Member postings for Trevor Gale

Sports Latest: GALE ATHLETIC 1 - COLLET ARBORS 0.

The fixture went well into extra time after far too many fouls, and there were fears that it would end up in a draw, barring a very heated penalizing shoot-out. In the end, the referee abandoned any hope of tempering the players as they became extremely hot under the collar with the situation. The one and only goal of the match came just as the Arbors lost their grip when the Gales flamed up the centre field and then delivered their final hammer blow which landed in the net.

The final effort involved rotating the mill head to horizontal (I didn't want the heat that I was going to use going upwards towards the bearings or any oil in the head), inserting a drawbar-sized steel rod in to meet the top of the arbor, then (again) freezing the exposed part of the chuck arbor,

I then used a small blow-torch to heat the collar which holds the arbor. I periodically turned the collar (using a spanner on the chuck arbor which was of course jammed in) to heat the collar evenly around, and occasionally giving a hammer (5Kg hammer) blow to the top of the steel rod.

For safety I obviously had the fire extinguisher at hand, and to protect the bed I laid a sheet of plywood atop the table with my car's fire blanket on top of that.

It took about 15 minutes of heating with the torch flame before one of my intermittent hammer blows showed some movement on the arbor. A few more (gentler) hammer blows caused the arbor to loosen and drop out of the collar neatly onto the fire blanket.

The temperature of the collar immediately prior to the release was around 270 degrees C according to the pistol-type IR thermometer I had at hand, and it was sufficient to ignite a safety match rubbed across the surface of the collar!

Examing the arbor afterwards showed no sign whatsoever of any corrosion or foul matter, in fact it looks as if it has just been carried away from the retailer; the inside of the collar taper also looks immaculate. To be on the safe side I am ordering a new collet chuck with arbor, and of course I will now proceed to check thoroughly the head to check for any other damage that may have arisen, and also check and lubricate the bearings.

As far as the wedges I used earlier are concerned, for clarity I did have the 2 with sloping form as someone showed in a drawing above, I made these up during the beginning of all this effort!

Thanks again for the many responses and helpful ideas that so many people gave me on this topic, it just shows the value of the forum and the general helpfulness of the model engineer.

Okay... Well I have in the meantime performed further actions on this "immovable" arbor... just for reference the machine is viewable (in English) at <**LINK**> though bought it from the Dutch agent and I also have the table power feed attached on the left hand side of the table.

(a) I took a substantial piece of scrap steel, mounted in the table vice, put a 12mm side mill bit in the collet chuck and proceeded (without the drawbar inserted!) to mill the side of this scrap. I used manual feed, not the powered table feed that I also have on the machine. I moved the workpiece at different rates - purposely causing a great deal of vibration, far more than one would ever allow during 'normal' use. The result? A great deal of swarf (!) but a very good cut apart from the roughness from vibrations caused by all the "bad" operator's feed technique! The arbor did not become loose at all, but the milling cutter did get a couple of its teeth damaged in the operation (that doesn't worry me, it's the machine I am concerned with, not the loss of a cutter).

(b) I took a steel rod, identical in diameter to that of the drawbar, and inserted it such that it met the top of the arbor (I did not want to risk damaging the thread of the drawbar), and gave it several hammer blows. Nothing shifted at all.

(c) I allowed things to settle (i.e. I went for a cup of tea and a quick puff of my pipe) and returned to the workshop and took a can of "Freeze-It" which I often use during fault-finding on electronic circuit boards (that's my profession, electronics design, and also the 'other' hobby I have) and used that to cool off the arbor to the extent that it was around zero degrees C. I then again used the steel rod inserted above the arbor and gave several hammer blows, and once again nothing shifted at all.

I have now rotated the milling head (it is a vertical mill but can be rotated) so that it is in a horizontal position to perhaps gain a further insight into what the problem might be. I have now decided to take a rest (and returned to this desktop computer to write the above!) - I feel that I must be missing something fundamental.

Thanks for all of the (very rapid) responses to my question!

Just to be clear, I have not used a 'normal' hammer on the drawbar to attempt release, I used a copper-head hammer ("lump hammer" - to avoid any sharp-blow damage to the top of the drawbar.

I have also tried using some penetrating oil above the arbor (in the slot) to no avail.

The arbor in question is not old, nor was it corroded and there was no swarf or any particulate matter when I last fitted it - as a habit I always ensure both parts of a taper is clean whether it be on my Myford lathe or the milling machine. When I am fitting these arbors it is never immediately after heavy work and there's no question of major temperature differences.

I'm lucky in that my workshop is in a double-insulated-walled building behind my house and is connected to the central heating system since I built a conservatory coupling it to the house.

I'll take on the advice given and try in half an hour or so - and report the findings!!!

Thanks, I will try that later this morning - thought the last work I did was 'side milling' some 3 weeks ago, but of course with the drawbar in as it should be!

I have a BF 25 milling machine (sold by various retailers, mine is from HBM machines) which has a collet chuck with an MT3 arbor and a drill chuck also with MT3 arbor. Both arbors are threaded for the drawbar.

I have used both in the past and for the last 8 months the collet chuck has been in there; I went to change it for the drill chuck and the arbor would not budge. First I went through the usual method by just releasing the upper collar at the top of the drawbar and then unscrewing the drawbar - this merely resulted in the drawbar refusing to turn undone as soon as it reached the top of the collar (that should exert a downwards pressure on the arbor to release it).

After trying this several times I tried using a copper-head hammer to hit the top of the drawbar, hoping to release it by this more violent manner. I then chose to use a wedge in the slot in the axis just above the arbor - this had absolutely no effect either.

I have then used a jet of hot air to heat up the outer Morse taper shank, hoping that would expand the holder and release the arbor inside it, but that was also without any result. Nothing moves that arbor whatsoever.

I have read of people using a flame to heat up the holder but I am wary of what that might do to the bearings above the arbor holder...

Has anyone similar experiences, or does someone have a better idea of how to release this arbor? I'm thinking that it might have become cold-welded to the holder?

I would be *VERY* interested to know if there is a way I could receive the magazines from February / March up until October here in the Netherlands - I've kept up my subscription but most of these never arrived - I am willing to pay extra and postage / shipping even on top of the subs that I have already paid, just to be able to read the missing content.

If anyone has an idea of how to receive these issues, please post me here or e-mail me.

-- Trevor Gale

Dear All, I have been trying to track where my M.E. and M.E.W. magazines have gone since I've not had any for a long time now, over here in the Netherlands where I live as an ex-pat. Now I found my way onto this forum and I se that there's indeed a serious problem with overseas deliveries etc.

Does this mean that I'll never see the magazine issues that I've missed in the meantime, and will the delivery actually resume when/if this virus crisis abates a little? During the virus spread and the various regulations imposed I have still successfully received items from U.K. companies and also Amazon u.k. and ebay u.k. without any remarkable delay...

- Trevor Gale.

Edited By Trevor on 07/06/2020 00:24:01

Thank you very much indeed for the extremely fast responses, most unexpected but very much appreciated.

Ady1 / Hopper:-

(a) The carriage stop on the headstock front is original, also as far as I could determine when I was in the process of dismantling the lathe during my refurbishment of it. It arrived complete with maybe many decades of swarf, dust, rust and so on, luckily also with quite a lot of oil and grease around which meant that it hadn't suffered much if any internal corrosion damage.

(b) Some details do look more like a Myford ML1-series (I've looked at the links you've posted and they show *very* close similarities to my machine) apart from the tailstock-end support botls. I wonder how much 'cross-fertilisation' there was even in the direction of Myford in the very early pre-war years?

(c) I am still intrigued as to the origin and/or the significance of the "ML109" stamping on the machine casting, a similar positioning I didn't see in the other photos in the links I looked at.

It was interesting to see that the headstock oilers have been added almost in the same way as I chose to, with the original 'holes' being pre-tapped in a case, although I had to tap those holes in my machine but I did that when the dismantling was in process with the spindle extraced.

Thank you again, I shall follow up with interest!

-- Trevor.

LATHE:-
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A few years ago when I was in Germany but with my house here in Holland, I found an opportunity to buy a metal turning lathe - of unknown origin, I only obtained the basic measurements, extremely cheaply and since I had been thinking of a lathe for some time I thought at that price it was worth a bet. I never saw it, but I felt by hearing the fellows' voice over the telephone (from England) that the man was as good as his word so I went ahead and bought it, and it was shipped to my father where it stayed until I had it shipped over here back in Holland. I asked my father *not* to do any restoration or fixing or whatever, and I thought that might make for an interesting and educative exercise.

PREPARATION:-
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Well, it was educative indeed, I fully dismantled the machine once in the workshop, cleaning every part and where necessary effecting the odd repair, the re-assembled it and gave it a coat of machine paint. Once that was done, I made quite a number of extra tools and accessories for it, and also bought some further chucks (the one with it was rather... not the best!) which meant I had to turn and thread some backplates for these using the stand-alone faceplate. Despite the black nose (mine, that cast-iron!) after they were done then I made two new toolposts and a rear post for parting-off, a few 'extras' like rotating die-holders for the tailstock (MT1) and a lot of the usual tooling. I have milled a new cross-slide, slightly longer than the old original which had been 'bashed' a bit with the usual arguments with the chuck(!) which runs on the V-slide of the saddle, which itself runs on the V-shape slide of the bed. I've also added a DRO readout for the X-travel of the saddle, reading both metric and imperial, and two oilers for the spindle in the casting in place of the (open) hand-dripped fillers.

QUESTION:-
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This completed, I found it a good machine for my needs, and indeed it has been in regular use since that time to the extent that it is probably time to give it a bit of another clean-up and machine-paint it again. The one question I have tried to find the answer to is exactly what this machine is!!! I know it came from the sellers' father (and the seller was quite older than I was) but not much more than that, and here I would ask your assistance or pointers you may know of in establishing what machine it really is.

It has a Morse Taper 1 both in the headstock and tailstock, the nose thread is 7/8" with 9 TPI, centre height is 82mm or 3-1/4", the bed ecluding gap is 590mm or 23-1/4", the gap is 70mm or 2-3/4", and it has a backgear for a reduction of 6:1 rotational speed (although these gears may be changed).
In use with the existing belt drive and pulley-wheels and the motor I have it gives speeds of 450, 720 and 1152 RPM plus (with back-gear reduction) 75, 120 and 192 RPM.

On the bed casting there is (see the attached pictures) a stamp with "MA 109" impressed on it, and lower on the casting there is the line "MADE IN ENGLAND". A number of different change-wheel gears are present for thread-cutting using the leadscrew which I've only used a couple of times but it's also useful for slowly turning to diameter towards the chuck (next extra I'll make when I get a round tuit is a stop that'll disengage the leadscrew drive mechanically).

SO - Finally, would you have any idea whatsoever of the background to this lathe, it's maker, or any other observations you might have? Photos are in the "my album" section of my profile.

With my friendly regards - F.C. Trevor Gale.

I have a relatively new milling machine (HBM series 25) and some time ago I used several 8%-Cobalt mill bits to machine the hard steel block I used to make a new cross-slide for an old lathe. I provided minimum coolant and the tool cut very well indeed, no 'forcing' nor biting and the bits performed better than any others I have in the workshop.

Most of the advertisements I see in M.E.W. and the like seem to refer to 5% versions, but I bought mine here in the Netherlands and I don't know if these are widely available in the U.K. Nevertheless worth the extra few quid for a set.