Thread: Shoulda known

Originally Posted by lather

All went smooth, heres a pic of the headstock.

Really nice job, and like others have said it will be easy to see anything,
Mine still has a good coat of orangy, red colour, so I will leave it as is.

Dave

Originally Posted by simonl

Thats's a great job. I love the colour. So easy to see any foreign material in there. A couple of magnets thrown in for good measure would top of a great job. I put one in the bottom and one on the lid, above the drain hole for the spindle bearing. Hopefully it catches any foreign material before it's flushed into the spindle bearings. Unlike most other peoples lathes, my headstock only has a drain hole for the front spindle bearing. I'm not sure if it's designed that way or if they forgot to do one for the rear. The rear bearing gets enough lubrication without it anyway.

Cheers

Simon

Did you ask a question about the oil holes recently on the Yahoo 12 x 36 group? If not there was a guy recently asking about 1 oil hole.

Dave

Just to be contrary here, realistically what is a magnet in the headstock going to acheive? Having one in a coolant tank yes - it will collect swarf and filings so that they are not recirculated through the pump or dumped back on the work.
However, in a headstock, are you really going to open it up every month and check it? If you do find metal on the magnet what will you do? Replace the bearings? Replace the gears? Clean off the magnet and then continue on? Either way something has worn but you don't know why and probably don't know what.
If you don't check the magnet, then the first sign of trouble will probably be a bearing noise in which case it's too late.

It seems an added device that while nice in theory is not really going to help in practice. I did think about it for my lathe but it takes around 1/2 an hour to open up, check and seal up again. (That's only the headstock box - there are 3 on the lathe and the largest requires an oil drain before the inspection plate can be removed) For a gear box that is low speed and changes only when stationary or turned by hand is there a return there?

My opinion
Michael

I don't have any magnets in my machines, but I could see if large enough it could be checked at each oil change, and cleaned if necessary. It would stop the metal flakes getting carried around with the oil, and in this splash system it could be flung up onto the cover and into the spindle bearings.

Now we have all these discussions about oil and every one recommends hydraulic oil, which lets stuff sink instead of suspending it like motor oil does. So will the flakes just sit on the bottom anyway?

Either way I think a speaker magnet could be put into the bottom and checked every oil change, you would never get enough shavings to fill the magnet up.
As they say, better to be safe than sorry.

Dave

Hi Michael
I am just wondering why it takes you so long to take the top off the headstock? I can have mine off in under 5 minutes (as quick as I can undo the 6 Allen head bolts and lift it off)

Mine come without any goo on the gasket and I just put the cover back one and do it up, never a leak yet and still with the factory gasket..

Dave

There will be metal in the oil.. things wear out. Having said that they wear out pretty damn slowly so the "pieces" of metal are going to be pretty damn small and on my lathe have lots of time to settle out. How much damage they could do to a tapered roller bearing I dont know, but I would think not much if they were small enough. Having said that I have a few magnets in my headstock.............. But it only take 5 minutes to get the top off and on on my lathe.
Stuart

Originally Posted by Michael G

Just to be contrary here, realistically what is a magnet in the headstock going to acheive? Having one in a coolant tank yes - it will collect swarf and filings so that they are not recirculated through the pump or dumped back on the work.
However, in a headstock, are you really going to open it up every month and check it? If you do find metal on the magnet what will you do? Replace the bearings? Replace the gears? Clean off the magnet and then continue on? Either way something has worn but you don't know why and probably don't know what.
If you don't check the magnet, then the first sign of trouble will probably be a bearing noise in which case it's too late.

It seems an added device that while nice in theory is not really going to help in practice. I did think about it for my lathe but it takes around 1/2 an hour to open up, check and seal up again. (That's only the headstock box - there are 3 on the lathe and the largest requires an oil drain before the inspection plate can be removed) For a gear box that is low speed and changes only when stationary or turned by hand is there a return there?

My opinion
Michael

Hi Michael,

I'm certainly not going to argue with what you say. But, from my point of view, I invested considerable time and an amount of money in new bearings. Things are in a constant state of wear (as Stuart points out) and so very fine metal particles are constantly being generated. My aim with the magnet was to ensure as practical as possible that each particle will only pass through the bearing once (if at all) and not be splashed though and through and through. I have not intended for the magnet to be a tale tail to mechanical breakdown. I always remove the top cover when I replace the oil for a number of reasons, it only takes 1 minute to remove 6 screws, I can flush it out with some kero if I want, easy to pour new oil in to required level without making a mess and I can inspect my lovely paint job. Oh, and have a quick look at my magnetic phycological metal filter

Cheers,

Simon

Like I said above I have not got a magnet in mine, but it's just something I have never got around to doing. I do think it's a good idea and lets face it, it surely cant hurt to have 1-2 in there. I have read about guys having them on the drain plug as well, which would make cleaning easy at oil change time.

Dave

I have heard about vehicle sump plugs drilled out to fit a small magnet. Easy way to check with regular oil changes. Cannot see how it would hurt. Would need to be a situation where the oil and particles are going to pass over the plug. After it is removed the only metal the plug will attract is off the floor when you drop it. Sigh. I have been adding more big speaker magnets to underneath the coolant tray of my bandsaw. The total is now 5. Just experimental you realise.

Dean

I have often toyed with the idea of a pump lubrication for the lathe headstock like some of the better brand lathes, running through a car filter so it would be cheap to replace. I have small gear pumps here, but seeing the lathe is around 8 year old now and still going strong, it probably doesn't need it and I might be a few years to late to be saving anything, LOL
Saying that it might be too late to add magnets to do any good, as the running in process it well and truly over.

Dave

Originally Posted by Dave J

Don't worry, I have an ice cream container here with about 2 1/2 -3 litres of casting sand and crud, you welcome to it so you feel they never forgot you.

Dave

Thanks Dave,
But just this one time I am going to be an individual and stand out of the crowd and keep my nice clean gear box all to myself

LOL
See we members will even share casting sand. It was only last week when I seen it laying around and put in in the garbage, but I think it's still in the shed, I should take a picture of it.

You and I must have got lucky with our lathes.
Maybe you got a new guy trying to please the boss on his first day assembling your lathe.

I have not heard any bad complaints from people buying the Gasweld lathes, but the 12 x 36 lathe is the biggest they have sadly. I should contact a member here that bought one not so long back and see what he thought and if his had any.

Dave

Stuart, looks like the crap that was originally painted over in my box, most of it sits in the corners and ledges waiting to drop off,
even though i cleaned the box before running it, the oil looked similar to yours after 30 minutes run time.

Simon
Plan to place magnets in the box, as well as placing small Neodymiums each side of the spindle bearing holes.
don't worry too much about the 1 oil hole, as mine had the special option of 1 and 1/100 oil holes.
lucky it was striped down, as the front bearing hole is literally blocked due to the inner lip of the front spindle oil seal "now that's improved chinese engineering"
checked the front oil hole before replacing the lid, it had taken about an hour for the small amount of oil from the gutter to drain out, "thought it was unusual"
filing a groove in the oil seal lip should sort it out.

The sand may work it's way out of the bearings, though the metal that found it's way into the front taper bearing remained in the bearing, causing an inconsistent jump of 0.04mm on the spindle.
once the bearings were removed the metal particles found on the bearings were flattened like foil, (unless foil in the headstock is the deluxe optional extra)

The half hour I quoted was a WAG (Wild AR-5E Guess) but given the amount of stuff I have to move and things that have to be uncovered, it's probably not too far off the pace if I was going from a cold start to completely stowed away. I have gasket goo all over things too that will not help.
If it was a simple thing for me to do I might be furiously arguing for a magnet but I can say with some certainty that it's unlikely I'd ever check it when it was in. I have enough trouble remembering to check all of the 6 sight glasses (a couple are hidden) for oil level.

Michael