Member postings for Nick Taylor 2

You say 'reversing the feed direction'.

Do you mean you are reversing the motor? Or do you mean you are using the stick on the gearbox to reverse the feed direction?

If you are touching the stick on the gearbox then this is your problem, you need to reverse the motor, if you bring any part of the gear train out of mesh then you risk loosing the sync between leadscrew and spindle.

Nick

Hi Matt,

I do have shielded cable on the motor feed, makes me wonder if I should use shielded for everything including the DRO power cable and the VFD controls. I am running at the lowest carrier frequency that is inaudible as I am using the original 1970s motor and I have noticed current consumption and heat both rise when using the highest carrier. I don't run below 30Hz for this reason.

A few other youtube channels have used this DRO, generally good reviews;

Enots Engineering, fitted to a Boxford and MrPragmaticLee, fitted to a Chinese 11x27 lathe

Lee encounters the same problem I had with the Chipmaster - the saddle is too small for the scales, so I have done a similar thing and fitted my scales outboard of the rear of the saddle. Luckily there is plenty of room behind the Chipmaster so I didn’t need to alter my splash guard.

I hate to break it to you gentleman, but I would place good money on the MDRO and SINO equipment being made to the same specs and even on the same street as all this cheap Chinese stuff you are warning people off.

I bought a Jingce 2 axis for my Chipmaster at Christmas, cost £125 from banggood. The only problem I have had with it is that it is very susceptible to electrical noise from my VFD, so I’ve had to combine all my machine earths to a common point on a copper stud I made and screwed into a tapped hole already on the lathe bed inside the existing electrical cabinet. Before this the scales would randomly start counting when the motor was either ramping up or down. Since then it has been very reliable.

Last week I did a job for my current employer - some linear bearing mounts for hydraulic test fixtures. All done on the DRO, didn’t look at the dials once I had set the cross slide diameter on the first part. This is mostly because they were metric parts and the machine is imperial. Kept my finishing cuts the same at 0.5mm (0.25mm DOC) and all parts passed inspection on a 0.025mm tolerance on the OD and shoulder length.

I purchased this same DRO from banggood for my Chipmaster. 200mm scale for the cross slide and 600mm for the saddle. Cost £125 delivered using the discount codes and have to say I am very impressed with it.

I’ll do a write up at some point but as the scales are low end and optical, they are quite bulky, not a problem on the saddle scale but with the cross slide scale I had to mount the scale and read head ‘outboard’ which required some brackets to be made to support everything. No space for nuts and bolts so the brackets are all welded, made from 2mm mild steel angle which is nice and rigid.

Next? You haven’t shown us this 100thou cut yet. By all means take your time to find the softest material you have.

Would like to see 100 thou in mild steel as well, well with a tool that was not so sharp that it blunts in a few passes... and with a finish that was worth the effort!

I had a similar problem with my Boxford, the adjustment nut felt tight but would slip easily under load. I found that if I rocked the crank handle back and forward say 1/8 of a turn as I tightened the nut it would tighten properly and hold correctly. I’ve stripped the machine down for other reasons (bearings) since then and saw nothing obviously out of order with the threads etc. I assume it’s an alignment problem, maybe some wear in the ID of the block.

As I understand the MK1 students - I think there is only one lever under the apron. You move it along to either Sliding or Surfacing to engage which feed you want.

Just be aware that chipmaster doesn’t seem to have a normal tailstock, just the capstan unit. As a chippie owner I can say that the small between centres length can be annoying even with a standard tailstock - let alone the considerably larger capstan unit.

it also doesn’t seem to have much equipment with it, I paid less that the starting bid for mine delivered by HIAB. And I got 4 burnerd chucks, 3 cam lock back plates still in the sealing plastic and stacks of Dickson tool holders etc.

However if that machine has spent its life with the capstan unit attached then the bed should be in fairly good condition if it’s been doing repetitive capstan work it’s whole life!

The bed wear on the tail stock area looks horrendous! It must be a trick of the photo, because that looks to be VERY deep. Given the general state of it, looks like a bit of a pup to me. I think people see the gearbox on myfords and their wallets run off without their brains!

Edited By Nick Taylor 2 on 07/03/2019 07:19:31

That's not an opinion actually Ketan, castings that size don't move that much if they are subject to correct manufacturing techniques before and after grinding… and please don’t try to tell me the surfaces in the above pictures have been hand scraped.

So we're saying that it because it was a different humidity/temperature in the factory the day it the machine was made that means that the ways and mounting pads are magically no longer ground correctly when its setup in your customer's house?

Sorry, but what a load of rubbish.

Also I think 90% of the people on this forum know the difference between a 'scraped' surface and a 'hacked up with a hand held grinder' surface.

If you have a lathe that has V-ways and the saddle is rocking then it needs a regrind, either due to wear or it was never right in the first place.

Lift is slightly easier, might be a case of removing shims etc but there is a way to adjust it. Plenty of vids on YouTube of UK and US mini lathe users performing saddle mods to stop lift, mostly during parting off.

Did you remember the spacer between the two bearings?

Are the bearings the correct way around?

Did you remember to give the left hand collar a sharp tap with a small hammer?

I doubt its good news as they built the place specially for themselves only about 7 or 8 years ago!

Hang on, so you turn the OD then for some reason it suddenly starts to run out? For this to happen the chuck must be either loose or the spindle is about to fall out. Sounds a bit funny to me... you must have a fairly obvious problem.

How much runout does it have? does the body of the chuck/spindle nose runout as well?

Friend of mine is a self-employed builder, he was complaining the other day about how difficult it is to get young lads for labour at the moment – not because there aren’t any of them but because they all seem to think they should be on £15 an hour.

He said most of them spend half their pay before they even get home every day; 2x packs of smokes per day, then lunch and drinks/snacks/magazines etc

The problem with the Chinese imports is that the quality is so inconsistent, the domestic importers are to blame for this as well as the manufacturers. You’re kidding yourselves if you think the UK importers really open up the crates and check every single machine. Also I bet they DO re-sell returned machines, because China certainly won’t take them back.

A friend of mine returned 2 mills to a certain purveyor of imported green machinery before he gave up and asked for a refund. However, I bought a small mill from the same place for work and it’s excellent, a tweak of the gibs and a clean and oil and it’s turning out good parts.

As for a new Myford, I would buy a new connoisseur today… if they were more reasonably priced, say in the £3k range. I don’t think you can buy a finer 7-inch lathe, however you can buy import or used domestic machines with considerably more capacity for the same money which will turn out as good parts as the Myford. You just have to roll the dice and hope you get a good one (the thread about the Warco cross slide from the other day comes to mind; no two faces square to each other and the T-slots different sizes and so close to the edge of the casting it made me cringe looking at it).

Also consider the footprint of a Myford on a stand, it takes up considerably more space than a mini-lathe. In fact, my super7 on the makers stand took up as much space as my Chipmaster… but weighs 500kg less and only has 1/4 of the HP. This is why the stand got sold and the Myford is now on a bench.

In all I think the Chinese machines are to be commended for introducing so many people into the hobby, there must be thousands of these machines in use everyday turning out great models. I’m looking at a mill from Warco, hopefully early next year, but if I could fit a Bridgeport in the garage…

Edited By Nick Taylor 2 on 30/11/2018 09:46:23

Most definitely too slow for a carbide tool. I wouldn’t think you’ll get decent results without running 2-300 rpm at that diameter, probably much faster. Might be best to use an external tool on the rear of the work and run in reverse, threading away from the chuck. Then you can run much higher rpm without risking a crash.

I would also use the top slide to feed in on the flank angle. Just because a machine is 600kg doesn’t mean all the gibs are in good adjustment etc.

That’s a nice old motor, late one as well LDC were broken up in 67. Another vote for HuanYang VFD, a 2.2kw model would be ideal. No need to over rate as you can use a slow ramp to start and you can set max motor current in the VFD.

I run my 3HP 1970s motor on my Chipmaster with a HuanYang and I’m tempted to buy a second one to run the Myford. My 2.2kw unit cost me less than £80 delivered to my door on eBay. It came from Germany as well.

Sounds to me more like a problem you would have with a phase convertor, not a Variable Frequency Drive... terminology problems maybe causing misunderstanding because there's no way a VFD rated for 5HP will struggle to drive a 3HP motor unless you have the motor wired for the wrong voltage.

However a phase convertor needs to be set correctly to be able to start and run different motors of different power outputs correctly (you are basically switching in and out different value capacitors to allow for the changing loads).