Member postings for Bob McDougall

Running better on the 1HP 180V DC treadmill motor than the 350W clarke drill motor I canabalized and had to reverse the start direction which I forgot I had done when I re-assembled it . doh. £26 for a 0-200V motor controller and £60 for the motor. Still need to trim the headstock and tailstock, guessing a 3MT test bar is on the menu. Also on the origional treadmill motor, it had an encoder fan on one end and a flywheel / multi v belt pulley on the other, flywheel left hand thread screw holding it on. This fitted best behind the lathe running in reverse to its intended direction which meant the cooling fan blew the wrong way . No you cant just turn it over. I had to buy a pair for compressors and make it fit. Also made a small V pulley for the new dc motor.

Stuck a bit now on alignment , need to align the headstock and the tailstock .The headstock has four capstan ? bolts which allow head alignment. Also image searching brought up an ME posting on what is suggested to be an IXL lathe and mine is similar but with changes. I wonder if BEC bought machined castings from IXL as there is no branding on the castings or screwthread plaque suggesting IXL. Mystery. Anyway it has a 1HP 180V DC treadmill motor on it now and a new chuck on a 1 1/12 " x 8tpi backplate. So its running just completely unaligned.

I'm begining to think my BEC lathe is an IXL with some modifications. Maybe by BEC and the BEC stamp is just an inventory mark. The main castings , almost identical to yours but a flat way at the back, mine just the front V . and the gearbox side rib is more inset in mine . Probably just small eveloutionary changes. Great to come across your post now, I hadn't seen this post and my research hadn't picked up IXL so im very happy to discover something new about  its design origins. 

Edited By Bob McDougall on 15/03/2023 21:10:16

Looks kind of similar to my BEC lathe. Have you had a close look for a stamp at the tailstock end of the front slideway on the bed, just behind the V ,on the upper surface. Mine was very faint.

Thicker sides added onto the cross slide

How did this coroded metal look so good in the sellers photos. I'm still glad I bought it.

Brass shims under the saddle front underside slide.

Locating C pins aligned the saddle front and its bed plate, These were the only two C pins on the whole machine when it has so many solid pins.

and finally to bed, that black scaly paint was probably full of lead so I took it off with acetone where i wasnt making dust and soaked it into workshop towel, outside.

The saddle grips around the outer edges and teh v , the tailstock on the inner only .

Someone loved screws , plate added, leadscrew nut steel not brass. , two side extensions with gib adjusters

Ive not spoken to Tony but I would happily take some picks for his very informative site. I will ask,

The "B.E.C.11470/15." stamped in the bed end ,I found only a few days ago and spurred me on to post the work. It was a pure joy when the seriel number caught my eye , completely hidden by the origional corrosion. B.Elliott & Co , doesn't look like any of their machines (cross bracing is similar) but works in Cardiff and I bought at Wooton Basset, not far.

Brass changeplate has no manufacturere marks I can find.

Headstock removed 4 bolts, gap bed. rear leadscrew gears in place crosshatched bed

Headstock siezed, both gear changers pins siezed, the right one came free , the left i had to hacksaw through after three weeks of occasionaly brutal encouragment to leave the hole. I tried punching out from the inside . no. hacksaw, lever came off ok, then drilled the pin out, came away in the end.

First gear came off theh end of the leadscrew ok, with a bit of woodruff key, alarm bell should have started.

Who did this. and didn't tell. . To get the second gear off I had to needle file the offset lip down. Yes I also cracked the cast iron gear holding pick up arm TIG back with nickle . Everything was rust siezed. . days .

the upper ring is threaded on the shaft and holds the Timken bearings together , it needs to be gentely released and the shaft tapped out forward as there is very little slack in the mid stage assembly. Pig of a job, my hope of saving the upper bearing was futile. I did terrible things to many parts befre I understood the mechanism of harmless seperation.. 

Going through the photos I have now spotted the three grub screws I have left in a tray . they are from the lower wheel set not part of this image. Dohh. It was running rough through the head gears.(direct its smooth and quiet)

So I bought a crappy old machine that turned out to have serious bearings in it.

Edited By Bob McDougall on 15/12/2022 00:24:56

Edited By Bob McDougall on 15/12/2022 00:31:04

For local pick up at £100 who could resist. in the car boot (seats down) and home.

A pleasure of a project so far, so im catologging it here incase anyone else has a similar machine because i found this quite unique. I wonder if it was a test model due to some added parts. . dual tapered timken head bearings,, , pin roller and ball race rear. widened cross slide ! extra parts are fitted to the outside sides of the cross slide. and a plate underneath. all will be revealed. I would love to know if anyone has seen similar I can't find another .

Motor test, connections were for 415V 3phase, star, for my 240V 3Ph needed to swap the pins, the lable says "mesh" rather than delta, The three phases were connected to UVW. Earth to a recess in the case far left.

for 240V inverter the three phases are connectrd back to UVW, no connection to N, Earth to case. Always check earth continuity from chuck to earth pin on the plug. Or just earth the machine and always use 30mA RCD breakers. when changing motor contacts , lie it down so slipped parts dont fall inside.

New gear, In the lathe I first bored the 25.0mm hole in the acetal square 12mm blank. then from a 25mm x 11mm bossand then a 12mm thread. in hindsight I should have drilled and tapped. bandsawed the corners off the blank square and took to 92.0 mm on the hub. then turned the rear shaft to 11mm to fit in the ER20 indexing colletThe cutter was £23 on ebay , 56 teeth, less than 50p a tooth, felt blunt but its cutting plastic, ..., the burrs were awful, not sure if I was going too fast, . but it cut.

Well heres a use of my 4th axis from my homemade cnc. made it for carving names on wood pens, made two ,

The 12:70 reduction with the large stepper holds the word very rigidly, I bought a new stepper driver with more microstepping but the 1/32 worked fine. I had code on the arduino to index by 1/56 every time I pressed a button. I turned it all on and the stepper just continually rotated. EMC !!! dont you love it. so Hard 470 ohm pullups and 1uF caps on the input pins solved that. all calculations were in floats and it indexed very well. Its plastic.

How many tines did you cut the gear, the first cut wasnt deep enough, or the second, the third was about right. luckily to re-cut is fairly easy to line up the cut teeth with the cutter. the important thing is not to move the cutter. in the Z or X between attempts. so i got a really ugly looking gear with loads of swarf attached I had to remove off with a scalpel.

Keep your balls in. , this shaft will need supporting from underside when re-fitting the gearbox cover, tiewrap on the detent sprung 3.1mm balls, i lost one . i heard it hit something about 2m away. 30 seconds with a magnet and i knew I would never see it again. so one is now 3.0mm. Slide the gear assembly onto this anc cut the tie wrap out . it worked .

line the holes up with the springs, it is possible to get it 90 degrees off. 50% of the time. To fit the gearbox cover I put a wooden ~1" spar across between the back and a slot in the quill bore to hold the end of the input shaft up,

Fitted the head , had to stand on 4 " blocks, and Im 6ft2, no quill or motor or feed. Maybe

Damage to the quill feed , i had seen this and this photo is two weeks old but re-assembling it bit into the quill,and caused a tight spot , the tooth was pushed over , no cracking, soft against the hardened quill, , I needle filed it down and it feels great.

Finally to make it run... Attached the motor and... the pulleys are different heights. by one . I know I took the front pulley off but it looks to me its the motor pulley thats too high. But I will be calm and let kroil do its work, , it runs.

excited. the high speed gear is a little tighter on one side than the other but...

This has been a pleasure of a project and I hope it helps others repairing similar machines. I bought the return spring from Meddings and it arrived next day with fitting instructions.

Thanks Mike , interested to see any literature related to this machine, Foot switch , useful when theres swarf flying roung the chuck and you cant reach the off.

I sold a boxford union to buy a downham jig borer , but i miss the full pillar so much . so now i;ll cut a new gear on the downham for the meddings.

some more pics, and a grub screw that jammed the quill arm cover.

the return spring was snapped it had a very tight outside holding pin , the housing was held in with a 2.5 mm grub screw.

The spring was in two pieces, too much snapped away to try and fold a new end. I will buy this from Meddings, its made for the exact weight of this quill. interesting cover, It fits really well. . no ratchet as I saw in some other models. . The cable clamps unscrew.

took the nut off and the arm cover didnt come off, this should lift straight off. a grubscrew inside was jamming it.

So I tried to tap the shaft out

The arm hub came loose after alot of tapping both ways, The grub screw on the collar had come loose and jammed into the hub unner, this photo has it turned in about two turns as i wanted to know how far out it was. I was so convinced the shaft was stuck I put a nut on the thread and applied more force. the effect was probably to snap the 5.96mm pin. not tapered.

The inside of the M4 arm cover with a slot for the pin in the drive shaft, the collar grub screw i believe had jammed into this .

tapped the remaing pin out . the collar with the loose grub screw was for pinching the x asis of the

Humble Pie, driving the shaft into the collar had pushed up metal on the shaft, tiny file, and it comes apart

The pin should be in one piece the collar looks like a modern finish coating, maybe its non origional.

Setup on the Downham jig borerwith a 12DP cutter doing 41 teeth on a 91mm disc. a test of the setup. arduino.

The stepper was on a button to increment teeth, the first timei turned the mill motor on the indexer just ran constantly. added some filtering and cut 41 teeth overlapped the first and last and very happy.

Picked up this sold as seen Meddings drill, plate says M4 , anyone know how this differs from the M4F ? .Turning the chuck in low speed the motor spun but in high speed it skipped. Aslo return spring was not working. Tapped the chuck out, MT2, Laid it down , loosened the head pinch bolt and tapped back and the head twisted off. I didn' t like the idea of lifting it off vertically even with two. shelf and table slid off nicely after some wd40 love. all in the van.

The gearbox input pulley was really tight, a single grub screw held it on the shaft. It was a straight pull with the three leg puller but needed some heat and underside pressure. In hindsight I should have left it with Kroil penetrating oil on for 24 hrs. The puller was at the limit of its reach and had to stack M6 nuts onto the shaft end to fully release the pulley. Cracked the pulley lip but it came off in the end.

The gearbox cover , six bolts, the dome cover was missing one, inner and outer circlips on both shafts removed and the cover lifted on 1" blocks. The gear changer was holding it in and it wasn't clear how to seperate. Knocked the input shaft through the bearing in the end and lifted the cover with the output shaft and Tufnol gears still attached. leaving the input shaft in the head. The bottom bearing had lifted from its seat and this shaft now lifted easily away from the gear sellector arm.

As mentioned in many other threads the high speed gear was stripped.

The three leg puller feet were too thick to get under the output shaft bearing so had to fabricate some angle iron and clamps . I was planning on replacing the bearings or I would have maybe cut a washer in half to let the bars only contact the bearing hub . The bench vice just absorbed all the hammer blows so the concrete floor and oak blocks gave a very solid base and moved up to gentle taps with the big hammer.

An M10 bolt with a nut was used to drop the output shaft out of the cover bearing.

were going to need a bigger boat.

Gentle taps with more mass feels more like a proper press than trying to whack it with a 1/2 lb.

All apart and pondering about the gear, DP16 20PA 56T delrin, measures 13mm thick but 12mm plate is more common so Ive bought a 100x100x12mm block and a no2 gear cutter and will have a go at gear cutting.

So I put my pendulum together with a electromagnet, teensy 4.1 . a reed relay with a magnet on the bob to time the fet coil power from 12V . It went so well the pendulum smashed into the glass reed relay and smashed it,

18 years ago, i read Accurate Clock Pendulums , published 2004 after listening to a R4 book review, of course.

Shortt are out of my price range, Enthused I made an oak 2 part mould for a bi-linear bob cast in type metal also from Keighley 11Kg bob, split the mould, not enough weight and got it cast at metcalfes in Keighley. Bought quartz pendulums 2 , ground a recess in each end to hold a split washer. everything made from ironless aluminium bronze. 3/4 inch steel pendulum head platform with dual single piece suspension springs

I cracked the first pendulum attaching the bob , the spare was broken in a move.

2021 got a JD2 tube bender for another project and ended up building a frame for the top pivot , Ive got a steel pendulum rod as a place keeper, .

Q 100K ~ 300K , thats what I measured i16 ? years ago with the top assembly bolted to a cellar wall

Just seen this thread , thanks for posting. I will read it all tomorrow. .

I'll post some pics , looks like we have a common appreciation of something that is (almost)? undefinable. Time

do you have a siesmometer.

Visit to Drax in around 2004, I sneaked up to one of the turbine shaft housings and kissed it. Those bearings were smoother than .... well Cold unmoving and very beautiful.

very efficient as pressure differential to current flow converters.

solid state would be nice.

i think most places have realised coal is finite but the solutions differ,

Swindon Honda factory, as a wind turbine manufacturer. (no affiliation )

A frequent question is " how big steppers do I need". Well I need bigger ones. Quick test with GRBL Plotter. These moved a bit but it was clear they became out of sync and stopped altogether often. Current ones are Nema17 42mm body 0.45Nm .So I've ordered Nema23 56mm long 2.8A 1.26Nm . I could have added a gear reduction and used the origional ones but I want Z speed for nameplate and 3D map cuts and the pinions and pulleys would have been almost as much as the motors, £30 a pair for the 23 size. Will need to take it all apart and re-work. I hate having to take the ballnuts off the ballscrews but Im getting better at it.

I have been looking for a way to describe hardness to young engineers , we have Vickers, Rockwell, firth and brinell, I add mohs and shore. "The nice thing about standards is there are so many to chose from".

Just added the Z axis mechanics to my Lovely Downham mini Jig borer. all the pics for the Z axis manual removal are in my album. I didn't record the X and Y conversions as they were relativley straight forward. The dismanteling may be of interest .

Was all going well until I got stuck with , how the hell does this bit come apart. Oh thats not a hole its a slotted spring pin. I'll post some pics of the X and Y tomorrow. Hopefully the pics are self explanatory. The new Z uses 12mm ballscrews each side of the spindle, NEMA17 x 40mm, 2A. The fixed end is made from two 10x28x8 deep groove bearings with a 0.2mm spacer between the outer rim so when the ballscrew is tightened it pulls the middles together to reduce backlash. they are sunk 10mm into the 12mm aluminium plates. Used solid 5-8mm coupling on the motor and the thin 3mm threaded bar can give for misalignment. I might put a shroud around them as they are vunerable. Had to unscrew both ballnuts fully off the screws for installation. sleves to hold the balls in but still lost one ball. 9.6mm OD 8mm ID sleve.

Edited By Bob McDougall on 22/08/2019 22:45:37

Hi David, yes we are looking at all options, what we are unsure about is just what acuracy is needed in the capstan head. clearly this machine was used to the point when we now have it so it was making parts even with this wear so if we can gain 90% of the origional acurracy . is that good enough. ?

What is the effect of a low center height capstan head ?

my thoughts are ,a centre drill will cut an off centre hole.

a drill will cut a taper

If we know these faults can we compensate for them ?

any hole over drill size is cut by the borijng tool so no problem

small drills will bend to adapt to the centre drill hole.

???

Wear on the auxilliary Capstan slide has become apparent! . a centre drill is about 30 tho below centre. . The majority of the wear is on the lower section but the upper capstan slider has some signs of wear also. The wear appears to be front heavy so the whole capstan carrige is tilted forward and lower.

the wear from where the gibb strip was located to the moving upper capstan section.

also wear of the capstan head into the capstan saddle.

on bothe sides

ANY options appreciated.

our thoughts are, moglice or equivalent.

Scrape the capstan slider (top bit) flat , cut down the capstan saddle (bottom bit fixed to the bed) and moglice it. but we will still be down due to the turret wear. but we could shim the turret up as its wear appears even but not sure if it is because of the cutting direction you would expect more wear on the frontside ?

Anyone around SN16 would apperciate help. we have got this far but we are not precision engineers.

Have purchased a surface plate and 1" wide cast iron bar to make a straight edge and will run a dial indicator over all the parts we can to get an idea of wear. next post might be in scraping.lol.