Volstro speed increaser

I don't know. What gear ratio and what condition is it in?

Grease? If you are increasing the spindle speed, I would expect an oil -- and hopefully the proper oil is listed on the label. If not, download the manual from somewhere.

A vertical bar in a holder on the head casting -- looks like it was designed for a dial indicator or something -- but if it is there, use it.

Good Luck, DoN.

There is a great fitting on it

OK, I will try, thanks

Smooth at hand speeds isn't necessarily smooth at high speed. You will not know for sure until you spin it up.

Is it a great grease fitting, or just an overall exceptional fitting? There are high speed bearing greases for the kind of speed and forces in these increasers. Most are quite expensive. Since my speed increaser does not have a grease fitting I had to open it up and grease the bearings and planetary gears by hand. Since the grease I used didn't come in a grease gun cartridge I guess that was ok for me.

I had already installed a vertical bar on my mill for adjusting my coolant sprayer manifold up and down. I just adjusted the bar down further and slid the coolant manifold up to clear. The stop rod on the increaser rides up and down along it nicely with one minor problem. On stop and start up it swings back and forth, and because when using it for modestly heavy cuts approaching measurable fractional horsepower the rod bounces back and forth a little bit. I forget if it was on stop or start, but the swing was enough to knock my locline coolant nozzles of the manifold. Even lesser swing would knock them out of position. I found loosely wrapping a bungee cord around the stop rod and the vertical rod so it was contained, but could still slide up and down easily did the trick. If I used it all the time I might be tempted to install a second vertical rod and trap the stop rod between the two.

A Zerk (grease) fitting doesn't necessarily mean "grease me." You need only look as far as a Bridgeport table without a central lubricator to see "grease" fittings that should be oiled and never greased.

Right

Sorry, misspeleed grease fitting

OK

OK, I think that I get it, I will install something, I already have a christmas tree of coolant fittings mounted on the quill.

Sounds nice!

You mean "grease fitting"? Done in by a spelling checker? :-)

But certain quality machine tools (e.g. Deckel, IIRC) have grease fittings for oil.

Download and print out the manual and *check*. Grease in a step-up gearing setup is likely to bind it up. Let's see 6:1, and on a Bridgeport, which likely already reaches 2000 RPM, so 12000 RPM with grease -- that scares me. :-)

Good Luck, DoN.

Exactly. I have surface grinders the same size that are oil-Zerks. The trick is to find an oiler that has or could have a zerks fitting.

Martin

Iggy-That thing is a piece of crap. You should just dump it. Since you gave me a good deal on a Procunier tapping head a while ago I think I should return the favor. So to make disposal easier I will send fifteen bucks to cover shipping. Put the piece of garbage in a flat rate box. Since I trust you I will send the fifteen bucks now Because I know you will ship it. Don't delay, I just took the garbage out today so you have only a couple days if you want it to go out with the next garbage. Eric

Iggy-If you want to put Jon in the box I will put him in the garbage too. Just pack the piece of shit into the smallest box possible. Don't worry about the extra weight. I heard that the USPS is sick and tired of the piece of shit too and is offering reduced shipping. Make sure to wrap him well so that he doesn't stink up the post office. Eric

Egad, the price! What's that, $20 an inch?

You use to be able to get the second one at Harbor Freight. Item number

You have to really snug down the spout to keep it from leaking at the crummy gasket. I'll try making a replacement gasket or try an o-ring someday. Works okay for the little ball oilers on my 9x20 lathe.

I use a piece of bicycle innertube rubber with a hole punched in it. I put the rubber over the spout of my pump-type oil can, centering the hole over the hole in the spout; push it up against the oil fitting on the lathe; and pump away.

It's a little sloppy but it works, it's easy, and it's cheap.

On the HF Pump the spout is maybe 3 inches long and screws into the rest of the pump. If you look at Larry's link/image this is where the yellow part attaches to the black part. There is a small gasket there, typical chinese junk. When you jam the spout into an oiler fitting like on a lathe, build up some pressure, it wants to leak at that point...

I bought three of them, two in use and all of them have the same crummy gasket.

Now some bicycle inner-tube material would probably be an excellent replacement gasket for that spot ;-)

I try not to use tools of that type that are less than 60 years old. They usually work better.

However, I bought my all-steel oil pump when I was about 16, so it's only 50. It doesn't leak, but 60 would have been better. d8-)

What kind of grease did you use for this Volstro speed increaser?