petrolatum -aka vaseline- as bearing lube?

[federico moreno]

Hi everybody!

I´m using a very nice bearing - extracted from an old Hitachi TT- in a DIY deck that is in constant ¨reformulation¨.

Initially, the bearing was ¨open¨, with a 10 mm diameter spindle, housed in a good sintered bronze sleeve. Acting as thrust bearing was a cilindrical alloy piece with steel ball and nylon base , open on it´s side (this opening was there to permit gear engage of the autoreturn mechanism of the Hitachi TT, which was, to put it in some words, ¨spindle actuated¨ ).
Original lubrication was grease.

In a first instance, I kept the original design of the bearing, using white grease as lubricant. Inexistent play, and a good 3 1/2 minutes of rotation with a gentle push in the platter (the platter is based on a 12 inches peripheral steel ring -seamless steel pipe-, which helps a lot with it´s inertia)...
But grease is sticky, and when using a low torque synchronous motor (extracted from a... microwave oven, and redesigned to work as a straight motor and not as a motorized gear), the combined mass of the platter and the viscous drag of the grease was too much... so the motor stalled, and a push was needed to make it work again.


So I sealed the thrust plate piece with epoxy and copper sheet, converting it in some sort of ¨cup¨, filled it with liquid vaseline,
putting the spindle back in place with great pain (because of it´s tight fit and the compressed air inside the bearing, acts as an oiled piston and only sets in in a couple of hours)...

Well... I fixed the platter in the spindle, and gave it a good hand push, to check out friction and rotational ease...

I made some coffee, drank it, and the platter was spinning...

I light out some cigarette, and the platter was spinning...

Geez...I was getting a little bored for so much rotation watching... But avoiding the desire to stop the hell of the platter, finally it stopped by itself.
The damned thing was spinning for about 17 minutes!!

Someone here has tried vaseline as lubricant ? (in oil bearings only, please...!)
Can vaseline do some harm to bearings in the long term?

I read in some site that sintered bearings ¨take¨ vaseline with ease, and that friction is greatly reduced. I don´t know if it´s true.

I performed the same test with light machine oil, but the bearing became a little more noisy (stethoscope) and the spinning time was greatly reduced.

A plus for vaseline: air does not oxidizes it. I have some liquid in a bad sealed bottle, has lots of years, and is in pristine condition.

Some oils tend to evaporate and get sticky. In the long term, a funny smelling residue is all that´s left. Not so, in my experience, with vaseline...

But...any cons?

[federico moreno]

I haven´t access to the bulk of the document, but what the extract says is interesting

http://www.springerlink.com/content/...101b1c9ff&pi=0

[jrevillug]

Sounds good. Thanks for that- hadn't thought of Vaseline as abearing lube.

Non-toxic, too. the person that invented it ate a teaspoonful a day.

[federico moreno]

Non-toxic, too. the person that invented it ate a teaspoonful a day.

hehehe, what a self confident man...
With that dose, I think he must be spinning all day long

Now, seriously: I used vaseline for different lube jobs with good effect.
In my old Thorens TD125 SI spindle, petrolatum performs flawessly. Priorly, some light machine oil that I put there give up in a year... The spindle get marked, and I had to polish it very carefully with brasso.
With vaseline it never happened again, at least till now.

I don´t know very well, but in some thread of the Vinyl Asylum, or maybe the Lenco Lovers TT site (very nice, by the way) someone mentioned it.

The thing that catch my attention the most was the inalterability of the liquid. Apparently, is more stable than normal light machine oil. I believe that in TT usage (low rpm, low temp, low vibration), it should be good.