Storing Mill Accessories/Tooling

Those cam bearings are expensive. I found 2 NOS ON eBay so just changed the two upper mast bearings. I was able to free up one of the lowers and lube it pretty good. That was a few years ago and I’ve left it with one bad and frozen bearing. It’s been useable. I just relube every thing every so often. It has been a handy find.
 
@Tim9 It looks like NOS brings the price down to $60 in just those bearings...

Looking the thing over a little more carefully, I think I need to do the following:
  • Replace the follower/cam/yoke bearings
  • Cut down the extended lift platform that someone welded onto this thing
  • Cut down/weld back to original shape the base that someone extended to support the extended platform (Can I get you to take some pictures of this for me, Tim? I'm not 100% sure what it's supposed to look like.)
  • Replace the front casters, which are totally ruined
After all of that, I should be able to avoid picking anything heavy all the way up onto the mill. I might also set it up to slide a chuck onto the way protecting board I have for the lathe, so that I'm never really lifting those either.
 
If I had my lathe and mill up and running plus had the tooling then.... that I have now, I would probably just make my own.
They are overpriced bearings IMO. I’m guessing most of these bearings get used on forklifts which have much, much higher lifting capacity than these 700# capacity lifts. So yeah.... I’d just make a couple shafts with similar OD bearings on 3/8” studs.
 
I had a thoroughly successful day yesterday getting all four of those mast cam bearings to free up. I let them soak for about 4 hours in vinegar to loosen the rust, then I gave them a couple days in Kroil thinned with acetone, and I finally clamped them with the appropriate bolt + washers + nut and used a strap wrench to get them to start spinning. They're now back soaking in the Kroil jar to hopefully do a bit more rust dissolving.

The big question from here is how should I lubricate them? What would I do to pack them full of decent grease?

Thanks,
Will
 
I think if you lube them real good with some way-oil, you'll be just fine. Just lube them once a year. No need over-thinking this since it won't be stored out in the weather and won't be used 24/7.
 
It's been out in the weather for a week or so since I fixed those bearings, and it's making a trip up to a friend of mine's shop. He's going to help me shorten the foot and weld it back together and cut the plate down some. Once that's done, I'll put the fancy new casters I bought for it on and it'll make it down into my shop. I'm deeply excited to try it out for moving heavy things around.

I'll post photos of the modification process after it's done.

Thanks,
Will
 
Just a wrap up post on here, but I ended up not really being able to use the cabinet. It started bowing enough that the doors didn't line up anymore after about 500 lbs on the internal shelf (dividing head, tail stock, super spacer, several drill press vises). After staring at it for a *while*, I ended up getting some extra heavy duty garage shelving from Home Depot. It's pretty damn solid, and I've got at least 4000 lbs on it at the moment, as you can see in the pictures below. I did have to shuffle the mill over 9" to get the shelving to fit, so that was quite a bit of driving to borrow machinery movers from a friend of mine, also pictured below.

The lift cart doesn't get me all the way to the top shelf, but it does get up to the third one. This means that I won't be picking up anything over 100 lbs to load it onto the mill for quite a while. I'm getting my brother to build me a few chuck boards to go with my lathe chucks so that they 1) don't roll off of the shelving and 2) can simply be slid off of the cart onto the ways and then pulled up onto the spindle by the drawnut, meaning that I don't do any lifting on them either. I won't manage to avoid *all* heavy lifting, nor do I really want to, but I should have it minimized to the point that I'm unlikely to accidentally do something bad to my back. Here's to being able to still enjoy the hobby in 50 years!

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