Lube

[RCman16]

Looking for a good open gear lube for an old Atlas 618 lathe

 

[Jake M]

Gears don't need much. These aren't high speed, they're not gonna sling everything off. You'd be fine to put a few drops of whatever "universal" oil you're putting on everything, be it engine oil (I don't recommend that, it's not what it was, but it's not a horrible thing), hydraulic oil, way oil, whatever. Just a couple of drops on each gear path, with your daily oiling points, and it'll walk around every gear in the path. (I believe you have two gear paths, an "inner' and an "outer" path. OIl will find it's way around a whole path, but not across a compound (double) gear, if that makes sense. Grease would be fine, but high maintenance, needing cleaned off regularly. There are open gear lubes in spray bottles if you want, all over the internet or in local farm stores, bigger hardware stores, etc. Or chain and cable lube is similar and works well.

I like oil for little gears. My "general purpose" oil is an ISO 46, that works well, and stays on way longer than it needs to, as I'm in there on the daily list oiling the gear hubs/axles/whatever they spin on, so it's nothing to 'touch them up' while I'm in there.

 

[tailstock4]

Looking for a good open gear lube for an old Atlas 618 lathe

On the quadrant or end gears I like to use an ISO 320 gear lube mixed with about 25% or so Power Punch – similar to STP. It stays on the gears for a long time and helps cushion the gear train but doesn’t seem as prone as grease to accumulating debris. I use this mix on a wide variety of lathes.

 

[francist]

When I first got my 618 I did the oil thing for a while but never really felt comfortable with it. Atlas in their literature for the lathe recommended a graphite-based grease so I thought I’d go with that. Yeah, easier said than done. Graphite greases turned out to be not so common anymore but I did manage to find some stuff from Poland that I could get from a supplier in the UK. Well, I was on the hunt so I sprung for two little pots of the stuff.

It works well enough, and over the ten or twelve years I’ve had the lathe I’ve used one pot (about the size of a cosmetic jar). But if I had to do it from scratch all over again I think I would probably just go with something like TriFlow synthetic grease. It has about the same consistency as the graphite stuff and it’s not too heavy. Comes in a tube about the size of a toothpaste tube, so for a 618 that’s probably about five years worth!

I’ve done a fair amount of threading and have rarely found any debris stick to the gears. One thing that really does help though is having a plug in the spindle hole to stop stuff from migrating through to the gears. How this happens is beyond me but it does, especially with boring, and without a plug the chips can and will go right through and drop out inside the gear cover. The Atlas spindle is small — I just use a short stub of foam backer rod — and it lives in the end of the spindle unless I’m running stock through or for some other necessity.

I’m sure a lot of greases or oils would work just fine, this is just what I settled on for my situation.

 

[RaisedByWolves]

We use this at work. Will not fling off.

 

[mmcmdl]

We use this at work. Will not fling off.

My basement is full of this . Use it on the equipment as well as the 4 wheelers and bikes .

 

[derf]

Mac's open gear lube...available at NAPA stores.

 

[ChazzC]

My basement is full of this . Use it on the equipment as well as the 4 wheelers and bikes .

So, “You put that s_ _t on everything?”

 

[mmcmdl]

So, “You put that s_ _t on everything?”

Well of COURSE . As an ex-McCormick employee I still enjoy their products . Their pay is what sucked and left a bad taste in my mouth . They paid a bundle for Franks along with many brands from Unilever . They grow by aquisition (sp) but have been lacking as of late .

I talked to my neighbor at the pig roast on Saturday . He owns a maintenance company that covers many of the states largest companies . He no longer offers his services to McCormick . He called upper management a fustercluck as it was 10 years ago but worse . All Unilever personnel are long gone so most employees are light rail riders . We know how that ends .

 

[ChazzC]

Well of COURSE . As an ex-McCormick employee I still enjoy their products . Their pay is what sucked and left a bad taste in my mouth . They paid a bundle for Franks along with many brands from Unilever . They grow by aquisition (sp) but have been lacking as of late .

That was the Hershey model in the 80’s & 90’s when I worked there; slowed after then and they concentrated on brand expansion (Reese’s & Kit-Kat everything).

I talked to my neighbor at the pig roast on Saturday . He owns a maintenance company that covers many of the states largest companies . He no longer offers his services to McCormick . He called upper management a fustercluck as it was 10 years ago but worse . All Unilever personnel are long gone so most employees are light rail riders . We know how that ends .

While at WEBBER/SMITH (A&E I gave the last 15 years of my career to; 95% food industry work), we put together a couple of proposals for McCormick, ended up doing some preliminary work. My memory is a lot of chiefs and a few, low-level people trying to get things done.