I'm in the final stages of putting back together my Clausing
Colchester 13" machine. I've cleaned off 30 years worth of overall use
and abuse.
This machine has an oil tank holding about 2.5 gallons of spindle lube
underneath the headstock. A pump driven by the main drive motor
distrubutes oil to the spindle bearings as well as dumping oil on the
forward and reverse wet clutch and splash lubing the rest of the
gears. When I first opened up the headstock, everything was coated
with a fine black grime. My best guess is that this was clutch
material resulting in normal wear from years of use. Since the
machine has an oil pump, placing a filter on the output of the pump
seems like a good idea on keeping harmful particulates out of the
headstock.
Any ideas on what might work. Micron size rating that would filter
abrasion from clutch use. The finer the filter the better but the
tradeoff is greater restriction resulting in lower flow rate. The
pump is a centrifugal impeller style putting out maybe 5 to 10 gpm
with fairly low working pressure as a best guess. I don't want to
kill my machine by cutting off the oil supply but I would also like to
keep the oil as clean as possible.
Any experience in this arena is greatly appreciated.
- posted
18 years ago