Member postings for Dave Halford

I have run a 3 "wide 21/2" dia slab mill on a Centec 2a with 1/2 hp motor. I only tried a light 3" cut of 2thou on alloy.

Shavings got thrown everywhere.

That said the slab is sharp and the shafts are free running. Its surprising how much stiff counter shafts and tensioner wheels soak up the power.

Is the cast iron machineable or are you trying to cut a hard spot You may have blunted the cutter.

Steel would be a better first choice to try.

BTW I have a T&LM lathe that took a 1" flat belt - the pulleys are about 1/16 wider than the belt so as your 1" looks lost on those pulleys it is too weedy to drive the mill, bit like your motor

You type o ring clearance into google

Nothing changes

Choice is relatively simple based on what you want to pay and how much room you have.

Chose your size and model and then hit Google for opinions.

People like to moan so most often you get all the trouble with positive replies reserved for threads like this one.

Current far eastern gripes have been

• gib strips made wrong
• I've blown my motor / control board working it too hard
• stripped plastic gears
• cant get the odd ball size belts any more

What the silly old duffer says is true, but his rough around the edges and simple fettling tells you a new machine needs work too.

There's been a spate of alleged ex school stuff, mostly lathes on ebay some are clearly not as described, also a heavily damaged centec 2 tarted up with fresh paint for £400 just check the screw heads on the table.

Both ways are a gamble, make your choice, you have to live with it

Best of luck

try Blackgates, but 71/4" pipe may not exist which may leave you with design issues.

Fizzy on here makes boilers

Suitable sticks meaning pure nickel. All you need is 90A and 2.5mm rods very easy welding.

However there a lots out there with a percentage of FE in them. Use one of these and you get un machineable scrap metal that you can only angle grind very slowly.

Dont ask how i know.

No kids that you could clutter up their garage for a few weeks?

Perhaps a short let on a local lockup garage? or cheap rent a Box storage.

Be a shame (and very annoying) to sell up if it turns out you don't need to after all.

I had a Great Aunt that used those to run her radio back in 1960 as electicity had not got any nearer to her house than the main road at the end of her lane. There was a house there that charged them for her.

The workshop of a 60's aeromodeller should stink of dope and diesel fuel.

A Taplin Twin would help with the look.

Nothing electrical, free flight only or combat.

railways work well with old sacks and finishing plaster for hills

The trouble with old Centec mills is the parts swapping you can do on them.

There are 2 fixed vertical heads and also 2 versions of the Quill head. They all fit.

Centec 2 was sold on to Granville - all parts interchange, so Granville parts find their way onto Centec machines. Perhaps the Granvilles had a smaller drawbars. Granvilles did not have the Centec name on the castings.

'Lathes' has a photo of the very early vertical head and a few Granville machines.

The vertical head is 3/8 and intended for collets or cutter holders

The horizontal is 5/16 and longer and is intended for retaining the horizontal arbor only.

If you want collets for the horizontal you need to make a draw bar, just weld a chunk of 5/16 bolt to some 8mm threaded rod and feed it in from the front already screwed in to the collet.Then turn up a big long nut for the back

Reading this thread just caused me to use the ignore member button for the very first time and probably only time.

Nothing to do with the OP nor the subject, just the cause.

Edited By Dave Halford on 30/06/2017 13:02:59

So what

Mine was a 2 years old car with 24,000 miles on it.

Dave

I suspect part of the almighty bang was the dual mass flywheel getting creamed, (they make quite a clang) which is what took the clutch out.

Brian

Try Jawel Paints in Brum

Might not be belt tension.

If it tends to stick and slip the belt and when you adjust the sliding hex sloppy it's OK then it's caused by a wear ridge in the main arm. You can stone off the first couple of mm or so front and back of the moving bit to dodge the ridges.

Just keep oiling it.

I've got one of those circa 1920

Still works and I still use it. Motor than can be seen in the B'ham science museum, not rusty, not come from a school etc so apparently absolutly worthless..

Buy it for less than £500

The narrow tray marks it as an older one

A 2A can make it's own riser block ;O)

Please be aware the gearbox has a gallery that goes to the knee Gib strip to splash lube it, so keep an eye on the oil level.

there are no oil seals in any of the vertical heads so they leak on warm days.

Some mt2 arbors do not have a spigot, but are designed to run in a ball race and therefore run on one of the last spacers.

get your arbour first

The 2B arm will fit the smaller 2 and 2A but they are longer (you shove the excess out the back) The 2 arm won't cover the full table travel of the 2B the 2a arm might..

The arm from a 2C will not fit at all

It's best to use butt joints between the plate and original steel else you get trapped water between and a while later a little line of rust bubbles betraying the edge of your plate.

Butting needs less filler too.