Timken Spindle Bearings?

Ken226

Ken226

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H-M Supporter - Silver Member
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The spindle bearings in my 2002 era Birmingham Chinese lathe are still humming along fine, but I sprung a oil leak in the gasket right behind the d1-4 mount.

I knew ahead of time that I would need to completely remove the spindle to access that gasket.

My current spindle bearings (SG, Phillipines) are fine, with about .0003" runout indicated off of a dead center in the spindle taper, but I decided to order a new set anyway, to have in-hand just in case I saw something I didn't like while i had it apart.

I found and ordered a set of Timken P5 bearings (made In Poland) from a reputable dealer in France. They look good, but there are no markings indicating the P5 rating, other that "P5" hand written on the box, in ink. There is no mark to indicate the side with max runout.

These sound legit? They weren't cheap. Timkens plethora of 100,000 page .pdf catalogs may as well be written in Klingon.

I can't find anything, in any of them, to indicate how to find a bearings accuracy rating in the part# marked on the race. Given the size of their .pdf catalogs, I'd need a couple million years to read through them with any kind of thoroughness.
 
can you post pictures of the bearing and box?

often, higher end bearings will have a reference mark on the inner race
 
Theres no reference mark that I can see.

The 30212 markings are too faint to see in a pic. Here are the markings on the 30210.





















The 30212 bearing is marked "Timken Y 30212 DL4 70 LC".

I'm reasonably certain that these aren't the standard truck axle bearings, which are "k" rated and marked "30210m-90KM1, and "30212m-KM1", respectively.
 
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So, according to this "how to tell if your bearings are genuine" .pdf,

I guess I won't learn anything from the markings on the races. Those are plant codes, date codes, and a general part# referencing race size. I guess I'll be taking 123bearings word for their P5 status until I can install them and take measurements.

Perhaps these things all come off the same assembly lines, with the same plant/size markings, then are measured, sorted and priced according to their precision?
 
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Usually, the precision bearings I’ve purchased are just as described. They have the same stamped part number imprint as regular Timken bearings, but then they have been etched with little ”O” ‘s
The super precision Timken bearings had 3 etched “O’s”
next level had 2 etched O’s
and the lowest precision bearings had just one O

And also, it’s just as explained above in that they all roll off the same line, but they pic the best for the precision bearings. And they etch the little O’s

I thought I saw a single little O on your picture of the race.

And I might be wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that only Timken does this now. Yet I always wondered about that because I know that some lathes had other brand bearings like FAG. And these were high end laths like Colchester.
 
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machPete99 said:
Yep the higher end bearings typically are just better picks from the main line.
Click to expand...

That's prettyuch what I suspected.

The pics I posted earlier were taken by my wife and texted to me, as I was working out of town. When I got home and looked the bearings over for myself, I found a better part# on the box, which she had missed.



Even though it's only marked on the box, not the bearings themselves, That suffix made them much easier to verify. According to Timken, the 99E60 suffix means they're P5.

 
I dropped my stand and chip pan off at APC powder coating this morning. They'll be coating the pedestals, center piece, chip pan and slide out chip drawer in gloss grey #GR736:


Afterward, I put these Timken P5 bearings in. Got my spindle runout down from .0003-.0004 ish, to about .0001" measured with an Edge Technology .0005" toolpost indicator.
 
Don’t mean to be nosey but I probably will be changing the bearings in my Clausing 6307 soon, as they are making noise. What is the approximate cost of precision bearings of this size? I saw some prices from Clausing and they were four times what I paid for the whole lathe fir just one! Thanks,






Bones
 
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These were metric bearings. I got them from 123 bearings in France. 30212 front and 30210 rear were about 300$ shipped.
 
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