Colchester Student Mk1 Won't Start

Rs ran out of stock after I placed my order. So even though the website said they had one, it hasn't come and now its on backorder for a fortnight. So so much for getting that wired out of the way. Very irritating since when I ordered it, it said it would be here today!

Still, the new belts arrived, the perfect size for the new motor and have space for adjustment. They actually fit the pulleys better than the old belts.

Time for more cleaning...

I had some more woodworking gluing today. But I don't fancy working on the actual lathe. So I took out a traveling steady

I took it to pieces, the paint was in such bad condition I thought I would take it all off with a wire wheel

Then I degreased it and gave it a coat of tractol red oxide primer. Once that's dry I'll give it a coat or two of the same tractol I used on the coolant tank. I'd like to paint the whole lathe in that colour eventually! Just focusing on getting the lathe fixed and working first

Three phase seems like a distant dream at this point. Pandemics don't help getting things installed.

I've spotted a decent rotary converter for about the same price as three phase would cost, so I'm quite tempted by that. We'll see

Any tips for painting the traveling steady and getting a really nice finish? Just with a brush?

Soft clean brush with long bristles, and a warm room! Put the paint on fairly thick, brush it out briskly, and when it is smooth, leave it alone! check for runs every few minutes, and if they happen, brush them out, usually primer and 2 to 3 topcoats does the job. Tractol is bloody good paint for the price, and oil resistant when fully cured, which takes about a week, longer in the cold! There is a knack to it which comes with practice. I have had great success using 2" and 4" gloss rollers for machine painting, almost as good as spray finish, and wastes much less paint! Very important to keep the painting area warm so flows smooth,  tacks off quickly and doesnt run! you can either put your roller in water, or in a tightly wrapped poly bag and reuse it the next day, or even a few days later. Give it a good shake if you use the water method.

Phil

Edited By Phil Whitley on 02/04/2020 19:34:06

Thanks Phil

Rotary converter all ordered. Should arrive on Monday or Tuesday

The coolant tube arrived today so I fitted that

I did put a coat on the traveling steady, but it didn't go very well so I'm going to need to sand it back and get a better finish. I'm loving the orange/red colour. I'll post a picture when it's looking better

Then I took apart my 4 jaw and decided that I would repaint the back while it was apart. It needed a good clean, and I think once again the orange/red will look great. So I stripped and primed it

NICE!

Richard, did you notice(can you remember) that when starting my lathe it would sometimes get a couple of clatters from the contactor before it started proper? Jist been thinking about that, dirty contacts on the intermediate position of the Craig and Derricot limit switch! Can you tell I am bored!!

Phil.

I can't say I remember it making noises?

But cleaning the contacts can't do any harm

I have plenty of other things to get done in the meantime. My table saw fence never cuts straight. the wood attached to the fence isn't flat, putting around a 0.5mm taper on parts, which is an absolute nightmare trying to get things to be consistent and line up nicely. I've taken the wood off, but the metal fence beneath isn't perfect so I'll file it as flat as I can, it can't get any worse. Surface ground is a dream right now, not that the precision is needed one bit!

If you're really bored, I'll send my uni work over to you so I can get on in the garage

I am not THAT bored, and probably couldn't do it anyway, maths was not my strength at school and at tech college we were still in the days of slide rules, I was earning about £14 a week and an electronic calculator was about £60!

Do you have a sheet of glass? plate glass is best, or a large polished granite tile. put a flat wad of cloth like a once folded blanket or an old towel on the bench and put the glass on it. mix some fine valve grinding paste with white spirit or wd40 and spread it on the surface, place the fence on it face down and rub to and fro and rotate and repeat, this will soon reveal where the highs and lows are, and you can scrape the highs down and repeat the process till you get good overall contact. Used to use this method for carb flanges and any joints that were not mating up or leaking, most recently used it on the SC box front on the lathe! it was a long way out, hence my suspicion that it was a foreigner!

Phil

No maths in this bit, just doing a lab report on pressure difference in pipes as water flows through bends. Plumbing really, or fluid mechanics supposedly. Not what I really want to be doing

It seems like a great idea for getting things flat, but this fence is very very off. I can alter the taper just fine, but it's lengthways not nicely flat. I'll take a picture to illustrate later, but it just needs filing, to begin with at least

Are there any changes in the SC gearboxes throughout the models of the students? I thought they were all the same for the mk1-1.5 at least?

there are no changes to the SC box, but things were individually fitted to machines as they were built up. All the parts would "fit" but some had to be eased to make them fit properly, bit of filing and smoothing here and there.

Traveling steady is looking very orange. It'll hopefully darken a little since it's meant to be red. But it's probably only 6 or so degrees in the garage. So it's not drying very quickly at all still, I don't need it any time soon. I'll just wait before I sand it and put another coat on. Might even bring it in the house to dry

That picture makes it look better than it is. And that still looks rough

Got the inside of the chuck painted too. I think it looks very nice. Perhaps unnecessarily nice. But I like it

As for the table saw fence it's like this

So I've blued it up

Letting that dry then I'll get back to filing it some more

I see the problem now, it is pressed metal, not cast, and looks, with the round clamps at either end, like it comes from a very similar sawbench to mine, which is a startright? The fence on mine is missing.

Well it was a lot of filling. But it's a lot flatter than it was

I've just blued it up again, now I've glued a bit of 240 grit paper to a bit of glass so I'm sanding it flatter (hopefully)

It's an old Rockwell 9 inch. Canadian. Not as good quality as startright or however you spell it. But it should do the job when it's aligned properly. It's been causing me problems for a while. Either that or I'm the problem

There's a few low spots, but it's good enough for woodworking

I've brought the chuck and steady inside so hopefully they dry quicker

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that looks a hell of a lot better Richard!

Still had some low different low spots when I started to sand, but they cleaned up quite quickly. I didn't bother to get them all. Did 240 then 600 grit. Left it there

All done with that now. Although I still would like to machine it at some point since it's not square to the table either

Converter now says it's out for delivery today! So might be up and running sooner rather than later

Converter didn't arrive, even though it said it was out for delivery. It'll come on Monday

In preparation I fitted the motor properly in location and the belts, fits much better than the old belts and allows for changing of the tension of the belt

the motor plate only has one washer, so that'll be my first project, to make a second

Just did a little cleaning today

Found a hole that I thought was going to be a bolt head or something, but it turned out to be a threaded hole and about 4 inches deep. It's just in the lathe bed. Not sure what it's for? It was full of crap, but I got most of it out

Just showing the depth

Then below there are some holes which I managed to clean a lot of stuff out of

Upside down, but you can see the gunk

Not much progress, but tomorrow should be good if the converter arrives. I'm looking forward to actually do some turning

I think the converter has a 32 amp socket on it, but the lathe has a 16amp plug. Don't know for sure yet, but I'll find out. Might need to change it somehow?

That big hole is for the lifting eye, if you take the chuck off, put in the lifting eye, and attach a crane, you lift the entire machine, moving the saddle left and right to get the balance.

Ah yeah how could I forget. I did know that, just slipped my mind

We have a big blue box. As expected we have a 32 amp 415v ket on the end, so can't plug and play. Where can I get a 32 amp plug today? Especially with lockdown

I've swapped the 16amp plug on it for the 32amp one that had left over from the Clarke converter also noticed that the connections from the box seem a bit off, so added a gland to secure it since had one spare. I'd like to fill in the other holes to stop dust getting in

Plugged it in and it seems to turn on just fine. Better than I thought it would. I'm surprised how quiet it is

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VU5hf6xW3RThjGwh6