ML10 - ready for the boneyard?

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I don't know the full story, but there is one fundamental difference between ML10 and the other Myfords, which probably helps explain. ... The ML10 has a flat top and 'undercut' dovetails. ... grind the top significantly, and everything moves.

MichaelG.

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https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Ways-Wiper-for-swarf-protection-on-a-Myford-ML/

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 31/07/2018 13:05:26

'.......Myford don't muck about - they replace the spindle. It doesn't mean that shimming is 'wrong', just that there's a better way which will cost a bob or two more

Yes - good for Myford (as was)! And unnecessary as the adjustment is simple but requires caution so spanner benders need to take care. You will struggle to find a new spindle now.

the cast end bracket would not allow the lead screw to be repositioned following the regrind

Suggest you take a look at Lathes co for a picture of ML10 and decide for yourself if you agree with that statement.

Not sure ML10 had a hardened bed, don't think mine is as it marks quite easily.

Good robust lathes, smaller and neater than a 7, you can run' the iron bearing ones at high speed too, if you have a VFD and good lubrication (or suitable pulley arrangement ). If I had a choice, would prefer the taper bearing version(less oily mess in the headstock), but quite happy with my 'Iron Dog'. The main irritation is 31/4 centre height that means all of the available ML7 stuff needs to be modified and requires small tools with turrets toolholders Simple problem, but irritating. I have a fitting for turning diameters up to about 11in, cant remember when I last used it though!

How does that work? Riser blocks for the headstock? Workholding on the ar$e-end of the spindle? I never found any such device when I was building my Stuart Beam.

Oh dear, just spent 2 days fitting a new leadscrew to my ML10 and read this post. Took a straightedge to the bed and lo and behold there is light to be seen. An imperfect Myford!; off to the scrapyard with it.

All those gearwheels and clock bits and optical parts and the odd steam and IC engine. All tainted with imperfection, all have to be recalled and scrapped. Well probably not, for it is a poor engineer who blames (his) tool. Some may need perfection but for most model stuff I doubt the odd bit of imperfection in the lathe is going to stop a semi competent engineer. Indeed for me dealing with the quirks of older equipment (including mine) is half the fun.

More realistically it would be interesting to know what the real options are for a regrind if only to help my heirs flog the thing because I doubt I will be going to the bother.

As I feared the memory isn't so good. The apron was modified to cope with the regrind, although I reckon bushing the lead screw brackets would have been simpler.

Andrew.

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That's what I thought, when I was considering buying a used ML10, Roger

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any useful advice, except that document by Mr. Moore.

MichaelG.

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It's a pity they didn't build it with a replaceable bed-plate,

like the Hardinge DV/ DSM-59

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 31/07/2018 17:03:28

**LINK**

Mick see link above and find machine builder post with video and scroll to near end of video to see what these devices look like. Don't think they are available as commercial products, but basically they consist of a billet of material which can be clamped to the bed in which a short spindle runs on bearings, a Myford nose one end, myford change wheel(s) other end - spindle at a suitable distance above headstock spindle, driven by a morse taper with another suitable change wheel. As these are DIY items, a great deal of variation may exist eg. fabricated frames, timing pulleys and belts instead of change wheels etc etc. The max size is dictated by available tool positioning on cross slide

The one I have for the 10 is change wheel driven, and has a layshaft with idler to ensure normal rotation, it is also geared down to approx. 1/2 headstock speed (remember the days before VFD and reversing switches )

The one I have for the 7 is an absolute monster, using the kind of timing gears a tank would have and will spin you 13inches in diameter, should you feel so inclined.

Both home made, the one for the 10 worked very well - I thought with the slop from the gears it would be very chattery, but not so

I have never tried the one for the 7 in anger other than to confirm it runs ok (and as you would expect much quieter than the geared version). The body is an humungous solid iron casting taking a real effort of will to lift!

They were both acquired, the one for the 10 looking as if it may have been built a plan, the one for the 7 looks as if it was constructed in a locomotive workshop of brobdinagian proportions.

Personally, I see no good reason why you couldn't get a couple of reasonable regrinds from a 10 bed and of course you would also need to grind the apron top or the carriage bottom in proportion to respect the leadscrew nut position. But you couldn't do too many without thinning the V ways and then having grind the bottoms off tailstock and carriage Vs etc etc.

Grinding the top of the apron must be way easier than drilling and eccentrically bushing the bed casting leadscrew bearings on a 10 ... Full hero points for anyone attempting that!.

The 10 is a lathe clearly designed by a committee of engineers and probably treated by its creator as the illegitimate brother of the 7, I suspect they felt the need to market something cheaper than a 7, but not something that would dent sales of the 7, hence its general quirkiness (as in why did/didn't the do that..? what can we do to make it not appeal to a mass market?). Highly under-rated machines, stigmatised by their lack of ubiquity.

If you want to do work,buy a lathe. If you want to play around,you have a great starting point.

Simple as that !!

Larry, you make a lot of sense.

Thank you for that. I don't think I've ever seen one of those attachments for sale separate from the lathe, which means they're effectively unobtainable except by making one, and IMO you really gotta love your Myford 10 to be prepared to do that. Bit like a whole skipjack tuna to catch a mackerel.

I've said often enough that I ran a Speed 10 for 15 years and that I enjoyed it at the time. It could produce work as accurate as I could and it was for the most part smooth and pleasant to use. If I'd been able to afford the space and cash I might've kept it when I got my Warco. But for me there's no getting round the fact that the Warco can do a much wider range of work, both turning and milling/drilling, and is similarly pleasurable to use once you get it adjusted. I wouldn't go back now.

I think what we have here may reflect the difference of emphasis between ME and MEW?

Just had time for one test before shutting down in the garage for the night.

I spent some quality time grinding and honing a fresh HSS bit - sharp as sharp.

Put that chunk of scrap steel rod in the 3-jaw chuck and ran a few short cuts, ending up with a skim cut of .001 inch.

The surface finish didn't look too bad, but the actual measured results are not encouraging. Over a distance of 3.5 cm the micrometer gave me the following (these being measured from the tailstock end, progressively closer to the chuck):

>> 15.212mm - 15.165mm - 15.135mm - 15.125mm

Not exactly parallel.   ...er, I mean cylindrical.

Edited By Ignatz on 31/07/2018 21:04:04

Edited By Ignatz on 31/07/2018 21:04:39

Do you live in Belgium, too? You won’t bring it home in carry-on luggage!

Uh huh....

A not untypical problem and hinted at my earlier post. Easily checked and usually easily fixed. I will take it from the top. the error is relatively large over the small distance - circa 3.5 thou and could be due to a number of simple adjustment issues....

First off and easiest, did you turn using the top slide or leadscrew? if using the topslide, did you check motion was 100% parallel to bed? if not set the topslide angle to be parallel to bed with using your DTI and see if that has any effect.

If you used the leadscrew to drive the carriage, then next thing to check is spindle alignment with lathebed/carriage. Various ways in which you can do this, easiest is with an MT2 test bar of reasonable length-say 6 inches, but you can also use a piece of silver steel in the chuck and the RDM (consult web for various approaches and rollies dads method is popular- google only problem with RDM method is that it may be telling you more about your chuck than the spindle, check out a steve Jordan video on alignment on youtube

If the spindle is miss-aligned, the headstock is only held by two clamps, it is possible that the headstock has had a knock or been interfered with in the past, this is trivial to readjust using the test bar (might need a shim or just re-setting to front Vway.

If checking with test bar indicates the spindle is true to the bed in all dimensions, then there are 2 other possible sources of non conformity

The easy- the chuck and or chuck back plate is distorted - no really, I didn't believe this could happen, but another member gave me the heads up on this when I was having problems with run out and it was exactly the cause of the problem. - check for no run out in the Y plane with DTI on the back of chuck mounting plate ( I will assume that the chuck jaws have not been modified by grinding etc)

If no errors found from all of above, check jaw alignment with piece of silver steel, if bad consider new chuck, if bold consider grinding chuck, if rich, consider replacing jaws (assuming they are available).

The difficult - the bed may be twisted - not that likely as the 10 has a very rigid bed compared to the 7 but it is possible that there has been distortion over time. arrangements. Check by turning a 6" x 1" work piece to a dumbbell shape and than take a LIGHT test cut at each end on the same setting and mic any twist will show up as a dimensional difference between the two ends ( refer you to Steve Jordan video for simple explanation) Quite what you will do about any twist depends on your method of lathe mounting - clearly you should not perform this test until all of the previous sources of potential error have been eliminated.

Could be that the gross error is due to accumulation of all of the above, so best blow the dust of the DTI and settle down to have a bit of sport.

All of these are simple set up checks and issues - even on new machines, welcome to the world of hobby engineering!

If non of these checks reveal any source of error, then your lathe has clearly been possessed by demons and should be handed immediately to an experienced lathe exorcist such as myself for safe keeping

agreed, I don't think I would have had the courage to make one, but they do appear from time to time on a popular auction site and are not always recognised for what they are (ie don't get bid up to stupid money like most myford stuff). The one for the 10 cost me about £30 plus about 10 for postage which is les than half what it would have cost to make. It is based on a solid aluminium billet, so not as cool looking as the one demonstrated by Myford Boy - King of Kasting, although I was somewhat alarmed to see that he double clamps it to underneath the lathe bed - do I need to fear that the awesome, stump pulling power of my 50 year old1/4 HP motor will tear the fitting right off the bed Vways?

any advice welcomed.

Martin,

Lots of food for thought in what you suggest.

The test was run using the leadscrew.

The 3-jaw chuck I used is an older Pratt Burnerd that came with the lathe when I bought it. The screw mount is integral with the chuck body and so I tend to discount faceplate distortion. The threaded mount is really snug (have to engage back gear to screw or unscrew the thing), seats quite well on the spindle and the jaws’grip on the workpiece quite secure. In any case, once the initial cuts are made, the surface of the workpiece should be - in theory - spinning true, in line with the axis of the spindle. However, I grant you that if I were trying to work on a piece of stock which was already (supposedly) round and true and I wished to machine it further then the accuracy of the chuck as concerns mounting, bell-mouthing of jaws and runout would be major factors.

“Rollie's Dad's Method of Lathe Alignment” is quite interesting. Thank you for that, sir. I found the article and have downloaded it. Very interesting! I shall attempt the test(s) as outlined. I sees yet further ‘quality time’ with the DTI in my near future.

As the ML10 was Myford's 'budget' machine I suspect they weren't planning to compete with Hardinge

From your latest test you are turning a conical shape. That is most likely caused by the spindle not being correctly aligned with the bed. Forget about problems with the chuck. A badly fitted or eccentric chuck will still turn parallel.

Russell

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Clearly, Neil

Subtlety of wording : I did NOT mention anything about competing with Hardinge, I simply highlighted one feature of the DV/DSM lathes which would have been of great advantage to Myford ML10 customers, and might have added only a modest incremental cost if it had been engineered into the design.

MichaelG.

Ignatz

The 3-jaw chuck I used is an older Pratt Burnerd that came with the lathe when I bought it. The screw mount is integral with the chuck body and so I tend to discount faceplate distortion.

Ha ha!, never trust a chuck! or rather 'trust, but check' as they used to say in the NKVD!

I have exactly the same myford integral chuck, was having similar problems and the spindle checked as parallel on my 10 and so assumed there was some issue with the chuck jaws. I consulted the forum with view to grinding and somebody suggested I check the runout on the chuck back (nah, surely not , I thought) and guess what.... when measured- nearly 2 thou runout, which over the chuck + test piece length was 6 to 8 thou taper! (and would be correspondingly more for a longer piece).

I think this type of chuck condition is unusual but not without precedent - anyway will only take 5m to check (somebody suggested internal stress relief over time as a cause of distortion, but I think more likely to have been die to a nasty lock up ). BTW, I did a quick and dirty fix of shimming up the low side between the integral plate and chuck bodywith some ally foil to avoid having to skim the integral plate and chuck innards - reducing the angular error to practically zero over 6 inches Picture of dismantled chuck in my album). There was still 1.5 thou runout in the chuck, but this is coaxial with the lathe and not worth chasing down on a 3 jaw

once the initial cuts are made, the surface of the workpiece should be - in theory - spinning true, in line with the axis of the spindle.

Yes, but if your spindle or chuck or both are not coaxial with the lathe bed and traverse of the carriage, you will turn a taper as it appears is happening. Assuming you mounted the work piece perfectly axial to the spindle and your first measurement (the largest) is at the tailstock, your measurements suggest that the misalignment is towards the back right of the lathe (or the right end of the lathe may be twisted towards the back with respect to the headstock end). In respect of bed twist, the error seems too large to be fully accounted for by twist alone, but may contribute as errors can be cumulative.

“Rollie's Dad's Method of Lathe Alignment” is quite interesting.

Yes, but bear in mind its limitations, in that with a chucked system, the method does not discriminate the error between chuck and spindle, which is why it is important to confirm there is no chuck runout (and that the jaws faces are co axial) - you do get people that grind the jaws in response to these type of issues without fully understanding the true source of error thereby not only not fixing the issue, but trashing a chuck as well (however, there may be perfectly respectable reasons to grind the jaws, but depends how well it is done)

I would strongly advise you to get a 2mt test bar, it is a very useful bit of kit for checking spindles, setting tailstocks and topslides etc a 6in one will do but if you are masochist, get a longer one! If you put a quality test bar in a well cleaned and deburred spindle and it indicates true or not, then the result is usually definitive (and a piece of 20mm silver steel for other checks).

Don't discount the possibility of bed twist, but that check should come after you have investigated all the other sources of error.

Above all have fun!