Member postings for Kevin F

Welcome to the forum a great source of knowledge and I'm rather envious of your equipment .

Only yesterday I was busy working on my lathe ,an old but very useable Myford ML4 ,I like the lathe as for me it's a trip down memory lane ,a time forgotten when old school engineers used and built the lathe, this got me thinking about previous owners and what they made on the machine ,do you ever stop and think what was produced on your equipment , if only these machines could talk.......... ' apart from the odd chatter ' I bet this old Myford could tell a tale or two .

I never part off using feed , I like to ' Feel ' the tool cutting and can judge when I need to back off the cut to clear the swarf

Sorry for raking up an old thread,but does anyone have the drawings for the ML7 clutch system, I would like to incoperate the ML7 system onto my ML4 ,thanks in advance .

Edited By Kevin Fenrich on 09/11/2013 10:04:59

Ive just fitted a link belt on my ML4 ,I bought the belt from RDG tools ,my standard V belt was looking a bit worse for wear so I decided to be proactive with my maintance ,just for info I have an ML7 counter shaft and matching pulleys on the head stock the conversion was carried out by the previous owner .

At this moment in time I'm not impressed with the link belt ,it is noisier than the conventional V belt at higher RPM and I'm experiencing belt slippage , I've tensioned the belt as much as I can and tried running the belt in either direction to see if belt slippage improves and there's no difference .

From what I can see the original V belt is of a softer more maluble material hence giving more bite and the link belt consist of a harder less flexible material,I think that's why I'm getting the belt slippage .

I'm thinking of buying a dore westbury milling machine ,what are they like to live with ? I'll mostly be machining aluminium and currently own a Clarke cdm10 micro milling machine but I'm hoping to upgrade too the doer westbury,any advice chaps ?

Welcome Charlie, I currently own an ml4 lathe ,the set I'm running at the moment consists of ,a Hoover motor running at 1425rpm and producing half horse power. The pulley on the motor is 50mm in diameter on the small pulley and 110mm on the larger diameter pulley ,I run this set up predominantly on the 50mm pulley but run my ml4 with an ml7 countershaft system , the pulley diameter is 205mm on the ml7 pulley ,hope this helps .

I'm watching it

Hi Berty , I own an ml4 lathe and have been slowly carrying out modifications throughout my ownership.

The previous owner had fitted an ml7 countershaft pulley incorporating the V belt set up, I have fitted a Handle to the lead screw as it makes life easier when moving the saddle in small increments ,I've also made a larger handle for the tail stock to make drilling easier, I've also extended the locking handle on the tail stock .

Other modifications are a Rear tool post which makes parting off more pleasurable , pics are in my album .

Re :- the spindle nose thread ,Id keep this the same size thread as you can still buy new or used back plates and chucks for the Myford .

When I was an apprentice there was a lot of talk in the machine shop about ' nats cock ' I soon learnt that a Nats cock

was a thousand of an inch

Why don't you make the threads longer and then face off or part the threads to the required length

Just for info the ml4 has this set up , when I first removed the grub screw and went to use my back gear ,it was seized and the gear wouldn't rotate on the shaft ,so I squirted a bit of wd40 down the hole where the grub screw was fitted and it freed things up .

Edited By Kevin Fenrich on 23/04/2013 21:31:24

I use tool steel with a negative rake ground on the top of the tool, this tends to 'shoot' swarf upwards ,this stops the swarf from wrapping around the job ,also a high feed rate helps too and I also give the nose of the tool a small flat edge as I found it gives a better finish ,too sharp a point gives a poor finish .

Hi Jason , it does bore true over a depth of 50mm ,I've found it helps If you take a few ' spring cuts ' befor you get to your required I/D

Well done Chris ,given a bit of set up time these old lathes can produce accurate work

Edited By Kevin Fenrich on 18/04/2013 22:35:33

An early type of dial test indicator ???

I clean my machines after I use them ,I also oil the bedways ect if I know I won't be doing any machining for a few days ,my motto is ' look after your tools and your tools will look after you '

Could my weekend in the workshop get any worse , we'll today I broke my favourite parting tool

I feel your pain , I had a bad day in the workshop today

Hi phil there's some info here that maybe of interest

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=65196

Edited By Kevin Fenrich on 11/02/2013 22:00:46