Member postings for Ajohnw

LOL. You should get your self a decent lathe Michael. Boxford provided test report sheets with all of them real ones too.

There are or rather have been better about. I used a DSG guaranteed to be better than 1 1/2 thou between centres which must be circa 5ft. I couldn't measure any at all over 3ft. Not much chance of finding one that hasn't been worked to death now. Mounted on adhesive pads. I shudder to think what the cast iron box type stand weighed in at let alone the lathe itself.

John

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Tell you what I'll stick my test bar in the morse socket and test the run out 125mm from the end of the socket. Boxfords spec is better than 0.001 thou per foot but they always seem to be a lot better than that. Mine was. Maybe some one used the usual trick to true it up. I've mentioned on here several times that a pure spindle nose runout measurement is useless.

Actually I will have to do that again anyway as I need to take my lathes headstock apart to undo something I did as a bit of an experiment that hasn't worked as well as I thought it might. I greased a part that is normally oiled to prevent the bearings from warming up. It has. Sounded like a good idea but it's better as it was.

The 3 morse plus myford nose was turned up on the lathe anyway so in real terms is no different to what would be achieved via a chuck other than rotational orientation. If I did that it would be with the 3 jaw as it would rather difficult to use it again once it was taken out - and who knows the spindle might be slanting up anyway.

If you are thinking of making one you might find the choice of material used here of interest. It wouldn't be mine for the reason I outlined.

By Harold Hall

**LINK**

Me. They spent 3 years training me as a tool maker plus 6 months of machine tool design and a further 6 months on other things. And yet more after I finished my apprenticeship.

John

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Sunny and clear here in s. brum too. Went to Redditch to get some paint from B&Q and had to use the sun visors in the car several time to see where I was going. Temperature 17C well out of the town.

I've never tried taking photo's of the sun. Only projection. What size lens / scope Neil ?

John

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No it's because water goes down the plug hole swirling the wrong way so pendulums run backwards.

They aren't really watch makers lathes either. More instrumentation and volume production of small bits an pieces. Micro lathes are small so loads can be put in a relatively small rooms plus no real worry about floor loadings. Many of them had capstan attachments available for them. Some Myfords too. There was a company not far from where I live making brass fittings on small myford capstan lathes even up to around 15 years ago. With the right gear on a capstan lathe the general condition of the lathe doesn't really matter. In fact loose slides and bearings can help as they let the work self centre.

John

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A lot of lathe for £3000. Interesting to compare with a Harrison with less bits at £14,500 probably plus vat or £6K for a used one that at that price should be in very good condition but in new lathe terms probably wont be due to industrial use although some probably finish up as Boxfords often do as work shop lathes and may have only had "occasional" use making odd bits an pieces from time to time.

2morse chinese 5/8 chuck pillar drills? They were mainly aimed at wood workers and at times came with a free morticer. The person who sold me mine rather a long time ago wouldn't supply the size that the adds offered for free in case I broke the drill and went down a size. It's served me well and I don't expect too much of it and don't care that larger holes need drilling slowly. I noticed yesterday that the chuck jaws don't run true any more with smaller drills in it - easily fixed via a replacement chuck of a more suitable size and make for metal work. 2 morse 1/2" I have black smith drills for the lathe. They are fine in a good quality industrial key chuck. Results with say a Rohm keyless can be a bit mixed. I don't use that for bigger sizes.

Chipmasters were mentioned, I have a tail about those. Circa 20 often less apprentices making round bits for their make a depth mic exercise. One intake a year and maybe 2 days work on the lathe for each person. It was the only lathe around that could run at 3,000 rpm to allow the work to be done quickly and not cause a bottle neck. Not many years of use and it was still accurate but the finish was a big let down as the bearings had worn. The only lathe we were allowed to use emery cloth on to improve the finish. Most lathes used in a toolroom get like this pretty quickly and not long after loose accuracy too which doesn't matter to them as accurate work is done on a grinder, work is often going to be hardened anyway. Later they wont be suitable for work like that so they get rid of them.

I did buy a chines lathe once. The one that can take a milling head on top of the headstock. One good thing to say about it - the finish was good. Bad things, the scraped tailstock was a very badly miss aligned joke and the headstcok alignment was awful too. Couldn't turn up to a centre so a morse extension sleeve had to be used leaving less between centres than was available before they increased it by 2". Things seem to have improved these days but if some one buys one with sufficient rigidity the finish should be good even if it lacks the over all work accuracy of a Harrison which cost n times as much. It might also be better than a well worn lathe of the same ilk.

Meant to add I'm sticking with my Boxford. I happened on a pretty decent one with lots of equipment. As I have used lathes capable of doing insanely accurate work I want it to do that - conclusion - too much to expect really but it's not that far off.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 01/11/2015 13:38:02

Boxford have another way of doing it that could be adapted to other lathes. They call it a boring table and it fits in place of the compound slide.

Handy in some ways as it gives more space due to the compound slide no longer being there and retains the swing when it's not fitted.

Lathe parts manufacturers things to order by the way. For a cross slide he would want to know the width across the gibs etc.

John

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I wouldn't be too envious. Often the machines are so far past their sell by date that they don't really deserve their reputation any more. There are exceptions but the odds are against buyers. It is possible to buy a recon'd Schaublin from a UK agent but as would be expected it will cost Schaublin prices. I'd guess the same could be done in many parts of the world. As to the rest the lathes are often 60 years old or more and will have done serious amounts of work at some point in their lives. People were sitting at lathes and turning all day in fair numbers when these types of lathe were in wide spread use. Maintenance will have varied, owners will have changed. Just to illustrate the point go back a bit further and people were making car parts by hand on milling machines in large factories that employed vast numbers of people.

I don't think straying into this sort of thing in a thread like this one matters Michael but I apologise too. People need to be aware of what they might be getting in to. Frying pans and fires spring to my mind in this area. i wouldn't have bought the Pultra in the photo unless I could go along and actually use it. From that my next aim was to find one that had obviously been just lying around for a long time unused and needing a sensible amount of cleaning up that I could actually go and look at - just in case for some spares as the other one did show signs of being cleaned up. This other one allows me to upgrade to a 1770 if I want but the 50 came with 40mm riser blocks. Some one on here sold me a head less spindle so I now have a reference for making new bearings without disturbing the others. Must admit it is easier to do this sort of thing with Pultra's in the UK but it can result in rather a lot work to get the lathe to behave as it should do. I don't see the point in owning one unless it does. Others though are more interested in the names scattered around their workshop. I have seen a couple like that where it was pretty clear that not much if any work is done with them. Other people use them and put up with the problems. It's rather noticeable that ebay prices in this area have dropped - I'd guess people are wising up or maybe many who are interested have died off. Michael's Lorch equipped as per the video would still cost a lot of money even if it was mostly worn out or even covered in rust which it might have been at some point.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 01/11/2015 10:58:15

I have a 3 morse Myford dummy nose Dusty. It's handy as both my dividing head and miller have myford spindle noses. I also have a Myford grip true to use with it. The thread and register will be fitted to an ML7 spindle I happen to have. That end can be done in one setting and I will cut the thread with a machine chaser.

As far as the register goes I will be aiming for a few 1/10 clearance max - one of the reasons for preferring cast iron. With that it's possible to have it fitting so close that it will tend to coin the surface of the register without it locking up.

John

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I think Pultra did a similar sized short bed model P Michael. That would have been often fitted with a more powerful motor due to the 10,000 rpm aspect which would push the footprint size up. There will be other what in most respects are watch makers size machines that are a little bit more rigid than some are.

Not really suitable for Brian. Some form of production lathe of a similar type that takes chucks directly on the spindle rather than via having a collet fitting on the back might be.

The footprint of my Pultra is 19" x 15" with the usual hefty Pultra drive mounted underneath. There is actually more room available at the back so a countershaft for an overhead drive could be added. I'm more interested in a self powered spindle that will fit anything I happen to have.

Talking small lathes it would be nice to find one of these for free - I don't think I would like to bid for one on ebay.

**LINK**

John

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Not so sure about that. This for instance is on wheels.

There is an entire genuine Pultra drive unit in the back of the cabinet. Due to be replaced with something else at some point. A number of other bits and pieces too. Plenty of room.

Not sure if Brian is into woodwork but it's surprising what can be done with a straight edge, circular saw and a router. It could even look like a piece of furniture complete with a fold out cover for the lathe.

The colours of that one look a bit 50's home made kitchen stuff to me.

John

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John Ward will make T slotted cross slides for a number of lathes. Not sure about chinese though.

http://www.latheparts.co.uk/

 Other bits and pieces for them too.

whoops forgot to add the link.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 31/10/2015 17:05:11

That sort of limitation on the screw cutting indicator on metric lathes isn't that unusual although I believe some of the mini lathes come with 2. As it has a 3mm pitch lead screw it is a true metric lathe. There has been some variation in that aspect at times. Even by Myford.

They are useful for other reasons. The half nuts should align with the lead screw when the marks on the dial line up. Some can be adjusted to do that by moving it slightly nearer or further away from the nuts. This saves trying to force the nut to engage with the tips of the thread in it rubbing on the outside of the lead screw rapidly wearing it out. I looked at a modern ex school boxford last weekend that I strongly suspect had suffered from doing that - it's not good for the nut. When I engaged the nut and put a bit of force on it using the saddle wheel it just jumped out. Ham fisted use and probably hardly any thread left in the nut. Other factors put me off but I would have wanted to look at the lead screw as well.

They can still be used for pitches they don't cater for. You'll think this is difficult but in practice it's easy. Start the cut by engaging the nut on an indicator mark. At the end of the cut disengage the screw cutting and turn the lathe off. Wind the tool out. Select reverse and when the same indicator line mark aligns re engage the screw cutting and run back to say 1/2" past the start. Set the next cut, select forwards and so on. The indicator will only turn a little when while the lathe is being stopped. It's far easier to work up close to shoulders etc done this way.

The indicator is essentially showing what are usually called repeat or sync distances - when n times the pitch being cut equals some integer number of lead screw pitches. This is what Boxford do but the marks on the dial aren't evenly space.

As usual they fail to mention using the indicator and reversing the lathe. That works because the indicator would have to turn a fair amount to loose synchronisation after the nut is disengaged and the lathe actually stops - a complete revolution at least.

John

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He has a rather nice piece of brass there. Mine seems to be a bit hit and miss.

Schaublin are the leaders in that particular line of lathes. Famed mainly because they made interchangeable parts that didn't lead to any loss in the basic accuracy of the lathe plus lots of bits and pieces.

If you want to see the sort of thing the UK was producing along these lines here is a for instance

**LINK**

Pity no price is given. There was also a more recent attempt during the 60's

**LINK**

There is a list of others on this page

**LINK**

As I am a bit of a lathe nut. I did have a Lorch for a while and a small Schaublin. I still have a Boley and now after a long long wait a Pultra. I reckon Holbrook and one or two others got it right. The best answer to bearings if some one want the word precision to have meaning is to try and make sure they never wear out.

Adjustable bearings sound fine until it's time to adjust them. There is a need to look into re aligning them after adjustment which means some very light very precise machining. Ideally when they are in place on the machine.

My Boley is this one but fitted with a conventional slide rest, same collet closer. They use a 2 speed motor, Bearing adjustment is "interesting".

**LINK**

I suppose Brian could sort out something along these lines but he probably wouldn't like the weight and sorting them if the wear is excessive can be difficult. Not impossible though.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 31/10/2015 13:53:31

Given how fine the thread in the nut is Dusty you may be right but I think it will be ok. I aught to check what grade and type the piece I have is. It should be one of the tensile grades suitable for back plates etc.

I had wondered about using E8M but will give the cast iron a go. The thread for the nut will be chased for a very precise fit.

John

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It's a slightly revamped version of the old 918 lathe. The belt drive version. The gear head one was extremely noisy as it didn't use precision ground gears and usually leaked oil. A well regarded lathe. Lots of people bought them and many retailers reckoned that it was easily the best far eastern lathe in it's day having had problems with some previous ones. Having seen them I wonder if things have improved further or gone backwards but have never looked at hidden surfaces. Accounting for inflation it wasn't that cheap a lathe. Not long after this period .de started mentioning spindle run out - meaningless on it's own.

I mentioned turning steel and rigidity along with Jason. The only problem with that is that it should be possible to take some sort of cut even if it's only an extremely light one. One problem with extremely light cuts is that they don't take out any play in the system and that will wreck finish. That aspect has a problem as well - it should be possible to set a cut that as far as the lathe is concerned puts the same load on it as aluminium does and that should give a similar level of finish on both materials. Maybe Hopper's work will help.

Just in case some one gets Taig / Peatol 1/4hp fever - when new the lathe will turn very accurate work, no real signs of taper etc, also give an excellent finish with suitable tools. With this level of power however something some where, probably the head bends and the lathe starts turning a taper. When I noticed that this had happened it was something of the order of 0.004" over 4". I can't really remember the exact numbers. Finish was still very good. Some people cure this by shimming the head now and again. The ER16 head may be better but I suspect it's down to the use of aluminium. It looks to me that they are a lot less bother than baby lathes though.

John

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According to how the belt is set you have 450w at either 1500 or 3000 rpm Brian. They mention the 450w as input power or as they put it total connection rate. That probably means circa 200w as far as motor output is concerned. It could even be lower as there is no mention of how they have rated the motor. It might well only take that current when it's in the fastest speed setting on either range.

So say the motor is 200w out if you half the speed you have circa 100w, 1/4 the speed circa 50w and etc. This happens because the torque the motor puts out is relatively constant so watts or HP go down as the rpm is reduced.

The Peatol (Taig) I had for several years used a 1/4 hp motor and belt drive. It could easily take 0.1" of 3/4 diameter mild steel with a 0.050" cut and way way more than that off aluminium with a tool ground to remove that particular material as rapidly as possible. That's 1/4 hp out *. I'd say the speed on mild steel was around 500 rpm, probably some what less. In your terms on a variable speed lathe you would need to be in the 1500 rpm range and have a motor fitted with around 3 times as much power output. 3/4 hp nearly 600w out circa twice that in, maybe even more subject to the motor.

Taig seems to have gone variable speed now but not on the UK Peatol site. I assume the unit is similar to the sherline one, spec here

**LINK**

The torque graph on the page needs some caution - note the current and and time limits mentioned. The curve is what happens when the motor is loaded to reduce the speed to the value indicated on the graph.

* At the time they supplied a GEC motor that was probably conservatively rated and it did get very hot when doing things like this but it never let any of it's smoke out. Just a bit of a warm varnish smell for a while when it was new.

John

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The thing that would drive me up the wall on the GH550 is that feeds can't be changed quickly - change wheels have to be swapped around. It's something I can do very easily on my current lathe over a very wide range just by moving a lever and it's something I often do. As gear heads go the wabeco one is pretty unique. You could find ones without this limitation but price, weight and size go up.

Gear heads and belt drive lathes have the advantage that cutting torque increases as the speed is reduced. Variable speed lathes don't offer that. Warco don't provide manuals for download but I would suspect that the WM250V has a substantial speed reduction available by changing a belt setting. That will increase the torque that's available. HP or watts is rpm * torque. Torque tends to remain constant on variable speed lathes so the watts drop as speed is reduced. It doesn't on gear heads. This may be why the gear head is heavier than the 250V, it will need the extra rigidity. It also appears to have a more complicated screw cutting gauge but the 250V may do that by changing the gears on it. Some lathes supply more than on indicator and they are easy to switch over either way. This isn't a problem on purely imperial lathes - one indicator can cut many pitches.

The bigger SPG lathe has a bigger spindle bore, a plus for some but 25mm is generally regarded as a useful minimum. I suspect it uses a DC brushed motor. Both of the warco lathes use conventional ac motors. These will run at the same speed even when reversed if needed for screw cutting. The brushed motor speed is often reduced when they are run in reverse. AC motors usually last for a very long time. Easier to replace as are inverters if that fails.

I linked to the gear head because if your interested in the larger spg then I feel that it offers a better balance all round but lacks the quick feed change feature which the 250V has. The induction motor and inverter will have increased the cost over brushed motor versions. There may be brushless motor versions around as well but I'm not aware of any at these sizes.

Personally I'd ask for electronic copies of the manuals on any lathe you consider buying. I'd also ask if they are true metric lathes if that is what you want.

John

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After some thought I decided to send it back. The 1st email to them seems to have been lost. The 2nd one via their web contact page resulted in an address to send it back to and a free post reference.

I have a length of cast iron I can use to make one from so will be going down that route.

One thing to add on checking it over but many probably wont have the equipment needed to check it the way I did. If I mount it on a spindle in the lathe there would be some error from that. This could be resolved by rotating the holder - difficult to do with a screw fitting where as I can and did rotate the collet independently of the chuck to see what level of error was being introduced by that. None of any concern in relationship to the error in the holder.

It doesn't look any better on a lathe spindle anyway.

John

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This and similar sites may be of use to you

**LINK**

I ran one of these applications under wine on Linux recently. Out of curiosity so don't ask which one but it it had lots of versions for different gear arrangements.

I used a helper application called q4wine as it's easy to set where an application can find it's associated files but the same thing can be done directly with wine.

There are other simulators shown here

**LINK**

Some might run under one of the dos emulators that are around.

John

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There are some tachometers around that are used on model aircraft and things like that. They are optical so a black stripe or similar could be used as a sensor rather than having to attach bit's a pieces to rotating parts of the lathe. They can be found by searching tachometer in toys and games on ebay.

I have one somewhere but haven't tried it on a lathe, yet.

John

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