Assembly and maintenance instruction recirculating ball
OPTIMUM
MASCHINEN - GERMANY
5. Dezember 2007Page 2 Recirculating ball screw assembly and maintenance instruction ; Version 2.0
© 2007 GB
1 Assembly and maintenance instruction
recirculating ball screw
Recirculating ball screw
The delivery of the ball screw nut and spindle is performed corrosion-proof and
ready-for-assembly.
The ball-type linear are precision parts and need to be treated with outmost cleanliness and
care.
Please unpack the ball screw spindle directly before assembling.
1.1 Installation with spindle
The ball screw spindle needs to be installed radial and stressfree: While tightening the bea-
rings, you need to move the slide to and fro on the corresponding side.
1.2 Lubricating notes
General notes
Please consider the used lubricant as another machine element. Beside the careful design of
the ball-type linear drives the lubricant is mainly required to achieve the technically possible ser-
vice life.
For most applications, the lubricant is a wearing part and needs to be added accordingly.
As a matter of principle, a ball-type linear drive cannot be perfectly sealed, since there are
always parts of the running path which back out of the protected area. This way, dust and other
soilings of the environment are taken up which adhere to the greasy surfaces and provide for
additional lubricant consumption. A part of the soilings get into the nut and make the lubricant
thicken. Thus, the serviceability of the lubricant is decreasing which needs to be compensated
by the lubricating.
Before commissioning the spindle imperatively lubricate the whole length of the threadwith the
help of the nut.
Due to the axial movements between the nut and the spindle the loss of lubricant is higher than
for rolling bearings. Therefore, it is not possible to perform a lifetime lubrication.
Lubricating
In order to maintain the functional capability of the ball screws, they need to be lubricated suf-
ficiently. You may use the same lubricants as for rolling bearings. Lubricants containing MoS2 or
graphite must not be used. The choice of the lubricant and the kind of application can generally
be adapted to the lubrication of the other machine components. According to experience, a sin-
gle lifetime lubrication of the ball-type linear drives is not sufficient since the spindle always
discharges small amounts of lubricants off the nut.
Greasing
Use greases with EP additions (KP2K, DIN 51825). The regreasing interval is depending on the
environmental conditions. Generally, it is necessary to regrease every 200 to 600 operating
hours (about 3 months). It applies as standard value for the regreasing quantity: per each 1 cm
spindle diameter 1 cm³ grease per nut. Only use greases of the same saponification basis when
regreasing. If you use any greases of another saponification basis, it is necessary to clean the
recirculating ball screw and the spindle nut.
When you have regreased once, you should move the slide completely to and fro in order to
make sure that the grease will be uniformly spread over the ball screw spindle and in the nut.
Then you should regrease once again.
