[Frogblender]

I have a spare spindle collecting dust which fits my NM135. It had previously been removed from service (via hammer) since it had horrible runout (I've since found out the top cap was loose, so this was probably the cause of the runout).

My goal is to turn my 6kRPM machine into 9k or 10kRPM by changing the pulley sizes. Most of my milling involves 1/8" bits on 6061, so RPMs are important since I don't want to wait all month for a job to finish. And this spare spindle is a good guinea pig.

Anyhoo, there seems to be alot of "stuff" rattling around inside the spindle, I want to check the state of the hammered bearings, and also check the lube. So a teardown of the spindle is in order.

In the picture below, I've removed the top cap, and the top threaded cap, which has exposed the top bearings. Now I'm stumped. Any ideas how to get this apart?