Chester Conquest Mill

[Chris Taylor 3Participant @christaylor3]

I have a 5 year old Chester Conquest Super mill which I have recently fitted with 3 axis DROs, (which was a great move), but I have just noticed slight lateral play in the spindle accompanied by a slightly different rumble when it’s running. I suspect the bearings but I’m a bit wary about attempting to dismantle the assembly. Can anyone give me any advice please?

[Chris Taylor 3Participant @christaylor3]

Advice on Spindle Assembly

[Chris Taylor 3Participant @christaylor3]

Obviously not a rivetting topic so I might as well just offer my own feedback. I dismantled as much as I could to get to the spindle bearings but I could see no way of extracting the spindle assembly without removing the head and control box. So I just cleaned as much as possible, greased the lower bearing and reassembled. Much to my surprise the noise is much reduced and the play has gone. I suspect the grease is responsible for the noise reduction and re-tightening the castle nut at the top for the elimination of play. I don’t really understand the latter because the bearings are just the plain type, and I didn’t expect the pre-load to have any effect on lateral play.

I’ve read the other threads and looked at the suggested videos but they don’t show the actual dismantling. At some point, I would like to strip the whole spindle down, but looking at the assembly diagram I can’t see how the shaft can be removed without a full strip down because the pair of high/low gears would foul each other.

I would appreciate any advice from anyone who has experience of this particular mini-mill.

[Ketan SwaliParticipant @ketanswali79440]

Chris, perhaps parts of this article may help. To the best of my knowledge, your machine may be the old X2 mini-mill.
Also, if you search what you are looking for under X2 mini-mill, you will probably find more dismantling information.

Very broadly speaking, the X2 Mini-Mill head assembly is also very similar to old SIEG C2 and C3 mini-lathe headstock, sharing many of the same components except the spindle. So perhaps also review parts of this guide.

Ketan at ARC

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Ketan to the rescue … like the 7th Cavalry

MichaelG.

[Chris Taylor 3Participant @christaylor3]

Ketan, many thanks for that, I hadn’t realised that the mills were effectively the same, the article will be carefully studied and I have actually considered converting to belt drive so that’s a bonus.

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