Milling Machine Lubrication

[Peter TettmarParticipant @petertettmar13398]

Hi All,

I have been lurking on this forum for a year and have learnt a lot from all you clever guys without making a posting – many, many thanks.

Now though I have a question about my newly bought Amadeal AMA 25 LV mill. There is a sight glass in the side of the head where I would expect to see an oil level but it is dry! I can see a dry gear and the other inner surface of the head. There is no sign of filler or drain plugs and no mention of such in the manual. My lathe, also a Weiss machine, has a similar sight glass on the gearbox and oil is definitely there – I know, I have changed it.

So is the mill supposed to be run dry, the transmission makes more noise than I would expect, or do I need to get oil in asap? If the latter how?

Peter

[Peter TettmarParticipant @petertettmar13398]

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

Did you ask Armadeal?

[Thor 🇳🇴Participant @thor]

Hi Peter,

I just got a similar milling machine (HBM BF25) with the same sight glass as yours. I e-mailed HBM and got the reply that this is not used to oil the gears. You can remove the sight glass and apply grease to the gears (there should be grease in there from the factory). When finished greasing just pop in the sight glass. Also on my milling machine the gears and splines make some noise.

Regards

Thor

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Are you sure theres no oil in there? When I got my lathe, there was no oil(so I thought) showing in the sight glasses, so I started filling it, still no sign, then it over flowed. It had oil, but overfilled, above the sight glass level, so I had to empty the level back to the FULL hight. Ian S C

[dcostaParticipant @dcosta]

Hello Peter!
Good after noon.

I have a milling similar to yours. It's named BF20 and it is made in China and distributed by Optimum machines.
The gear box is a compartment only accessible from behind after opening a cover. To see the cover you have to tilt the milling head to left (when seeing from front). In my machine, that compartment has a hole to let the illumination cables to pass by, so don't even think in oil.
The wheels inside the gear box rotate at high speed so the grease to be used has to be very tacky.
I experimented several greases and finally decided on BP Energrease LCX 222 (Lithium complex grease), which I was told was aimed to use in places where it shouldn't fall off, until it disappeared from the Portuguese market. Then I found an even more tacky grease from a USA company called Lubrication Engineers, Inc. **LINK** . I think its reference is 4025 H1 and it is aimed to the "food machinery lubricant" as they say in the packaging.
I'm happy using it.

Hope this helps.

Best regards
Dias Costa

[Author]

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