I have this charming old German made milling machine.
It's normal knee type horizontal milling machine with table feed. I have a universal head with MT3 spindle. Nine speeds from slow to sedate.
I bought machine well used and it had had some evidence of mishandling, but it's big, cheap and it serves me well. Drill it ain't.
I have a question about the universal head lubrication. How to lubricate the spindle? I could find it out by taking the spindle head apart, but I don't want to do that without pretty good reason. Main gear is oil bath.
Opposite side of the universal head is a grease nipple, previous owner used molygrease (NLGI#2) and I have continued using it. It greases the gearwheels inside the spindle housing.
The vertical spindle has plain bearing. There are some openings to the spindle bearing housing on each corner. Looks like the purpose of these holes is to purge air/excessive grease out. I don't trust particulary much grease finding it's way to the spindle. I cannot believe that a German engineer would have designed a system that would reguire filling a large cavity (universal head) that has gears all the way up before some grease would be forced to a spindle. I can see that there is a access, but I would not risk splitting the gear housing with an over enthusiastic pumpping of grease.
I open the spindle KM nuts from the top of the spindle, push spindle out and lubricate it fresh MOS. Then run it and adjust clearance. It all looks dandy, but can't be how it's intended to be done.
In addition of these holes there are two unthreaded holes that have no thread, but they have a camfer. They look suspiciously like for old fachioned grease gun. Why would there be two different type of receptacles? Unless for two different type of lubricant? They are not ball press oilers. And there are plenty of oil cups on some locations.
I'm keeping it all lubricated best I can, but I'd like to do it right. I have no manuals, no other information than what I can get by looking at it.
Pekka
