Aciera F4 (round head) Gear oil recommendations and drawings?

[pzwinakis]

Hello,

I have a new to me Aciera F4 round head, late 60's vintage - 420V machine. I'm wanting to put it back into service and would like oil recommendations for the main gearboxes, drive assembly and vertical head (spindle runs on isolated greased bearings).

I have a later manual with some exploded diagrams but they are for the later square-head style. Much information appears missing and I am not even sure how much relevance there is to the earlier machines. Obviously I'd love exploded views, wiring diagrams/schematics and any other relevant info if anyone knows a source for such stuff?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Pete
(Santa Cruz, CA)

 

[shapeaholic]

try this:
Aciera F4 manual round.pdf - Google Drive

Peter

 

[pzwinakis]

Thank you so much for the link to the manual. This is great!

 

[Botje]

For oil, per manual I used:
ISO68 oil in the feed gearbox. Used Shell Tonna 68.
ISO150 gear oil in the column and vertical head. Repsol Super Tauro 150.

The feed gearbox slipped after some testing. Have disassembled it now and did not find much dirt in the clutches. Manual recommends a lighter oil if it keeps slipping.

I can recommend to clean out all the oil reservoirs.. By now they will be quite dirty with sludge. Besides the feed gearbox can get contaminated with cutting fluid. The vario drives run on greased bearings, those might benefit from re-packing or better replacing.

Luckily these machines are very easy to work on, taking them apart for some cleaning is an easy job.

Here you can find more info on the refreshing I'm doing on mine: New machine day: Bought an Aciera F5

 

[btcc]

Hi
I am from Greece and a have a round body aciera f4 . I'm trying to find out what type of oil this machine actually needs. In various forums I read about types of oils and I do not draw any safe conclusions . Some of the recommended oils are hydraulic system oils, others are turbine oils and others are gear oil . with the same ISO number there is a big difference as far as viscosity is concerned . I would like to know what type of oil I should use in this milling machine .

 

[btcc]

Shell tona 68 is for slides beds and feed mechanism . I am very confused

 

[rklopp]

I use Mobil DTE Extra Heavy or Rando ISO 150 in my F4 and F5 main gearboxes and the X slide gearboxes. I use Mobil DTE 26 or Heavy Medium ISO 68 in the feed gearboxes. I used Mobil Vactra No. 4 slideway oil on the slideways. I don't think it makes any difference whether you use turbine, circulating, or hydraulic oils in the gearboxes. Vactra No. 2 on the slideways would be OK, in my book. I doubt it would hurt anything to use slideway oil in the X gearbox, since it is very low speed. I would not use slideway oil in the main or feed gearboxes. Other oil brands besides Mobil would be fine, of course.

I suppose the main message is: use circulating, hydraulic, or turbine oil in gearboxes, and slideway oil on slideways.

I also don't think it makes any difference whether the machine is a round or square-head. Mine are mid-generation square-head machines from the 1970s.

 

[btcc]

i asked because hydraulic or turbine oils have different viscosity than gear oils . In our case we have gear box . I think that gear oil is the correct .

 

[rklopp]

i asked because hydraulic or turbine oils have different viscosity than gear oils . In our case we have gear box . I think that gear oil is the correct .

How are the viscosities different? If two oils have the same ISO VG number, they have the same viscosity in terms of the industry standard.

 

[btcc]

so if i use hydraulic oil its ok? Why not gear oil that is designed for gear pressure ?

 

[btcc]

by the way . I need a spare part for this machine . Do you know where i can find because in swissmachines they don't have . I need the part 14 from this drawing

 

[rklopp]

so if i use hydraulic oil its ok? Why not gear oil that is designed for gear pressure ?

Sure, that'd be OK. What kind of gear pressure are you ever going to get in a 50-year-old F4? You'll never run that machine long enough to notice a difference in wear rate between any particular oil, as long as it is not Crisco.

 

[btcc]

The big problem is that Mobil DTE Extra Heavy sold for 20 liters and it is very expensive . A guy who sell oils he said me that for the spindle i can use gear oil 90w . Is it ok?

 

[AlfaGTA]

The big problem is that Mobil DTE Extra Heavy sold for 20 liters and it is very expensive . A guy who sell oils he said me that for the spindle i can use gear oil 90w . Is it ok?

No! 90 wt is too heavy for tight tolerance anti friction bearings ......AW-46 would be my go to....Oil is lots cheaper than spindle bearings.
Cheers Ross

 

[btcc]

Viscosity, wading through the numbers - Stratson

Viscosity, wading through the numbers: Simply put, viscosity is the measure of resistance to flow, the higher the number the greater the resistance. Seems easy enough until one discovers that there are several ways to describe the same viscosity

stratson.eu

 

[ole.steen]

Btcc: This factory went out of business many years ago, the last I heard was that the remainders was sold to Indonesia. Parts are hard to get by! You need to make them, or pillage a corpse. Good luck!
Ole