I made some bushings to adapt the 3/8" press fit ball oiler holes to 1/4-20 for a grease zirk. I now use my Vactra #2 loaded grease gun, also used for the Bridgeport, for applying way oil through those, and another with ISO 68 Medium Spindle oil for others. When combined with "quick connect" flush mount zirk attachments AND a quick connect needle attachment, I've pretty much got my lube needs covered...

[dp]

Those devices with the ball and spring are cleverly designed oil spreaders. They will send oil everywhere except where you'd like it to go. Below that ball is an infinite reservoir of gas that will expel oil faster than you can squirt it. When you are done oiling there will be a film of it on everything except the other side of that ball. If there were a mechanical anti-Christ that ball and spring would be close.

The only way I've known to encourage oil around that ball is to get a pin feather from a penguin's butt (they're hollow to preserve heat, and flexible - polar bear fur also works, but is more difficult to acquire as you might imagine), soak it in a good non-detergent machine oil, and slip it around the ball (on the lathe oiler), then blow on the open end of it. Sure it makes you feel silly. I can't tell you how many penguin butt feathers I have injected into my lathe, but it's considerable. Hopefully they're biodegradable.

I've considered replacing them all with hex screw plugs.

[nheng]

Lots of good oil talk but I seem to recall that the 9x20 bearings are packed with grease. Incidentally, when bearings are "packed" with grease, they should only be filled about 1/3 or so. Pack 'em full and they will get hot. Den