[Lathe] Ames Lathe Headstock Bearings?

BostonMann

Registered
Registered
Joined
Jan 2, 2017
Messages
3
I am new to the forums here.

I have acquired two old Ames lathes.

One is a closed headstock model, probably EH, with at 1AM collet spindle.
The other is an opened headstock design also using 1AM collets. I did get 25 collets with one of the lathes.

These would be nice in my shop for small, precise, high rpm work that I struggle to do on my South Bend 10k.

These are both ball bearing machines, and they both use the same bearings. I took the machines appart and removed the spindles and bearings.

The closed headstock one has what appears to be a retrofitted oiler on the side that feeds the main bearing. The other one had a main bearing jam packed with grease.

After more than a week soaking in carburetor cleaner and a few visits to the parts cleaner at work the main bearings are mostly clean.

The one that was running in grease will spin quietly and smooth until it suddenly stops on some piece of debris that falls off the inside of the cage. So this one is not quite clean yet, and I am not sure if I can ever get all the junk out of it.

The oil lubricated main bearing is quite loud when it spins, and the balls look like they ran in sand.

Both of the rear bearings from these machines are toast.

The main bearings are New Departure 5209, double row angular contact, and they are opened.
Dims: 45 x 85 x 30.2

The rear support bearings are New Departure 773209, single row radial deep groove, and they are double shielded. 45 x 85 x 19

I have looked for these bearings and found many equivalents to the numbers, but I think that these bearings do not include the rest of the numbers to specify characteristics such as ABEC number, and preload.

Does anyone know where I might find such bearings ABEC-5 or 7, with a medium preload (for the double row)? That is what I guess the originals were.

If I can find bearings the restoration will continue.
 
Does you existing bearings have any markings to indicate ABEC-5 or 7 class bearing?
 
Thank you for your responses,

4gsr,

No there are no markings on the bearings but the basic number, and on the single row the shields are marked with the basic number and the specification for the shields. However I can not imagine that these are not high end versions of the basic bearing. How high precision could the machines have been with ABEC-1 bearings in the headstock? I did look through the part number matrix from New Departure, and found the suffixes needed to specify a preloaded ABEC-7 version of the double row angular contact bearing. I even found one on ebay that is specified as a medium preload ABEC-3 double row angular contact bearing. Maybe 3 will have to do.

LF_WS,

Thank you, I will try Lynne tomorrow.
 
Yep, looks like you answered your own question. You better grab the ABEC-3 bearings. That probably the best you going to get without special ordering higher class bearings and waiting many months for their arrival. Plus the price will probably be two to three times higher that standard ABEC-7 or 9 spindle bearings. On another note, someone may have replaced the originals with off the shelf ABEC-1 bearings and did not look back. The only problem with ABEC-1 bearings, they have too much clearance built in them as you know. Good luck on finding the correct bearings. Let us know what you find out. Ken
 
Back
Top