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Greasing tool mag chain in horizontal?

huleo

Hot Rolled
Joined
Feb 12, 2014
Location
UT
Doing work in an HMC, cleaning out tool mag area and curious if you guys do much greasing of the tool chain and drive sprockets? We still some lube on there, and I think the book requests grease, but sometimes the book is a little overboard. Actually haven't greased one of ours but are all 1 shift machines without too many hours.

If grease is a good solution, what are you guys using? Being subject to koolant, I figure there might be a modern preferred recipe?
 
A good place to start would be to check the machine's manual to see if they provide instruction. Sometimes how much grease to use varies machine to machine.
 
I documented going through the entire tool magazine in my Kitamura 50 taper vertical on the Machinistboard site.

I only used grease to pack the bearings in the idler sprockets. Everything else I assembled with way oil.

I've never seen a toolchain or a sprocket it rides on wear out. The problem is usually chips and shop dirt sticking inside the toolpots, then sticking on the tool tapers and going in the spindle. For that reason I feel grease is just asking for more problems catching chips and dirt.
 








 
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