Here are the pictures of the cutter head..
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Yours is pretty darn similar to mine (even down to the crappy paint! LOL)....I opened the access cover just to put an eyeball on things....it uses grease (also has grease fittings for each bearing...but that doesn't always mean much).
Actually these are two different generations of cutter head. Steve's is the first generation head. Note how the two clamp bolts on the bottom are exposed. On the later generation cutter-heads the front clamp bolts are enclosed in cored holes in the casting. Both of these heads have front and rear bearings that are lubricated by grease. W's has grease cups instead of Zerk fittings; I believe this is the type where the operator is supposed to give the cup's cap a twist every so often to force a bit of grease into the bearings.
The center cavity is where the ring and pinion gears are. They are lubricated with OIL. W, if your cutter-head is packed with grease, that's a problem. You need to clean it out and replace it with gear oil. Mobile DTE Heavy-Medium should be fine and is what you need in the ram and feed gearboxes as well.
On both styles of cutter-head there are front and rear bearing retainer caps/plates that are held on with socket-head cap screws. Pull the bearing retainer plates off and you can clean and flush the bearings.
One thing to be aware of is that there is no grease seal to keep grease from the rear bearing from getting into the center reservoir and contaminating the oil that lubricates the ring and pinion gear. Over the life of these machines over zealous maintenance workers often pump so much grease into the rear bearing that it gets forced into the center reservoir; not good.
Some guys go nuts trying to find the grease used in the 1940s. Trust me, if modern greases were available back then, they wouldn't have used the grease that they did. I use Mobilith SHC 100 grease for the spindle bearings. It's far superior to the greases available when these machines were new and you can use it to lube the motor bearings (assuming they are that type). It's a good idea to pull the bearing retainer caps and clean out any excess grease every second or third time you grease the bearings.
The easiest way to service the cutter-head is to remove it from the ram. The best way is to do that is to use a collet in the spindle to grip a section of round bar. Turn the spindle vertical and bring the table and vise up to the bottom of the spindle, so that the vise supports the end of the spindle. Clamp the other end of the bar in the vise and crank the table to the left as you back off the clamp bolts, jacking the cutter-head away from the ram.
With the cutter head off of the machine you can flush the bearings from the ends. I like to use a recirculating pump to recycle kerosene and power flush. You can use an automotive inline fuel filter to keep from circulating debris back into the bearings. Use fresh kerosene for your final flushes.
Cal
