Winter Maintenance

Well its now winter time for "most" of us I know some of you may mill year round however, I am interested to know what kinds of things people repair on their milling machines each winter.

A short list of what we would do each year (by no means a complete list) to a smaller machine would be

-replace lower conveyor/bearings
-inspect/change rollers
-inspect/change track idlers
-weld/replace holders/hardface cutter drum
-drain hydraulic tank
-full service including draining of gearboxes.
-wash rad
-fix odds and ends noted as broken in the summer.

Thats a nice list.

Attention is always given to wear items like ski's, track pads, conveyor belts....how long they will last may depend on what gets replaced over the winter.

When it comes to wear-parts, always ask: How can we get more wear-life out of this (fill-in-the blank). A little inginuity goes a long way on some things like crawler undercarriage components, repeated shock and continuous vibration is the single most cause of advanced wear in this area, so how do we minimize that (we asked ourselves once long ago)? One genius on the team (a seizmic engineer) on site said put rubber track-pads over the steel shoes of the excavators to absorb the machines vibration while it worked. This was so the ancient and historical building next-door wouldn't crack apart, and prevent a law suit, but as a side benefit, the big wrench at the shop whos job it was to remove the rubber pads after the project (but never did) noticed that the undercarriage wear was much less sever on this machine that others that ran only on the steel grouser shoes. - Go figure, who would've known and we all learned something that day.

Love this forum so much good info and advice