Hi all, newbie with first lathe, rare one i think.

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Looks like you made a very good buy, Wayne

Try not to find anything broken, though … Spares could be tricky to find.

MichaelG.

What can be broken easy though, gears can be made, there is one with three teeth half missing. not sure on what else can break easy, or with misuse.

But yes its a good bu i reckon

Ok then gears i have

25

40 with 2 off

42

45

46

50

55

64

70

76

100

plus whats on the lathe now, so looks like a full set ??

I turned the lead screw 10x and the bed moved 2.5" or near as dam but for 8 thou.

What gears are on the machine Wayne? The 25, 42,46 and 64 aren't part of the original set but you shoud have a pair of 50's and a pair of 20's.

just did a quick removal and found

20 x two

35

45

65

80

plus lead screw one i which cant see the number.

You could make an intelligent guess at the one on the leadscrew by measuring the diameter and seeing what you do have that is about half that diameter.

You might be lucky and find it is 127 teeth in which case the metric side of the threading table also becomes available in the threads that the lathe can screw cut. The best result of course is to count the teeth, then you know for certain what it is and can mark it accordingly.

Brian

okeydoke then. is the only way to check what bearings there is in there is to strip it ? cant see much otherwise.

I would be very reluctant at this stage in your knowledge of this lathe and it's potential habits to strip it down just to establish what sort of bearings the spindle runs in. Not only will you disturb any preload setting, without knowing what it should be set back to afterwards, but you run the risk of introducing foreign bodies into the bearings in taking it apart and putting it together.

Does it really matter that much what the bearings are? Spindle speeds are given on the information plate and I would stick to those as a guide to see how the lathe performs before any such invasive surgery.

Thus far I don't think you have cut any metal on it yet.

Brian

Edited By Brian Wood on 22/10/2021 17:54:13

I am just trying to get info for the lathe still, i have not yet touched it but for a clean down. rebuilding this cant be any harder than an engine which i can do, but yes the settings to rebuild it i still need to find out which is what i am trying to do still, very little info found still on these lathes. you dont ask you dont know, so its all gathering info for now.

I plan to get the new motor fitted first on a new cabinet i will building soon, then see how it runs. oh yes first new oil added once drained. i cant find a drain so it will be pumped out with a sump pump i have from when i serviced boat engines. what gets me is the vary in folks idea on what oil to use for the head stock.

OK, I understand you are gathering information, I guessed wrongly at your response re. spindle bearings.

I used 10W-50 oil in my recent restoration, a geared head lathe made in 1947 so not that unlike yours. Plain SAE 30 horticultural oil would also be a good choice. Avoid gear oils and very thin hydraulic oils, they would both be wrong for differing reasons.

Brian

Edit. Look underneath the headstock, there might be a drain plug there.

Edited By Brian Wood on 22/10/2021 19:23:18

The bearings and shafts are all gallery fed which are filled by spalsh lubrication so the most important thing is that there is at least the right amount of oil in there or in any case enough so that the splash system works. If in doubt I always go for ISO32 hydraulic oil.

Lubricants have improved tremendously since that lathe was built. Most modern oils of the correct viscosity are likely far superior to the original spec. No particular need for a hydraulic oil but many much more highly stressed machines use a universal hydraulic oil for gearbox and hydraulics. Thinking here of agricultural applications.

Think i will have my first go tomorrow, made new cabinet now and sorted the fitting of the new 3ph motor and VFD out. need to programme the VFD though i think. it runs but its tech so ill sort that tomorrow aswell.

I also found the G box drain and filler, so i will be doing an oil change soon aswell.

storage for gears and face plates

the belt adjuster is temp as i need the lathe to make a decent adjuster.

Oh and not painting the cabinet, i was but not now. I will be at some point adding a draw or two in the end unit aswell for tooling.

cant wit to get going now

As Brian says, measure the OD of the gear on the Leadscrew.

Measure the OD of one of the other gears, say a 60T ( In both Imperail and Metric units ) Add 2 to the tooth count, so as an example, 62.

If you divide the 62, by the OD in inches, if it is an Imperial gear, you should get a whole number like 14, 16, 18,or 20, possibly. That number is the Diametric Pitch

( i. e. 62 / 3.1 = 20. So a 127T, 20 DP gear would have an OD of 6.45 " )

If it is a Module gear, the OD in mm, divided by Tooth Count + 2 ) should give a number like 1.25 or 1.5.

That is the Module Number..

A 1.5 Module, 62T gear would have an OD of 96 mm. A 1.25 Module, 62T gear would have an OD of 80 mm

Armed with the DP or Module, measuring the OD of the gear on the Leadscrew and applying a similar calculation should tell you how many teeth are on that gear.

HTH

Howard

Well i gave up on looking for info on the lathe. it does what it needs to do. A bit of a faff as the scale are not very clear so will be fitting a DRO some time.

So next thing i got a couple week back was this Tom Senior mill. I actually went to buy a power hack saw as he was asking a daft low price but he sold it on me

BUT

as it was he had a milling machine for sale as the chap was selling up so like you do. I had it. Just the perfect size for the shed.

What a faff about though to get the place ready for the mill. I had to move the lathe over. while insulating the back wall and lining it as if it did get done now it would not of been done. Oh and paint the floor.

Then move the fly press bench over as the mill was going there. Dont know what i would do with the engine hoist. well prob by a set of skates haha

Now the fly press bench. all in one go

And new machine in place.

I dont ink ill be getting anything else to soon. Although the mill wasnt expected so did all this a few days. Would love a shaper for the sake of it, maybe a surface grinder haha. Need more room though and that is not going to happen.

I have it wired up to a 3ph 415 VFD and works fine. I just need to sort out a tapping noise coming from the top pulley. Il be stripping it down this xmas as have a bit of time off ans T works over christmas so lots of time. well aswell as loads of other things to do.

Oh made stove aswell a sits dam cold in here. made it just in time hey it has been as cold as -8 to -10 recently here in Manchester.

All best folks for xmas from Faffer.

Oh yes it can be. A lathe is a machine tool that is used to manufacture engine parts. Thus it has to be more accurate and precise than an engine by a factor of at least 10. Where an engine's parts are measured in thous, lathe parts are measured in tenths of a thou. Engines are mass produced by unskilled production workers to very lax tolerances by comparison to a good quality lathe like this one, which would have been meticulously hand-finished by very highly skilled craftsmen who would have looked down on mere motor mechanics as semi-skilled bodgers.

Don't start pulling it apart until you know a lot more about lathes than you do now. Even skilled toolmakers etc baulk at doing that if they don't have machine tool fitting experience, and rightly so. Tread lightly. Many a good lathe has been ruined by overzealous beginners ripping into them. The name of the game it to gently massage it back into shape, bit by bit, with minimum disassembly and intrusion. Then get to learning how to use the machine and get to know it well. Then eventually when your skill levels and knowledge have surpassed the condition of the lathe, you can think about deeper reconditioning work.

Edited By Hopper on 18/12/2022 21:43:58

Some very good advice from Hopper. Enjoy your machines as they are as you use them you will fix any minor problems as you go it’s the best way with old machines.

It's not unusual for newcomers to machine tools to start by stripping them down and introduce new faults on reassembly. Car engine parts are toleranced by the maker to be exchangeable, which simplifies stripping and reassembly considerably. Older high-end machine tools were often fitted, a process in which experienced well-trained craftsmen fine tuned all the parts to maximise accuracy. And, although lathes are superficially simple, they have some non-obvious features that beginners often miss. Another issue is the difficulty of making the high-accuracy precision measurements needed to align the machine: the technique has to be learned and practised. Not as easy as it seems, and it's difficult for forum advisors to tell the difference between worn components and reassembly mistakes.

As nothing reveals faults like cutting metal, I recommend doing so before major dismantling. Make sure it's electrically safe, and turns over by hand - controls not jambed etc. Then put some brass or Aluminium in the chuck and turn and face it. If something is wrong, the lathe will emit a shower of clues that help isolate the fault.

Buying a second-hand car, not an obvious wreck, would you start by stripping it down, or by running the engine for a bit, and then going for a test-drive? Strip down after the test drive has revealed some real problems.

In short, if it ain't bust, don't fix it!

Having got a feel for how well or badly the machine cuts metal, get stuck in. Just don't attempt too much too early in a flush of over-confident enthusiasm, particularly if the full 'as-new' performance of the lathe is needed. All this becomes much less critical if the lathe is only used for rough work.

Dave

Hi chaps

Afraid you're replying to a very old message I put on lastr year when I first got the lathe

I mentioned a rebuild as folk on another forum said to do a full refurb on it. Which I chose not to due to very little i fo out there on it. . Not even paint it but kept it as is.

Appreciate the thoughts and advice though.

And how is the old lathe working for you now you have had a year to play with it? It certainly looks like a beauty.