My beaten up Myford

Hello Jim,

That is a very kind offer, thanks. Mine is metric, what is yours?

I bit the bullet last night and took it all to bits, and dismantled the whole carriage assembly.

Lots of cleaning was required, it was full of muck where I had not been before.

There are many faults on the machine, with parts broken worn or missing.

However I intend to persevere for a while, as I am learning through the excercise, which now is more "can I make this lathe work" rather than "can I make X on this lathe!"

Thus far I have refitted the main slide to the bed, and adjusted it with the feed screw removed. It does get very slightly tighter towards the ends of its travel, but it moves fairly freely by hand.

Close examination of the cross feed screw (terminology?) showed that it was running out of true. Gentle bending seems to have improved this, which may be the root of my problem.

Then I shall study the book and do some tool grinding. I have a collection of hand me downs to work with .

That's the weekend cut out then.

Charles

LOL, hardly surprising on a machine of such vintage rescued from a yard in Dar Es Salaam.

Tis an interesting exercise though and very satisfying when you get it sorted and making "X" on it. Anyone can make a model engine/dividing head/Quorn TC etc on a new lathe and mill. Doing it on vintage machinery you've refurbished yourself is a hoot -- if you are of a certain bloody minded perverse nature.

Charles,

The leadscrew is Imperial - my ML10 is one of the early ones. But I think the main cross-slide body casting would be the same for metric or Imperial models.

Jim.

Edited By Jim Guthrie on 23/02/2018 08:36:23

Thanks for the offer Jim, I will see how I get on first.

Charles

I view of all of the kind advice and time given here, here is a bit of an update:

I studied Sparey's book which is excellent.

I reground the cutting tool carefully, having made a tool rest for the grinder!

I stripped down the lathe cross slide etc.

I managed to straighten the wobbly cross slide lead screw so that it rotates true by eye, and tightened up everything correctly.

I eventually discovered (Thanks Peter!) that the top slide swivel locking pins were fitted in the wrong holes (swopped over) and the top slide was not gripping properly as a consequence. This was causing all sorts of mayhem as you can imagine.

After all of this I managed to cut a test piece to within 2 hundredths of a mm, which was pleasing.

Finally I visited Warco on Saturday at their open day and have purchased a WM240 along with some bells and whistles.

The reason for this treachery is that I have not detailed what else is missing from the ML10, it would take a long time!

I have learned a lot through this exercise, and plan to apply it to the new machine.

I am thinking of having a go at Alex Whittakers Firefly engine in due course.

Regards,

Charles