Myford ML4 ?

Thanks again Brian, now have the tailstock stripped and painted. You were right about the small key/screw that locates in the spindle slot. I was thinking along different lines. I thought that there was a key which the screw pressed on, not like it actually is in practice. Simple but effective.

While the tailstock was apart, I drilled four 5/8" equidistant holes in the face of the homemade tailstock steel handle which lightens it somewhat.

Mike.

Hello Mike,

​Now that you have stripped the tailstock, you will have it all to reassemble and align eventually. I have a worthwhile procedure written up to simplify that tricky process considerably if you would like me to email it to you. Remember I can't add things into my albums, or extract them once they are there.

It will save you hours of frustration. I think the tailstock soleplate fitting that Myford foisted upon their customers was little short of a Friday afternoon job just to get it out of the door. Absolutely diabolical.

Regards Brian

Are you sure? I can add and delete all mine. Are we talking about something else?

Muzzer.

My trouble is caused by incompatibility with Microsoft Edge, I even have to fiddle about just to write this.

Paragraph entry will only occur satisfactorily with using the Caps key held down before enter. There are other oddities too with reverse writing from time to time that will only disappear with the delete key and not backspace, although that works just fine in normal writing.

Brian

I stripped out the apron today so that I can paint it. I noticed on the larger of the two rack feed reduction gears the script, " fabrique en angleterre". Did Myford build machines for France .? It is possibly a pair of gears that came from another lathe or machine , I have no idea.

I did find that the large gear was locked on its thread with a pin, but when I drifted it out, it was a broken drill bit !!

I have done a search for Myford aprons with the reduction gear, but so far have found no photos. The apron looks original in the gear area although most ML lathes I have seen have a cutaway area on the right lower portion of the apron, whereas on my lathe it is straight.

Mike.

"fabrique en angleterre" is a common stamping on older Meccano parts.

It was done to meet a French requirement for items to be marked with their country of origin during the 1920's. I don't think it necessarily means that the item has actually been to France, only that sales in France were a possibility.

The implication is that the gear pre-dates your lathe. No surprise that your early Myford shows evidence of repairs. I expect it's been loved by several previous owners.

Dave

I'm pretty sure your machine has been modified Mike.

Normally the handle is on a shaft that passes through the apron. On the other side of the apron, on the same shaft is the pinion that directly engages with the rack.

Most lathes the saddle traverse operates in the other direction to the normal ML 1/2/3/4.

If you're working close to the chuck, you're used to a normal lathe and you forget; it can be nasty.

This is especially true when you finish a job and want to just wind the saddle back.

Many people modify them with an extra gear to reverse the direction of travel and avoid the accidental crash.

Edited By Andy Ash on 06/09/2016 20:51:27

Hi, I had wondered about the gears being Meccano but can't remember them being quite like those on my lathe.

Interesting about the known mod with saddle direction. I had not realised the possible problem as lathe has not been running yet. So at least I will be safe as it is !!

Re. Meccano, I graduated through the sets from one to nine, all in carboard boxes. I never got to set ten which came in a wooden box.!! Only rich kid's dads could afford them.

By the way, I had a job to type this as sentences were being mixed up as I typed.. A hacker on the site ??

Well the lathe is now painted up and I went to fit the motor to the Myford bench stand and found that it was turning anticlockwise. I reversed one pair of the windings, so now correct.

I am just using a temporary motor pulley around 3.5" diameter, but would like to know the correct nominal size for this pulley. Probably a tricky question, as most of these lathes will have, by now ,been altered from stock condition.,

I did wonder about calculating the size working back from the motor speed which is probably aroud 1475rpm.

I failed to find any reference in the ML handbook re. spindle speeds, although I thought that I had seen it somewhere in print.

It also seems that the above pulley needs to be dished heavily on the motor side, in order to be able to line up the drive belt. If that fails then I will need to make a longer spindle for the countershaft. (The triple pulley on headstock is in good alignment with the countershaft pulley.)

Mike.

I think you could drop down a size on the motor pulley, if possible using a twin one so you have 2 speeds for the countershaft aiming for about 150 rpm slowest without backgear. Then your 3 step pulley would give you say 300 & 600 and going back to the big motor pulley bump up to 250 at the bottom. I'm not sure what people would advise as the top speed for this type of spindle but bear in mind that the newer ML10 only went up to 850 in the plain bearing model.

You memory is good. It's very unlikely that your gears are actually Meccano as these are on the small side for a lathe.

Lucky you getting up to Set 9, I never had enough parts to make a big model. Aged 11 I spent a couple of weeks in hospital and the Children's Ward had a pristine Set 10 with several boxes of motors and other bits. We weren't allowed to play with it!

Dave

Just found out that motor pulley was 1.750" diameter,going by the illustrated extras in the handbook.

I must check my super seven .Not sure of the size on that motor. (Just curious.)

Mike.

Edited By sparky mike on 11/09/2016 20:54:40

I have now taken a few more photos of the lathe now it is back in one piece. I was not happy with the homemade bull wheel guard, so have made a new one. A tricky item to get right, as not much clearance between several items, I had to do a small modification to it as the reduction gear was fouling the guard when it moved back on the cam, but all is ok now. The motor drive belt is too tight by around 1/2" at the moment, so need the next size up I think.

Photos are in the ML4 parts album.

Re the pulley size, it depends on what size the large pulley is. Ideally you want the counter shaft to run at about 400rpm so the main headstock spindle runs at about 800rpm, 400rpm and 200rpm, in rough round figures.

Plenty of online pulley calculators to tell you what size you want if you pump in your motor speed, pulley sizes and desired rpm etc.

Again in rough figues, for a circa 1475rpm motor, you can run about a 2" small pulley and a 8 or 9" large pulley to get the abovementioned spindle speeds. So your 1.75" would be right in there if you have a 8" main pulley or even a 7".

A 3.5" pulley would be more suited to something like a 12" pulley but you might get away with a 10". That wuold give a spindle top speed of about 1,000rpm, probably about as fast as you want to go with plain bearings, maybe even a little too fast.

It depends too on what ratios exactly the pulleys on the countershaft and headstock spindle give you. For some reason mine (M type) are not quite 1:1 on the medium speed and not quite double and half respectively for low and high ratios. It all has to do with keeping the required belt length the same on each speed.

I ended up buying a $20 digital tachometer that has an infrared beam you aim at a white sticker on the pulley and get the exact speed so I got mine set up just how I wanted it. But that was probably overkill, or just wanting a new toy to play with!

Edited By Hopper on 17/09/2016 09:46:15

Hi Hopper,

Countershaft pulley is 8" diameter and motor pulley is around 3".The motor has 1452 RPM stamped on it, so the countershaft should rotate around 500 RPM. In the centre pulley position the headstock shaft should therefore be about the same as the countershaft, eg. 500RPM. I have been looking for a 2" motor pulley which should be a better deal I think.

Re. digital tachos, I found one on UK Ebay for aound £8.00. Anyone know if they are any good ?

Mike.