Member postings for Pete Rimmer

No it was just a nasty habit by Boxford/Denford. Most manufacturers use conforming threadforms.

I like the 29.5 degree option, You'll be hard-pressed to hand grind a tool to half a degree anyway without using a jig or rest.

L0 chucks sell quite readily. I don't think you'll struggle with that.

I hadn't seen the previous link so I thank you for putting this one up. I needed a clamping kit for my new milling machine for when it's rebuilt and they had a couple of the correct size in stock.

Hi Steven and welcome. It's a shame you didn't come along 12 years ago when I was looking for a suitable recipient for my dad's part-built Jinty when he passed away, I would have gladly donated the lot . In the end I gave it to the local model engineering society for them to decide.

Just for interest - where are you located?

Steve I think it's unlikely that you would have a problem with a reversed field it would require the wires removed from the star point and swapped around with a wire from a terminal and I'm not even sure that even that would cause a problem on this particular motor. I f you have rough running issues then it's more likely to be mechanical, maybe debris in the impeller or even corrosion. I had a pump where the impeller was completely eroded away and full of white powder.

Swapping any two power leads is much easier and less likely to go wrong, for reversing a 3 phase motor.

What size motor is it Steve? I am looking for a small motor and VFD set for a small bench lathe I have. I also have a couple of very small VFD's suitable for a coolant pump going spare although I still say you should try the capacitor first it's a lot simpler and it's very cheap.

I believe that John Stevenson ran a coolant pump for years using nothing more than the capacitor out of a tube light.

Most small 3 phase coolant pumps will work just fine from 240 single phase with just a capacitor (steinmetz connection).

It's a bit of a jumble in there but it looks like you have red white and blue incomng power each on one post with one motor lead connected on each. The bottom post has three wires connected to it, that makes it the star point so your pump is configured for 415v.

Now, being just a coolant pump there is every chance that wiring your VFD to 2,3,4 just how it is will work just fine. Motor power will bevastly reduced but if it pumps enough coolant that's all you need. To configure the motor for 240v 3 phase (for your VFD) you would release the three wires on the No1 post and bring them each to 2,3,4 to form a delta. You can do this easily using a multimeter just split them all off and figure which is the other end of the coil on 2, connect it to 3. The other end of 3, connect it to 4, the other endof 4, connect it to 2.

If you haven't already bought a dedicated VFD for it though save your money and try it with a capacitor, they usually work no trouble at all.

It does catch people out. For small items like cross slides you put them on a flat piece like a surface plate and bang down on the four corners in turn with your hand. If it clacks there is clearance below. For longer parts just scraper the middle - your blue spotting will gain a patch of no contact in the middle and you just keep scrparing wider and wider until the blue reaches the ends.

There is no problem running two scraped faces against each other Bob and it would be preferable to using a stoned face. The upper face of a pair will benefit from heavier scraping or 'oil flaking' so it has pockets to retain oil. You wouldn't do the lower face such as your lathe bed because then the pockets would hold dirt for the saddl e to pick up as it travels over. Your scraping on the bed is not deep eough for that to be an issue.

If you have confidence in your bedway being straight and true you could fix it down and level it, then blue it up and use it as a reference for scraping. Be prepared if you're going to do this because although you've made an admiarble job of milling the bottom flat and certainly improved the geometry even after stoning, it would print up poorly when blued. They always do it's just the way things are.

I don't know what your location is but I could certainly give you some pointers and practical assistance if you're near me in Kent and in fact if you can get to Essex I did just discover that the guy I have bought several straight edges off (the only source of new cast iron references in the UK now afaik) will be running a week-long scraping course next month. If anyone is interested I can fish out a link.

It looks like you have put a parallel on the worn way and are indicating off the parallel. There is a risk by doing this that you will find one end very low and the other end the highest point because it has teeter-tottered one way on the centre high spot. Blueing the ways and moving the saddle carries the same risk. When you take this sort of measurement, always hold down one end of the prism with the indicator on it, then press down the other end to make sure it doesn't rock. Of course since you have milled the underside by indicating the un-worn face then you will already have compensated for that. Hopefully you will have taken great pains to avoid clamping stresses whilst doing the milling it takes very little milling error to require a lot of scraping to correct, as I have discovered in the past.

How are the underside ways now Bob? Still in as-milled condition or did you then scrape them?

Saddles wear on the underside at the ends where they collect abrasive material from machining. Usually, the headstock ends are more worn. This causes the face to be convex and so shaped like the rockers on a rocking chair. It's likely that it would blue up quite well but that doesn't mean it's mating with the flat way just that it's printing blue like rolling a fingerprint. If your ways are worn, it's likely that you'll find double the wear in the underside of the saddle.

BobMc you're doing well but you should make sure that you never rely on one set of measurements when looking for wear if you have a means of cross-checking. You chould check your measurements by stoning the front machined face on the underside of the saddle lightly to remove any burrs then running a surface guage on that face with a dial gauge on the ways. That would have been a set-up face for the original machining of those ways.

You're right to be concerned about the saddle height being lowered. It will cause the weight of the saddle to be carried somewhat by the leadscrew and might cause finish issues with your work. You might well be able to skim the bottom mating face to bring the apron up, but don't try to do this on a machine with powered cross-feed or it'll cause the cross slide gears to bind.

I'd tig weld that for you if you were able to bring it to me in N Kent.

You could scrape the face of the part and that would remove all of the diamond compound. Done well it would probably be flatter than your lapping exercise too.

I repaired one last year that had a fault in the wheel hub. The owner was compleltely mechanically inept, he was complaining about a loss of speed and range and then it wouldn't work. When I looked at it one of the bearings in the motor hub has disintegrated and bits of the cage has been floating about. and ripped off a hall sensor. I replaced the bearing and all three sensors, plus the well-knackered chain and he was off and running again.

I'm not suggesting that you have the identical problem but it might be worth checking in the hub and loom for water/foreign objects.

My 8" 3 jaw is held by three D1-3 pins. I see no problem with holding the same size chuck with 3 of the much stronger D1-6 pins.

Things seem to sell well on the lathes website. I heard that Tony is very good about giving advice on valuation too.

Chris you'll get a small fraction of the value if you let some clearance merchant take it all away for an easy profit.

The grey Myford Tri-Lever lathe has a gearbox on it, the gearbox alone is worth hundreds so don't let that go cheap. Gearbox models regularly seell for better than £1000 much more if there are steadies and chucks.

The blue shaper looks clean and tidy from what little is shown, there's a few hundred there. Usually they come without the vice because they lso fetch good money separately so don't let someone bid you silly on that either.

I can't see enough of the smaller black lathe to identify it but if it's complete and working there's a couple of hundred at least.

Bench drill has a couple of vices with it, grinder looks like a quality item.

The model on the bench and the one on the top shelf look nicely made but someone else will have to identify those and offer a value on them.

I would say that individually the items I've mentioned will get you comfortably north of £2k. If you take some better pictures and see what attachments come with the larger items you might do much better. Just looking around the pics, the well-used but well kept machines, nicely insulated workshop, home-made powered cross feed on the lathe your dad must really have loved his time in there. You should make sure you do him justice by getting a decent price for his stuff IMO.

Denford certainly used imperial stock sizes for Metric pitch leadscews. Their metric cross slide screw drawing calls for a 0.750" diamter 5mm pitch LH ACME form thread. A friend of mine enquired with someone for a Boxford cross-slide screw and he was also told it was a metric pitch but ACME form screw, but I cannot verify that. I have an imperial drawing but not a metric one.

Not completely redundant but most of them will not be needed in normal work.

Sell them - they fetch reasonable money.