Member postings for Hopper

It would be the grunting/swearing that got it done. Keep up the good work.

Glad to hear you got 'er done. I am sure the drill press will be easier. One thing with them, don't be tempted to fit all rubber sealed bearings throughout in place of the original steel shielded bearings. The rubbers cause too much frictional load on start up and the motor has little torque at zero rpm to overcome it. So it just sits there buzzing without turning. Don't ask me how i know this!

Maybe fit one rubber sealed bearing at the lower end of the spindle to keep swarf out, and go with the steel shields on all the others, including the motor and intermediate pulley if fitted. The steel shields don't touch the inner race so have zero friction but the trade off is a tiny gap there. Still, they seem to last ok so not much swarf or dirt must get through the gap.

Edited By Hopper on 04/03/2023 09:36:20

If the cabling to your door is giving way, how old is your car? Maybe it is from the Stone Age. In tech world that is about five years, as I just found out when trying to get my phone repaired after the on/off button got sticky.

You can hold the piece of square bar in the toolpost, packed to suitable height, and machine a groove down it with a 90 degree cutter such as a countersinking cutter held in the lathe chuck.

I made one for my old Drummond out of plain old bright mild steel, 1020 grade here not sure what the UK code would be. Milled it in the lathe as Jason suggested, after removing as much metal as possible by drilling holes in the slot area using the drill press. Makes the milling go quicker on my shaky old Drummond. It does not like heavy milling due to its small spindle diameter I think.

Edited By Hopper on 04/03/2023 08:41:34

The smaller drills all have the pilot point -- they just don't have the larger diameter part that the bigger drills have, as it is not needed.

Edited By Hopper on 04/03/2023 08:24:59

Everyone concerned about industrial disease
There's panic on the switchboard, tongues in knots
Some come out in sympathy, some come out in spots
Some blame the management, some the employees
Everybody knows it's the industrial disease

PS, thinking about the file comment more seriously, you could take a lo-tech approach and file it down to size. It is only a small piece of brass and a 10 inch flat bastard file would make short work of it. Face the ends in the lathe to size first, then blue up the bar and mark a line around it at the halfway point by using a piece of flat bar or lathe toolbit etc that is half the height of the bar to guide your scriber with both sat on a flat surface.

Then hold the bar by its ends in the bench vice, with the line just on the jaws. Then file away until the file comes down to the vice jaws. Finish off with a nice smooth 10" single cut file such as mill saw file. Easy peasy and accurate enough for the job the piece does. If you want it dead accurate, you can measure the thickness of the bar as you go at both ends and the middle with a digital caliper.

Edited By Hopper on 04/03/2023 08:05:08

Bit of a longwinded way of saying modular assembly. The Yanks were doing it with Liberty ships and then Victory ships in 1941. Pre-fabricated completed sections of the ship were made at remote workshops, trucked to the shipyard and welded in place in one go, instead of being made from the ground up on site as they went. They could build a ship in 42 days. Submarines were built the same way when I worked in the boatyard in the 1990s. Made in sections with all internals completed, then the sections were welded together like so many lengths of very large pipe.

It's a good idea and somewhat innovative in the car industry. But there is the usual cloud of Musk hype around it. Grain of salt may be required.

Interesting that even with all the automation and thus hardly any labor costs (comparatively) they are still proposing the new Tesla plant for Mexico where labour is cheaper than the USA. Will they never be happy until they get their cars made for free?

Don't use gear oil in your lathe. Depending on grade and additives it can attack brass and bronze components. And it smells bad! Plus as pointed out already is too heavy in viscosity.

If you can buy hydraulic oil where you live, that will do the job perfectly. ISO 32 for all the oil bath cavities. And you can use it on the slideways too. Or you can go to ISO 64 for the slideways and it will stick to the ways a bit better maybe. If you want to buy hydraulic oil cheap, it is often sold as air compressor oil at hardware shops etc.

It is not critical. I still have my father's old lathe that has been lubricated exclusively with car or motorbike engine oil since he bought it in the 1950s. It is still in very good condition with no sign of excessive wear.

One other lubricant I like to use is motorcycle spray-can teflon chain lubricant to put on the change gears on the lathe. Put it on and let it dry overnight. Then it does not fling off and make a mess, and swarf does not stick to it. Your WD40 silicon spray might be good for these gears too. But I don't know about how it would lubricate the slideways.

And, no, mineral oil is not toxic. Used engine oil can be toxic, due to the dirty contaminants from combustion that it contains. But fresh oil is safe to use.

Edited By Hopper on 03/03/2023 22:52:48

File? That were luxury that were. We would have rubbed it on concrete floor of workshop until it were beautiful and smooth.

On the other hand, an important part of engineering is finding the best/easiest/most efficient/most effective way of doing a job.

But to stick with using the original material to hand and stick to the plan for the sake of learning, I reckon you could grab the round bar in the four jaw chuck and face it down to almost halfway, or close-ish to it. Then drill and file your slot. Then silver solder, or even soft solder, the upright standard into the slot. Then you could grip the standard in the four jaw and face off the last bit from the half round bar to bring the flat down to the centreline. Very fine cuts with a very sharp tool would be required, I should think.

But as the kit's advertisement says it is designed to be done with a milling machine, I think I would compromise if using only a lathe and go with a piece of square bar that is easier to deal with and will look just fine. You could even file the ends to 45 degrees (or rub them on the concrete floor!) to dress it up a bit.

Or you can grind on the bench grinder by hand if careful. Usually (but not always if the iron is badly chilled right through) you only have to remove the crusty black skin off the outside.

The other thing is low RPM in the lathe, especially for large diameters like wheels. IE well sub-100 rpm. Backgear if you have it.

The traditional softening method used to be to bury them in the glowing ashes in the fireplace to get them up to red hot then leave them there to cool slowly overnight. But not sure if fireplaces are even allowed in this day and age so it might have to be propane torch.

Edited By Hopper on 03/03/2023 12:38:06

Because fractions like 27/64ths are so much easier to use than big long numbers like 17.05mm.

The turret tailstock was a full-on rotary-indexed one mounted on a proper slide and carriage, so an expensive and serious bit of production gear. Not the little MT2 thing mounted in the standard tailstock for model engineers to make BA fasteners with.

How many factories actually used that and the other mentioned cut off slide and collets I have no clue. But the thought certainly was there. And remember, Myfords in their day were were a low-cost lathe, compared with say a Boxford or Raglan, or any of the purpose built capstan/turret lathes that powered mid-century production work, so may have been an attractive buy for small factories etc. turning out small parts such as electrical components, lock mechanism parts, shock absorber internals, type writer bits or a thousand other small things back when the world was powered by mechanical devices and not digital chips.

And the ML7 was originally produced to replace the M-Type, which had been used throughout World War Two for everything from onboard lathe on ships and subs through to mass producing aircraft parts by the zillions, so was probably aimed at the same market, small industrial use plus the model engineer market. Capstan/turret lathes then hit their straps in the post war era for production work, along with other "automatics" operated by everything from cams to eventually  ticker tape and punch cards so maybe that is why the Myford focus shifted to the ME market.

Edited By Hopper on 03/03/2023 12:19:12

Edited By Hopper on 03/03/2023 12:24:30

The other question is how are you going to machine the slot in it to attach the upright piece? Clamp it in the toolpost with a milling cutter held in the lathe chuck?

It seems like a needlessly tricky little bit of machining all up for such a simple engine. I might be tempted to use a bit of square brass bar and make life easier. Just mill the slot in it and be done.

Or could you mill the slot in the round bar first, then attach the upright piece to the round bar and hold the upright in the four jaw chuck while machining the round bar down half-round? Can't tell from the pics how that is secured though. Might not be strong enough?

Re the cylinder: That one is only a small flat. Yes holding in the four jaw and facing with a sharp tool will do that one easy enough.

Edited By Hopper on 03/03/2023 12:01:23

Yes there is always that factor when restoring old machinery for occasional use at our stage in life. I have motorbikes that do fewer miles in a decade than they typically did in a few months back in the day. They will certainly be still going when I am not!

How big is the bar and what size lathe do you have? And what is the part going to be? Something precision or something decorative?

Which model kit is it from? Possibly others on here have built the same engine and can share their experience. Or sharing a picture of the finished part/engine might help too.

For any work of reasonable size they would have used this lot LINK Nice long bed job right in the back.

The Myford was probably used by the instrument fitters. Powerstations in the pre-digital age were a mass of mechanical instrumentation and small bore pipework. Lots of pneumatic control valves too. Probably the Harrison too. It is pretty small by power station standards.

My ML7 spent its working life in an electric motor rebuilding shop and had been pretty much clapped out in the process. I know of another that spent its life in an auto electricians shop machining commutators and the like on starter motors and generators etc. But the Hercus (South Bend clone) was the more common small lathe in industry and schools and tech colleges here. That bit bigger and more sturdy. But Myfords would have been much cheaper in t e UK.

Edited By Hopper on 03/03/2023 08:29:26

The old farmer (and ex-farm manager on some large corporate farms/stations) reckons he remembers those old tractors with grease nipples on the hubs. Says they always fitted the seals in the conventional manner: the lip and garter spring facing inwards towards the bearing to keep the grease in. Says they just packed the bearings and the hub half full of grease as with a car wheelbearing set up and it stayed in there for the life of the bearings. Reckons leave the grease nipples alone.

That coincides with my experience working on machinery in dirty, dusty and often wet conditions in the mining industry and coal fired power stations. Never seen a seal fitted with the lip and spring outwards. Same on off-road motorcycles that go axle-deep in mud and creek crossings etc. A gang mower does not seem like particularly arduous duty by comparison. Bit of dust and chaff flying around but nothing that will get in past a conventional seal. Not like it's operating under water or anything.

In the absence of any workshop manual to the contrary, I would fit your seals in the conventional manner, lip and spring inside toward the grease and bearing. Pack the bearings and half the cavity on assembly with grease and then leave the grease gun alone.

You could try an enquiry with one of the bearing manufacturers/distributors such as SKF etc. if in doubt. Or your local ag machinery dealer/mechanic shop.

With fairly recent machinery like that, still available new, half the new price is a starting point. The unused brand new one might be worth a bit more. Maybe ask 3/4 of the new price and see how you go. You can always come down.

Steel is widely used for toolposts. Less likely to crack under the pressure of the clamping screws. Cheaper to buy and cleaner to machine too.