X2 central lubrication

[X2cnc]

I've rigged my X2 for central lubrication. I put all the oil passages in the saddle and ran two oil lines, standard 1/8" automotive oil pressure tubing and 1/8" NPT 90 degree elbow fittings. I haven't acquired the oil cups yet, but they'll mount up on the column somewhere.

The original plan was to use four separate lines, one for each dovetail. Partway through I figured I could oil the X dovetails from the bottom, and after having changed plans three or four times during the process, I wound up with "a maze of twisty little passages", the ends closed off with 8-32 set screws.

This is the right hand side Y dovetail oiler. It intersects the gib, so the gib side of the dovetail gets oil too. The idea was to put an oil cup in the side hole and give it a few drops of oil every now and then. If I was doing it over, I'd use a #60 or so drill through the back of a blind hole to drop oil on the gibs.

I didn't realize I could have oiled the entire thing from one feeder line until I was almost done; it would need a long drill to reach across the saddle side-to-side in the back, where it's solid metal all the way across.

[X2cnc]

Here's the left side of the oiling system. It could be *much* simplified. The right side way cover mounting screws had a single hole that went all the way through the saddle. The left side had two blind holes. I ran a smaller drill through to connect them... after I'd drilled the smaller hole halfway across to oil the left Y dovetail.

The six #6 holes are the limit switch mounts. The location of the 1/8 NPT feed hole was chosen to clear the limit switches. In the first picture you can see how it intersects the way screw hole. The vertical passage is offset to miss the inner edge of the X way. In retrospect, I could have ground a bit from the edge if necessary.

The angled slots on the Xs come very close to the inner edges, to drop a bit of oil into the dovetails. I figured both the horizontal and angled surfaces needed lubrication.

After you get finished laughing at my mess of drillings you can figure out a better layout of your own.

One note - there's only .020" or so between the drilling through the way cover screw holes and the bottom of the ground pocket to clear the ballnut. There's room to drill a passage below the holes if you got wild clearing the ballnut, just continue the one I drilled halfway through to all the way across.

[hoss2006]

Nice work!

[Farasien]

Interesting setup- whish I'd thought of the all-in-one idea before I did mine.

Instead of putting up oil cups, have you throught of a hand pump? For mine, I drilled a seperate line for each of the dovetails (x/y) and did another one to drip a bit of way lube onto the ballscrews by drilling another through the center of the table- the lube comes out just in advance of the ballunt on the two. I bought a bijur hand pump off ebay as well as a 6-hole aluminum hydraulic manifold and a bunch of barbed fittings from Ace Hardware and cobbled together a oil manifold which was bolted to a columb brace I fabbed up. It seems to work pretty well, but I notice that there is a variance in how much lube each one of the fittings get. I wanted to make a one-shot system, but it looks like I'll have to put stopcocks in the lines and do them in pairs to keep from turning the base into a huge, gooey mess. I made a seperate manifold and am using a drip oiler for the Z axis.

One thing I was thinking is... once I get the rest of the mounting plates done and get the electronics set up is to make the process of oiling the mill an automatic operation on start up... Has anyone thought of this? I was thinking of just putting air cylinter on the hand pump or putting a smaller stepper on the pump handle that would cycle once every time the power was put on.

-Farasien

[X2cnc]

My 1940 Gorton vertical mill has a drip cup on the spindle - about a 2x2" glass reservoir, a short glass tube to see the drips, and a combination needle valve/flip lever. McMaster-Carr has similar things for $10-ish.

Seig provided a little oil bottle to put a drop of oil on the ways each day before using the machine. My Atlas lathe instruction manual calls for a similar amount. I figure an occasional drop during use is enough.

The collection of drillings would likely wind up with different flows to each orifice, but each orifice (except for the gibs) is almost sealed by the mating part sliding on top of it. I would guess actual flow would be very small unless the pump pressure was very high. My idea was, as long as oil was there, the relative motion of the parts would swoosh it around as the machine worked.

No reason you couldn't use a pump oiler, though. I was looking for minimal flow to keep oil out of the water-base coolant as much as possible.

[X2cnc]

So far I've been doing what I can to protect the ballscrews from oil or coolant. I haven't done anything other than run the table around to make sure Mach3 and the Xylotex bits all talked to each other.

Do the ballscrews need specific lubrication other than giving them a dab of oil during assembly?