Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Help...Re: More Bridgport lube questions.

Lee Studley wrote:

> Thanks Jon,
>
> 1) Where is the spindle resevoir?
> 2) And (excuse my ignorance)what is the 'back gear drive'?
> 3) What levels are required on typical mills and where are the fill
> points?

I'm assuming the series II head is mostly equivalent to the Series I
J head, just bigger. My older J head has 2 oil cups. One trickles oil
into the back gear drive, the other drips oil into the top of the quill
by
a thing that looks very similar to a pipe cleaner - a wire and a cord,
essentially. The quill/spindle oil reservoir is a fairly large flip-top

oil cup. The oil is delivered by capillary action, rather than gravity.

That oil cup has a tube in it, so there is no direct gravity feed, the
tube runs up into the cup and then right up nearly to the top. The
'pipe cleaner' is threaded through the tube out the top and down
into the pool of oil in the cup. (I've never seen an arrangement
like this on other machines.)

So, the J head has a very small reservoir, about 1/2" diameter and
3/4" high. Oil drips and splatters around inside the quill, getting
all the bearings wet. Some oil is trapped in the bearing races, etc.
and is retained to prevent dry starts.

The back gear is the mechanism to reduce spindle speeds - you
have a high and low range lever on there, somewhere.

I am not familiar with smaller machines that have anything 'filled'
in the heads. Bigger machines have oil baths for the head
gearing, of course. All the lighter machines I've seen had some
sort of drip system (or used sealed bearings - ugh!)

Jon