Semi-automatic oiler

[ozzie34231]

I'm putting together an Industrial Hobbies Mill and I got to thinking about adding a way oiling system.
I'm a hobbiest and don't know beans about such a thing but I presume the main components would be:
A pump manual or electric
A manifold from which to run the tubes
Some sort of light, small, check valves to keep the lines from emptying between shots, may be one at each end of each tube
Maybe a filter
Maybe an orfice system to give some places more oil and others less.

Anyone know about these things? Is it as simple as I think?

Jerry

[Al_The_Man]

If you visit the Bijur site, it may offer some insight, lube pumps are usually one-shot affairs, that can be manually lifted and/or have a timer motor that lubes every so often.
You do not need check valves with this as the pump is self checking, you can get metering devices for the end of each lube line, these simple pumps can reach fairly high pressures, I have seen them reach 25~30lbs.
As they are self timing, I usually put the power on them whenever the e-stop is released.
You may find one occasionally on Ebay.
Al.

[wizard]

One thing to watch out for with automatic lubricators is that the regular shots of lube can impact the machines operation. Normally this is for the better. However is you are very concerned about changes in tool height or the profile of a cut this could concern you.

On some extemely senisitive equipment we got into the habit of running a work in cycle after giving the machine a shot of lube.

As to your decription of what an oiling system consists of you pretty much hit it on the head. So you do know beans!!!! As the other poster pointed out check out Bijur they are more or the less top of the line when it comes to this sort of hardware. By the way these systems are excellent for manual machines also. They are however not cheap, I'd suggest getting pricing from a local distributor.

If you decide the cost is to high for your mill, you could always go the doit yourself approach. I'd suggest still buying the Bijur mettering valves and the associated hardware though. It should be significnatly easier going with prefabs parts here.

Thanks
Dave