I am looking for design ideas for an efficient, easy to operate grease stick press. Any ideas, drawings, and pictures will be appreciated.

Russ

Two airbrake cylinders back to back.

-Hudson

Ours, using one brake cylinder:

https://barryc53.weebly.com/greasing-1392.html

Russ,

Change to wet cellars. Nobody I know has ever regreted it. Even a hog like a China Rail QJ gets by with Journaltex for everything except high temperature applications.

Take Care & Work Safe.

Russ, I don't know if you remember the one we had for many years. I believe it was made from an air brake cylinder, and the piston shaft pushed the grease through a pipe to form the sticks. When we converted the rods to soft grease, I gave the press away, I think to the Soo #1003 group.

I feel that we have had great success with soft grease on the rods, and I have no reason to go back. For 4960, it got new rod brass around 2011 with tolerances of 0.015". We use Alamagard 3752 grease, and it runs quite well.

Eric

Russ,

As an alternative, I have seen and used a french-fry cutter to cut block grease into acceptable sizes for easy insertion into a grease gun. The user then takes the freshly cut block and twists the block back and forth at the cut-lines until the grease rotates free of it's other half, revealing a clean line. This process is repeated until you're left with a french fry like dimension stick. The process gets easier as the block reduces in size. It's not a fool proof method mind you. The grease can re-solidify itself after being run through the cutter and despite your best efforts turn into a glob of useless matter when attempting to break it apart.

If a french fry cutter is not in the cards for you, a similar apparatus can be made using piano wire sections (say 4 or 5 strings spaced at 1/2" intervals) strung across a raised framework. The user pushes a grease block through once, rotates the sliced block 90° and once again through the wires. The process of separating the sticks from there is similar to the method described above.

Food for thought,

DC

Kelly may correct me, but 30 years ago I believe at the Strasburg grease came in big blocks, and somebodys job was to take a big kitchen knife and cut the grease into sticks.

The air brake cylinder adaptation seems to be quite common and does work. We had/still have one but it is not currently in use. It does work but we had to pack the grease into it carefully to avoid air pockets when pressing sticks. The results of the air bubbles coming out with the grease under pressure could be rather explosive.

Hand cutting is another tried and true method, which is what we are currently doing. We use a cutter that looks much like a lever operated guillotine. It is very time consuming and wastes much grease. The hard grease we use does not always cut cleanly and often breaks up into smaller pieces which are then useless for sticks.

I am hoping to come up with something that we can just open up, load a complete block of grease into, and start extruding sticks. The machine that SD70dude linked to might fit the bill.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

Russ,

I am glad you found those photos helpful. Sorry for the relatively poor quality shots, due to our current minimal steam operation the apparatus is not used much anymore and is currently in storage, those are the only photos of it I have access to.

I should also note that we first cut the big block of grease into smaller chunks with wire, so that they will fit into the press. However I see no reason one could not construct a press with a larger diameter that would hold most or all of one of those blocks, ours was homebuilt by our then-CMO out of scrap steel and pipe that was lying around the shop.