Chester Super Lux advice

Evenin' all!

So I believe the 3 golden rules of tig welding are - get comfortable, get comfortable and make sure your comfortable...

Oh dear.. so leaning over the lathe having chucked up the vertical saddle on the face plate after giving it a wee skim to true it up so I could try to braze (I emphasize try as never tried tig brazing before!) the locating boss in the centre and what ever was digging in my ribs suddenly let go as I tried to adjust my view point.

It was the toolpost locking lever.. not the most inconspicuous of things I know but there we are.. so with foot still on peddle (now at full beans as I was sliding over the top of the lathe) I managed to do a lovely job of dragging a 90amp arc right around the inner ring on the face. good job I had only set the thing to 90A, god knows what 200A would have done!

Even dafter, while putting the last of the braze around the thing I coughed and added another couple of spots!

And we all know what happens to cast iron when that happens. To quote a certain enjoyable youtuber loads of small spots that were harder than 'woodpecker lips'! I think the sticker he has on the front of his CNC machine is meant for me.

After much careful spotting with a die grinder to try and recess all the tiny stupidly hard spots the face turned quite nicely, even if there are now a load of small shy spots.

I also dressed the inner seats for the T bolts as the standard bolts have chewed the seats so very difficult to finely adjust the head rotation.

The insert holder I had that would take my smallest inserts in order to take very fine cuts is only a 12mm stock so being stuck out far enough to clear all the mounting hardware and the compound being fairly well advanced to get in there quickly showed as one hell of a chatter squeal. Raided next doors garden and found a 25lb cast iron weight which when sat on the compound on 2 small slivers of wood worked a dream! smooth as anything so if your wondering what the hell that thing is in the photo ..

All came good in the end, last pic is the almost finished face print. forgot to take a photo of the final one with a very light blueing but it was more than good enough..

Evenin' !

Week off this week .. ish so between hospital, car service and other nonsense I might be able to get a bit done.

Didn't get a great deal done today, stripped, de burred, cleaned and re assembled the gearbox shafts ready for re assembly.. it was pretty manky to say the least but all good now and made some new T-Bolts for mounting the head.

Turned out OK, nice snug fit through the head face (17mm) reduced to M16 x 1.5 thread so don't need to be horsing up on them - single pointed and just ran a die down to tidy up, was a fairly hard piece of bar stock I found on the shelf, not sure what but she'll do!

A much better contact area for the saddle too, just need to add the flats.

Every bit done is a bit closer I suppose!

The old ones were pretty crap..

Evenin'!

When I dismantled the head, I was surprised at how poorly the gears meshed, by that I mean vertical alignment, and the fact that there was no 'neutral' position so it would be possible to freely rotate the spindle.

Anyway, after an awful lot of shim making, changing the thickness of bearing spacer rings, messing with the shafts etc etc and what seemed like builds and disassembling of the shafts into the head cover using the old bearings I have all shafts turning with fully meshed gears in all positions. thought I'd never get there..!

And even better, the 3 position selector has a fairly large space when between 2 positions so that shaft now has a small detent so it will hold in a neutral position well clear of the other gears (I cant remember if it is between Low and High or High and Med, it's all been upside down!).

All boxed up and spinning lovely & smooth.. the old chinesium bearings were proper rough and sloppy.. ah well, they all add to the scrap weight!

Spindle build next.. then bolt the head to the saddle and lay it on the surface plate to re check the alignment with the quill properly assembled.

Fingers crossed!

It has been quite interesting watching the dismantling and fixing of your geared head mill, with some good work correcting all the nastiness you found.

Some of the gear teeth look a little worse for wear, but now you have the internals all cleaned, realigned and with fresh bearings it should still have a long trouble free life. There is even one pair of helical gears in there, is that long shaft with the helical gears meshing on the end actually the input shaft driven by the motor mounted on the top cover above it? It looks like the top cover sat upside down on the bench.

Will be interested to see the work on the quill and spindle assembly.

Edited By Lathejack on 25/11/2022 17:14:51

Cheers for that

I only really started the write up as I couldn't find a great deal of info on doing this to begin with and thought it might help someone like me with naff all experience of these things. Now I know these are a pretty generic RF45 type machine and with the greatly appreciated help and suggestions of some folks on here I'm finding more on the interweb.

Yes, the smaller diameter gears are a little on the grim side but I have now given them a dressing to remove any burrs and nasties so they should be OK. The pic is, as you say, the top cover of the gearhead with the shafts sitting in the old bearings and the input shaft on the right

I've made some aluminium blanks for the drift slots in the quill to keep the crap out of the spindle bearings but lost my JB weld to bond them in so that is maybe a job for tomorrow..

Started on the XY saddle today , pics to follow.

So managed a few more hours today.. now the gearhead is mostly reassembled - leaving spindle build etc till I've cleaned up a bit cos even Steptoe would be ashamed of the place at the mo!

Stripped the X Y Saddle and after a bit of cleaning started to get an idea of how it was.. be ways on the Base appear to have very little ware on them but then I don't have a straight edge / camel back to check (And can not afford one!) but the raised surface between them seems to be a ground (coarsely) surface so I presume that is the reference surface for hen they build the thing and will use that to depth mic the ways as best I can to check.

Did an initial print of the saddle as below.. not the best!

The Y ways..

The X Ways..

So I set to the Y ways. I tried to take as finer scrapes as possible as didn't want to remove any more metal than absolutely necessary thinking that the oil pockets are best on the lower ways so not too fussed about the pattern, just want it flat.

Am I right in this thinking? Or should I be taking some deeper scrapes and making more effort on the pattern and spots per inch?

Anyway, this is nearly done -

Lighting makes it look far more patchy than it is and its a bit heavy.. leaving it like that till I sort the below stuff.

I then set about taking some measurements to the X ways and the high area coincides with the initial Y ways print that was heavyest so need to do some more thinking and measuring to see if i need to try to step scrape the X Ways into co planer with the Y or take some more off the Y Ways to bring the high side of the X down a bit..

Any thoughts?

I suppose any error I get here could be taken out with the column adjustment though - not that that is the right way to do it I suppose!

Which ever way I go, I presume the X ways will need an attempt to scrape properly with decent oil pockets being upward facing ?

1 bonus though, I found an old Eclipse hand scraper so my modified file is fairly redundant!

Foot and a pint now though..

Evenin' all!

Got through a bit more, got the X Y Saddle finished.. after checking as best I could from the machined faces on the saddle, I decided to drop 1 of the y faces a round or 2 of scrapes and then have anther check which gave the results below.. much better so set too on the X faces..

After a fair few rounds got it to this..

And after a few more rounds of tweeking got the whole thing to 0 with a couple of spots that were -0.01 ..

All this of course is subject to the accuracy of the new surface plate. A Dasqua 450mm x 450mm x 80mm and according to them its a grade 00 .. Chronos were selling them recently for only £150 something. A grade 00 plate for that.. me thinks not but so far I can not complain, I can not measure any variation anywhere on it!

I ran a half thou indicator all over it on a 3" extension from the surface gauge base and the indicator barely twitched let alone move!

There are 2 tiny (match head sized) chips right in 1 of the corners so maybe thats the reason for the price but they affect nothing.

The print..

Again, lighting is hiding almost all of it.. David Bailey I'm not.. but it's pretty much there.

Once I was happy I set to it as heavy as I could to scrape some oil pockets into the surface's and called it done.

Forgot the final photo but naff all difference really.

So next I set about trying to check the Table itself.

After much cleaning and stoning I placed it top down on the surface plate. Yes, it's far too long with a fair bit of over hang so crap for taking any measurements. I ended up placing weights in the centre in an attempt to counter the over hang and with only about 14lbs of weight the indicator readings on the ways became perfectly repeatable even when moving the table slightly left & right so with that being the best I was able to achieve it would have to do.

Both sides were out over their width, very slight slope of about 0.05mm although from centre out towards the ends was spot on along the rear way and the front way was good 1 way but tapered down to 0.05 low about 10 inches out the other.

After many .. many finger aching hours of scratching and stoning both sides are within 0.02 which considering the probable inaccuracy in measuring is way better than I could hope for.. leave it alone now!

Again, forgot the pic.. was so excited that repeated set ups gave consistent readings!

The Base ways.. cue a proper Heath Robinson set up but best I could come up with with what I had.

I used what appeared to be the ground face between the ways as I presume that is the reference surface for when they build the thing.

Put a machinist's level (as far as I can check it's a thou / foot, a J Rabone & Son's but no rating on it) on the freshly stoned surface and centred it with bubble just touching line on left.

Then a pair of 123 blocks on each way and a so called precision square between (it was fairly cheap, not bad at all though) and the level on top. Moved along to 5 different positions down the ways with level and square positioned in same way on blocks each move.

Worst position was the 1 above, 1 division out . Here we go with the scratching and stoning again..

Managed to get it so the rear half is bob on and just less than half a division on the level out at the front.

All things considered I think that will be good enough but I may have another attempt at because I know it's not quite there..

Think I deserve a pint now although I'll probably drop the bugger the fingers are aching so much!

Thinking about it, I suppose the best thing to do with the table would be to blue up the saddle and use that as a reference .. at least I could probably get the main middle portion bob on.. will have a look see in the week..

Could do the same with the base ways.

Evenin'!

So.. set to the table. Got the Surface plate on the now reinforced baby welding table on 3 feet with some bracing support to prevent any rocking and then after more cleaning and stoning got the table down side up on it on a couple of shim strips.

After a bit of messing got it sitting pretty good with no fluctuation in indicator despite placing the saddle on it in various places so that will do me tidy.

Then, after mic'ing thickness for reference, mapped the main section of the ways and just used that to rough it in with the baby eclipse scraper. The mapping tied in nicely with the thickness check so everything seemed to be sitting nicely.

Just kept scraping, heavy stoning and mapping until it was all showing the same on the indicator.

Didn't have to take much off really, 0.05mm at the worst so cant complain!

once I was happy with what the indicator was saying I took a print with the saddle which I'm pretty happy with. Remarkably there was patchy blue over pretty much the whole area!

Ignore the measurements, hadn't cleaned them off.

I've only done 3 rounds since that photo and it's getting pretty close.

Only 2 real problems, first is the ware lip in by the dovetail on the non gib side, not much but had to go.. was a ball ache getting in to that without messing the dovetail.

Second is being able to see the blue in the light so a wee pot of Stuarts Red is en route, I couldn't find any other die for a contrast. Thought about food colouring but no. I've heard that some folks use cement pigment as that is fully soluble but found the red on the interweb so went with that.

Once the middle section is good, I'll do the outside 7 inches ish by just stepping the saddle out an inch or 2 at a time and bringing the untouched areas down until it prints good with the rest of the way.. best I can do with my set up I'm afraid but I think it'll work.... well.. it has to !

Unless anyone can offer a better solution, I've racked what's left of my brain but short of a 3 foot camelback I cant come up with anything??

Plugged up the quill drift slits too, still need dressing but roughed down to close.

That'll do for now..

Edited By Taf_Pembs on 30/11/2022 23:35:12

Evenin' All!

Despite a busy couple of weeks I have spent pretty much every spare hour 'scraping' (I use the term very loosely!!) the table ways. Probably made much longer by being too scared to take more than very light scrapes for fear of going too far and having to go over the whole thing again, but this afternoon I did my final 'dusting'.

Now, no matter where I place a lightly blued saddle in position on the table I get pretty much a full print... Extremely satisfying considering the set up, surface plate not big enough etc.

What is far more surprising is that moving the surface gauge all around the ways as far as the table will allow, shows less than 0.01mm variation everywhere !

Genuinely shocked at that, I wouldn't have though that would be achievable with what I have.. either that or my measuring is all to cock..

Suffice to say very very happy with that.

On to the base ways next..

So after finishing the table and the surface plate being free again I placed the head on it sitting on the vertical saddle ways to see how that sits in relation to the quill.

Again, something of a shock.. with the quill extended a little under 5 inches and the indicator set to 0 nearest the head there was 0.04mm drop at the most extended part. Not bat at all.

However, I did notice when I was cleaning everything that when clean there was a bit more play in the quill to head bore than I though there should be. Lifting the quill gently takes the measurement from -0.04 to +0.12 at the nearly 5 inches extension. at 2 inches extension this drops significantly to 0.06 over all play.

Not bad really and if there is any extension of the quill required then the locks will be used.

Now there's another thing.. the quill locks, the 2 brass slugs that come together on the quill are just machined with a taper that clamp to the quill barrel. Why on earth would you have a flat clamping a cylinder??

Another job.. machine the flats of the locks to a radius that matches the quill.. surely that will hold far better.

As for the quill to head bore play, it occurred to me that there is a perfect solution readily available and is done in multiple automotive machine shops all over the country. Fit a piston liner and hone to suit.

Westwood Cylinder Liners in Worcestershire do a liner - WCL 16CFL that is 74mm bore, 5mm wall thickness so no problem there and 238mm long with a flange. No idea of price but might look into that as getting the head bored and fitting the liner is a very common and straight forward job.. just cos it's not an engine block shouldn't be a problem (I hope!), it is an easy enough set up. Liner can then be fitted and bored to suit the quill (just shy of 75mm).

I can then open out the areas for the quill guide pin, pinion, lock etc easy enough with a die grinder and burr.

Only issue is I have to decide on this before doing the column as that has to be the final adjustment to true everything else up I suppose.. Dear oh dear.. every day there is a decision to male ay!

So in between shivering and trying to fit some celotex (other brands are available!) to the roof of the garage as I'm finally getting round to adding some insulation I have now managed to 'map' the base ways in a rough way.

Making the assumption that the 'ground' (I use the term loosely!) surface between the base ways was intended as the reference surface to build the thing I used that to depth mic the ways. the base of the depth mic is wide enough to take a measurement close in by the dovetail and also out towards the edge of the ways.

The results ether mean I have a huge amount of scraping to do or there is a significant difference between the plane of the ways and the 'ground' surface.

Here are the depth's from the ground surface, just the decimal of the mm is there.

So, taking the .31 as the lowest point I re numbered using that as the 0 mark.

I also then took a heavy print and that seems to match up with the numbers pretty well so I have reasonable confidence in my measurements.

PS... If anyone sees cockups in my maths please let me know!

Back to insulating when the rest of the boards arrive then some scraping I suppose!

I think there is supposed to be clearance between that ground surface and the table above it. So, don't spend any time working to get it flat.

Martin C

Hi Martin, sorry, I should have been clearer, I have just written the measurements on the top surface to allow for taking a print and working our after scraping etc, they don't refer to the ground surface but points on the ways 22.** mm down from the 'ground' surface so my intention is to bring those 2 ways flat and co planer as best I can.

I've re-read your post and see what you are planning now. In that case I think you need to be careful using that surface as a reference plane. The level you used on the ground surface can bridge over low spots that a depth mic will not. Not knowing the order the surfaces of the base were originally machined in or how well the casting was aged before machining it puts its quality as a reference surface in doubt. I think you need to check the height of the scraped surface relative to the surface plate it is resting on. Shim it (or use machine jacks) so that three corners are the same height then take your measurements to find how the scrapped surfaces relate to those 3 corners. Put support under the fourth corner as well to avoid droop of any sort in the base casting.

Martin C

Full marks for hanging in here for so long .

Evenin'!

And a happy new year to all

Well, in between this work thing, insulating workshop (what a difference!!) oh and that Christmas thing etc I have now managed to get round to the base ways.

Unfortunately the initial measurements I took as depths form the 'reference' surface must have been pretty good as the amount of material that needed removing from the r/h side in order to start getting a sensible print was daft..

I started very light as I have done through out, mainly due to a lack of confidence but I ended up getting all neanderthal on the thing... eventually blue started appearing on both sides of both ways.. I thought I was going daft!

Just using the freshly checked saddle to print, I just did the centre section, placing it in situ and gently sliding it between the blue 'horizontal' lines marked on the face then once that was done, stepped it out to bring down the rear and front sections of the face until the blue on the already scraped section began to expand towards the higher bits then just went really careful until no matter where I placed the saddle with a light bluing I got a decent print. Same process as the table really.. seemed to work OK!

Here was the centre section almost done..

And here is the whole thing almost done.

I've given up trying to take pics of the finished article, with a very light print and shiny metal there is nothing to see so basically it looks similar to this but with a more consistent and shorter scrape pattern rather than the rough that is here.

The column next.. however, the only way I could print to that would be to use the column saddle which I really don't think is long enough to show anything meaning full. I will have a go to see if it gives an impression of how good / bad or ugly it is but not sure I've much chance of doing much with it without potentially making it worse.

A mate has kindly offered to assist with machining the oil ways (he has a mill.. bonus!) rather than trying to mess it up by hand so when ever the cheep one shot oiler kit gets here and I decide where and how to drill I can then get those done.

Still haven't decided whether to do the quill, fit and hone a liner or leave as is. I keep thinking that if I'm doing all this then I may as well but it's 60 odd quid for the liner + what ever machining costs. Have to wait and see what the next month or so brings (i.e. lottery ticket!)..

The other little gremlin that keeps nagging in my ear keeps on whispering 'ball screws, ball screws, ball screws and motors' the little **** but I'm afraid I'm not listening, the credit card has already had a bashing by needing a new telly and paying for insulation let alone how much that would cost, I bet that would be well into 4 figures to complete..

All the best..

Arfnoon all..!

I hade a go at using the Column saddle to print to the column ways just to get an idea of how they are.

Re checked the saddle on the surface plate and gave it a light stoning .. all was good.

Inked her up and went for it.

Oh dear... I've seen straighter roundabouts!

I placed the saddle at various points on the column and just just a short rub back and for (about an inch only) so as to just look at the localised area.

At a guess I would say between 0 and 5% contact.. I say 0 as there were large areas that I simply wouldn't print.

No choice really but to go for it. Print, scrape move a couple of inches, print, scrape move etc etc.

I didn't concentrate on any one area at a time so as not to go too far and ruin the whole thing as an area further down may have brought the low area into the ball park so just kept working up and down until I had a reasonable print.

Here is a pic that I have set up with heavy ink (so it would photo!) just to show my method with the saddle and all the 'hieroglyphics' I was using to keep a reference on where I was moving up and down the column - it might make more sense to someone thinking about it...

At this stage I was just chasing the blue high spots to try to bring it even both sides.

This is getting close now, there were only a couple more goes to get decent prints regardless where on the column I placed the saddle so now I only have to try to scrape a few oil pockets into it and it's done (again, heavy ink set up and multiple prints just to be able to take the pic!).

Unfortunately I am off in for surgery (wrist) on Wednesday (the bloody 3rd one!) so will be out of action for a bit but at least the bulk of the scraping is done.

What I'm going to do about the dovetails I have no idea as I have no way to print them or have a reference surface. I will put some ink on them to see how they are but that may be a bad thing as I will then know how bad that are!

A fella I know at a local firm is going to give me a price to machine the gear head and fit the liner so that can be sorted and if the price is right I think I may as well do it .. going this far and not doing it seems a little daft now.

I know in Pembrokeshire we don't have a word in the dictionary for anything as remotely as urgent as Manyana but she'll get there..

Allo all..!

Well, after trying to get some prices for boring out the mill head and fit a liner to address the quill not being a great fit in the sleeve it seems that most places don't really want to do it (the're all busy to be fair) and the quotes I did were unfortunately a little unaffordable for me.

So.. if you don't try you don't learn I suppose..!

Had an old landrover half shaft that I thought would make a good line boring bar so made use of that.

Cut down a 10mm boring bar so it would do the job.

I've set the mill head on the lathe saddle with the cross slide removed and spent more hours than I care to mention packing, shimming and tapping it into position.

There is just enough room on the bed for the whole operation to be completed on the unworn area of the lathe bed, not that there is much but it is measurable in the normal area close to chuck.

Got a plate set up against the back of the mill head so I have a reference to set the cutter depth increments.

Got the head set so the bore will be true to the head mounting face ( I hope!)

The cutter will run in the normal lathe rotation so it is on the down stroke on the apron side as that is the 'loosest', the rear of the saddle has full length under support so the cut will end roughly in the position in the last photo - by taking the knobs off the tail stock handles it passes them perfectly!

Bar is set up between centres to I can remove it for measuring.

If there is anything I have missed or got wrong I would very much appreciate any advice..!

Here are a couple of pics of the set up.

Cheers..!