Spindle Grease

[FlyingHaggis]

I working with a china vertical mill/drill, ZX50 clone.
The gearbox is a 4 speed unit.

The spindle needs lubricated with grease via a nipple on the front.

When i use the mill on it's fastest speed, which i need for steel.
Grease starts to egress via the lower bearing and drops on to the work.
The spindle is not getting hot - i read about 40C after it's been running for 30mins.
(i can imagine that the inner temps of the bearing will be higher)

Can anyone suggest -
a) a better grease that won't drop out
b) some other type of cure.


thanks

[m_c]

Grease will always drop out to an extent, but if it's doing it excessively, then it's a sign you're putting too much grease in.

For a spindle, I'd only be looking to inject maybe a single grease gun stroke every 50 hours of spindle run time, and I'd be injecting it slowly with the spindle running to ensure it's evenly distributed.
Bearings don't need a lot of grease (typical bearing load is only 25-30% of available free volume), and too much grease will do damage (it can cause the balls/rollers to slide, rather than rotate).

[FlyingHaggis]

Many thanks for the info.
Clearly then i have probably over lub'd it.

What type of grease (that's available in the UK) would you suggest ?

[m_c]

If you've not got anything that specifies a grease, I'd just go for a good quality lithium grease.

[FlyingHaggis]

Thanks.