Member postings for Bruce Stephenson

Bonjour Bob,

Le filetage MC3B sur le Myford est un filetage à gauche pour la broche extérieure du tour et la taille de la broche est de 7/8" inch x 12 Whitworth.

Notez que la broche intérieure sur le ML8 utilise une taille de broche légèrement différente de 1 pouce x 12 filet Whitworth. (Voir le lien : http://www.peterchild.co.uk/chucks/threads.htm).

La première chose à faire est d'identifier la broche sur laquelle vous voulez essayer d'adapter votre mandrin Record et de noter le sens du filetage !

Si vous essayez d'adapter vos mandrins d'enregistrement à la broche intérieure de la ML8, vous pouvez essayer d'envoyer un e-mail à ce fournisseur et lui demander si cela fonctionnera car la ML 8 utilise un filetage Whitworth. https://www.amazon.co.uk/PSI-Woodworking-LAG1218-Headstock-Spindle/dp/B000KIECHE?th=1

J'espère que cela vous aidera ?

Salutations,

Bruce

Hi,

Its a long shot, but if anyone has a 10 inch sanding disk faceplate with the LH thread (MC3B thread) that they are willing to sell, let me know.

Regards,

Bruce

Thanks for the answers guys. My computer has been sick, so havent been able to keep up with this thread. Thanks so much for the offers so far. I hope to get on with converting inner workings into the old casings soon, so will need to get the instruments on to the test equipment and calibrate new cards for the new faces. It may take some time!

Cheers,

B

Hi All,

I am looking at different solutions to get some instrument faces made up for an old aircraft. I need to get a couple of instrument faces cut into 0.8mm brass plate.

There are some pretty cheapish small CNC engraving units out there which may be worth looking at but I dont know how good they are? Any recommendations?

Alternatively, if there is anyone out there who has an engraving machine and wants to give me a price, please contact me.

Regards,

Bruce

Yes that's correct...mine have large heads, hence why I will apply a spot of engineers blue to the heads and see what happens when I refit the tool-post.

B

Hi Howard,

Yes I checked the depths. The ratchet cog is less than the recess as that was the first thing I checked after discovering there was light showing under the base. It is however probably sitting and making contact with the ratchet fixing screws which sit proud of top surface of the ratchet.

I will get some of my engineers blue out and mark the tops of the screws before I do any work to level up the top-slide so I can address and eliminate all issues.

At least I am now getting somewhere!

Thanks for all your support and kind advice.

B

Seems having a rant can sometimes do one good! Just refitted the toolholder and may have just found out the problem?...gawd.

I refitted the toolholder and took a look to make sure it was seating down properly. There was a big chunk of light visible between the bottom of the tool holder and the upper surface of the top slide. Hmmmm, wonder what happens when I tighten it down? Did that and it looked ok and seem to have disapeared . As I have lost my feeler gauges and am waiting for new ones to arrive, I thought I would get an old headstock bearing shim and see if that could be inserted. It went in about 20mm...huh....

Took off the tool holder to discover there is a slight curve to the surface. Obviously there is wear here too and needs bringing back to a perfectly fat surface, as it is probably seating down on an angle, thus throwing out the tool tip heights as the tool holder is not sitting truly flat...as I said, it never seems to end! So I will get the topslide surface skimmed perfectly flat, which should sort out my conundrum?

But at least I am moving forward again....hopefully

Hi Howard,

All the bits are still there. As for machining down tools each time, what a pain that is however, especially as I am already using 8mm tools. I just can’t for the life of me understand why they are sitting high? I mean lathes don’t grow, if anything, they shrink with wear...

I don’t want to be grinding off material off the bottom of tools. I will contact the Myford agents and see what they say. Meanwhile I’m getting tired of the damn thing, nothing is straightforward on this machine. If I were using 10mm tools, then it would make sense.

All I want is a lathe that doesn’t need constant modifications to do even the most basic of jobs....that is, get a decent clean cut would be a start....

Grrr, getting frustrated...and time to throw the tool holder out and go back to the original crappy holder shimmed up.

B

Hi Hopper,

Just reading your post again and realised that my wires were crossed as you clearly state that you skimmed around 20/thou off, whereas I had confirmed what you already wrote! Sorry...

Just for the record mine is 9mm thick at the bottom section of the toolholder.

B

P.S. Here it tis here....

Edited By Bruce Stephenson on 19/01/2021 13:03:12

Hi Hopper,

Looking at your tool holder I would definitely be confident enough to say that yours has been skimmed. The picture I posted before was actually one I nicked off an ebay post as it was nice, crisp, and clear shot of a 1410 tool holder. although I haven't measured mine, I have around 1 mm meat top and bottom of the grub-screw hole for the indexing(?) pin. Yours looks excruciatingly thin in this area.

What I cant get my head around as I outlined above, there is an assumption that these tool holders were probably designed so a 3/8ths tool was on dead-center. Why then mine with an 8 mm tool is a couple of 100ths high, beats me (especially when you consider I have scraped the carriage to bed it in with the new lathe bed).... Weird...I subscribe to the old adage: its easier to take off than add on.....

As to your post Howard, yes agreed. But then nothing is as straightforward as first thought. I don't have a milling facility to readily access. The last time I inquired to get a bit of milling/grinding done for a pretty straightforward job, it was around £70 upwards, which comfortably exceeds the replacement of a similar part from RDG. Now translate that to 8 tools in my latest purchase that will need modification....

Hey ho.... Its been frustrating (and bloody expensive) getting this darn thing set up properly... but equally educational....

B

Thanks for the info guys.

The tool is pretty close and just a touch out by the looks of it. It looks to be a couple of hundreth's (mm) high when I line it up with a center in the chuck (I will measure it tomorrow). I was expecting it to be low if anything as many say that they have to shim an 8mm tool up to the correct height.
Anyways, it is what it is and I have no idea why? I reckon I could get away with a slight shave off the bottom of the tool holder, but you cant go very far due to the lock-pin assembly and threaded hole (as shown as per example in the photograph).

Thanks for all the feedback to date.

B

Hi All,

I am tearing what's left of my hair out over my Myford ML7. I brought it around 10 years ago now (first lathe). It looked ok with a nice new coat of paint, but once I started using it and the tool got slightly loaded, it was evident that all was not well with it with major amounts of chatter going on and worn bearings all over the place. For this reason it sat idle for a few years, but last year I decided to overhauled it and have now got it back to a good lathe again with new bearings, bed and lead-screws etc.
I also brought a used Myford 4-way tool holder and a new set of 8mm cutting tools. I started doing a cut on it the other day when I noticed it wasnt cutting cleanly despite everything being tight and new.
Checked tool height and found that the tool sits slightly high and needs lowering. I initially thought that the best way was to mill a skim off the bottom of the tool-holder, but quickly realised that there is no scope to do this as the grub-screw holding the locking spring/pin in place will not allow hardly any material being taken off either the bottom or top faces of the lower block of the tool holder body. I dont want to start taking bits off the tools themselves as this is a pain and they are only 8mm tools in the first place.
I cannot really understand it as I have scrapped the carriage when I was truing it up to the new bed (which would have brought tool heights down if anything). I havent modified the cross-slide or top slides and have a genuine Myford 4-way tool holder, part number 1410.
So why is that I am finding that the tools are sitting slightly high? What can I do about it? Unless I have got the wrong 4-way tool holder, it just doesnt make sense.

Cheers,

B

Edited By Bruce Stephenson on 17/01/2021 16:26:06

Hi All,

I have almost come to the end of renovating a Fobco Star. It came with the original parts list and drawing, so I didn’t take too much notice of where the various springs went when I dissembled the spring box. Upon closely inspecting drawings on rebuild, it doesn’t clearly show what washers go where.

Looking at the obvious in terms of the internal diameters of the washers, I have laid then out from left to right in the sequence I think they came off.

Does anyone have an exploded diagram of to confirm what I THINK is the correct order: Dome nut, Graduated Friction dial, Silver broad washer, spring, washer (I have these two washers the wrong way around in the attached photo), spring box, thin wavey compression spring (which I assume takes up end float of the pinion when the dome nut is tightened?

All help will be gratefully appreciated.

Regards,

Bruce

Edited By Bruce Stephenson on 19/06/2020 13:53:29

So in your case, having changed the bed -- I believe? -- you will need to start from scratch.

Yes, correct. I managed to get a near perfect bed that has extremely little wear from a guy that breaks lathes and sells the parts on. It has virtually no wear, with no tell-tale grooves scratches on it and mic's out pretty accurately (and only reason as to why I decided to rebuild mine). It was a pity that I didnt get the rest of the lathe as well but a lot of it was gone, despite being about 20 years older than my abused baby.

Well as I said, I am a beginner in playing around with lathes to this degree but enjoy the challenge. The thing is to LEARN along the way. My final goal is to have a good, reliable little lathe that will see me out, set up to do fairly basic work around the garage. My main work will probably center around my glider restoration projects, which apart from main-pins (which I would try and tackle anyway), most of the work is so basic, you guys would just laugh judging by some of the amazing stuff you guys turn out! I come to this forum because I dont think you will get better advice anywhere than seasoned model enthusiasts who know the Myford inside out.

As for MEW, I dont subscribe to the mag as it is not my core interest (not at the moment anyway!). My passion is anything that flies, especially gliders.

I have checked out Rollie's Dad's lathe alignment as well.

Thanks for the well written and detailed posts. They are a great help and very much appreciated.

B

Thanks Howard, but I have only the most basic of set ups with this lathes, no accessories what so ever.... Thank you for your informative post anyway.

B

Cheers Hopper,

Thinking about it more deeply, where I am getting in knots is that twist in the bed and alignment were/are 2 different things. Not having done this before, it made sense to me that you needed to align the headstock first with a test bar, then remove any twist in the bed by taking a cut and mic’ing each end. (I realise I can also do it entirely with the dial indicator and test bar without the need for cutting a bit of mild steel bar as well).

Of course reading your post and thinking about it deeper, it comes down to how you adjust things and assumptions. Thing is, having changed the bed (still using my ORIGINAL headstock cradle), the method I watched on a video was by adjusting the bed riser nuts and didn’t touch upon the set-screws on the headstock which are likely to be way out as I exercised them to make sure they were relatively free (without headstock in place) and then backed off before fitting my original headstock to the new bed during the refurb. So if it’s way out on the cut, I may need to bring it back a bit with the headstock set screws first (with the headstock mounting Allen-head screws loose of course), before trying to do it all on the feet? My original thoughts were to get it parallel to the bed using my dial indicator and a parallel test bar in horizontal plane, then take any twist out by turning and mic’ing. But for rough alignment, I guess if I took a straight bit of stock 25mm steel bar (relatively speaking!) in the chuck and ran the dial indicator along the horizontal plane over the length of the bar, I could get a reasonably good idea of alignment with the bed before starting to turn and measure using the feet nuts for adjustment of bed twist. That’s the bit that has got me wondering, just how I primarily adjust things? Of course the challenge is not to get too bogged down in detail and keep it relatively simple in how I approach the issue I guess.

As for my original question, the double taper bar, once the headstock was correctly set up, that’s when I was thinking it may have been a quick neat way of achieving a satisfactory check of alignment of the tail stock in more than one direction all at once? What I couldn’t work out was why they are advertised as for woodworking lathes and not something that could be applied for metal lathes as well? (Posts here however have convinced me otherwise in terms of even more outlay and alternative ways of achieving the same thing).

Hi David,

Clever idea! Got any more bright ideas for setting up the headstock? Plan is to buy a MT2 bar and flog it off afterwards as I will probably not need it again?

B

Hi All,

Be gentle with me here! I am new to lathe issues and have only schoolboy experience and a dollop of common sense (I hope! Ha ha).

I have just got to the end of a comprehensive refurb of my old Myford ML7 which I purchased a few years ago to find it was so badly worn it was virtually unusable past the most basic of work. The bed was badly worn (you couldnt set the carriage to take up the slack at the head-stock then get full travel of the bed) the bearings had so play in them, it sounded like a dull buzz saw whenever there was any appreciable load on the cutting tool and parting off, well things really got loud!

Anyways, hindsight is a wonderful thing and now looking back I would have been better off junking the thing and buying an existing better set up with what I had learnt! But yep, I went the hard route (but learning loads along the way) and as this is starting to get long really quick, let me get to the point...

As I have had the headstock cradle off and re-scrapped the bearings, I now am at the stage where I need to ensure I have correct alignment. Watching the various videos etc, I am looking at MT2 test bar to set up the alignment of the headstock. Trouble is, the MT2 test bars are pretty expensive for a one-off measurement. I have also watched the videos on taking out the twist on the bed as well.

During my hours of googling, I came across a double taper bar for setting up the alignment of the tailstock to the headstock for WOOD lathes. Being a double taper I wondered why this same system wouldnt work on a ML-7? It just seems an incredibly easy way in which to ensure that the two correctly align to each other once tailstock is set? They are also reasonably priced too.

Your thoughts?

B

Fair points Dave....

Assumption is the mother of all **** ups.

Thanks for all the good gen everyone.

B

Thanks Martin,

Clearly I have a spring washer missing as I only have one. Are you 100% sure there were two? (it would make sense I guess). I may have misplaced one?

You have confirmed what I think the washers do, that is keep grease from being flung into the motor windings and rotor. The thing I was hoping to verify my hunch was hoping to find some sort of witness marks on the circlips on the rotor but couldnt see anything that hinted that the washers had been resting up against them, hence my question here.

Thanks to all those that have taken the time to help me out, its much appreciated, so thank you.

B