[harrzack]

I have a Gavin (India) 4" rotary table which I have disassembled. It has been factory lube'd with some sort of heavy, sticky oil on the shafts and some rather nasty looking/smelling grease on the worm gear on the table. Would like to clean this all up and put some better stuff on.

Is that 'sticky' oil a Good Thing' - I'd like to just clean it all with mineral spirits and put Lithium White grease on the gears and use synthetic gear oil to lube the rest of it.

Ideas?

=A.

[RCaffin]

The 'heavy sticky oil' may be shipping grease: keeps the parts from rusting in transit.
I can't imagine you could do any harm at all by stripping all the shipping grease out completely, then adding a small qualtity of suitable grease or oil. Some waterproof wheel bearing grease might be fine.

I once bought a very simple new-in-box Japanese sewing machine for my wife. It would not work when we got it home. The demo unit had been fine. I found shipping grease on the main vertical shaft (the one that goes up and down with the needle on the end). I cleaned all that off and then lubricated the shaft with light machine oil. Thereafter the shaft FLOATED in the cast iron bearing. Beautiful.

Cheers