Replacement lathes. Recommendations?

Big Green is doing well. To be perfectly honest, for a twenty year old machine, with the exception of a little backlash (no more than I would expect and far less than the far older Boxfords) I really have nothing to complain about. I never did get the change gears that I asked about last year, the only supplier I could find wouldn't sell to us because they were in the process of shutting down and wouldn't or couldn't process payment. The gears themselves are quite expensive from Warco, but I hold out hope that I'll be able to convince those in charge to purchase a set.

Our service engineer was about 30 I would say, although the guy we had last year (in his 40's I would guess) expressed much the same opinion. I appreciate it's a diversive topic about which people are rightly passionate, but I apologise for rattling any cages, it was not my intention.

My continued thanks for the wealth of infomation coming out here. I will definitely follow up on the possibility of having these lathes refurbished, that would be a good solution, although I wouldn't be surprised if it transpires that it is an expensive option.

It appears from following up on everyone's leads that there are a wealth of options for new lathes in the £3k-£8k bracket. Many are definitely or probably Chinese in origin (for whatever that matters) but others such as Cormak and Ajax seem to hail from Europe (again, if that matters).

I think on reflection that a gearhead lathe would indeed be preferable to a variable speed, I can see how the urge to twiddle a speed knob might be irresistible but I've yet to see any student show any interest in, let alone fiddle with the selectors on the Warco or the Harrisons in the other workshop.

Change gears do not normally transmit much power so 3D printed gears can be used. If you specify what gears you need by describing width, how many teeth, pressure angle, and hole diameter it is likely someone could print them for you for a nominal fee and send them to you. People who have used 3D printed gears say that they hold up well and if they break or wear too much, are easy to print new ones.

Id you can measure any of the changewheels, you should be able to calculate the Module (This assumes that the lathe is of fairly recent manufacture.

Neasure the OD in mm, and count the teeth.

(Tooth Count +2 ) X Module = OD Thus a 40T Mod 1.5 gear would be 42 x 1.5 = 63 mm OD.

The chances are that someone else, like Chester, Axminster, Arc Euro, or Amadeal might be able to supply a set of changewheels.

One of the gear specialists, such as Davall, or Reliance could supply, in more than one material, Probably Ny;lon, brass or steel, and would require bushing or boring to suit your lathe.i, (You would have to sepify the tooth count and Module ) but at a price

Howard

Edited By Howard Lewis on 09/05/2023 12:48:30

Unlikely I think - that type of lathe is far less common in the working world than they used to be. Before WW2 almost all production machining was done on manual mills and lathes similar to what I enjoy as a hobby. Not now.

General purpose lathes aren't good for production work because labour costs are high. As a result, general purpose manual machines in industry have been progressively nudged off the factory floor by specialists like thread rollers, Capstan lathes, various automatics, Numerical Control, Computerised Numerical Control, and - today- CAD/CAM implemented on multi-axis machine centres, 3D printers, grinding machines and whatever.

Nowadays general purpose lathes are valuable for prototype work, repairs, one-offs, and simple short-run production, all on a relatively small scale employment-wise. Repair work itself has been much reduced by technical improvements: in the 1950's most garages owned a lathe, now none of them do. It's more profitable and reliable to replace motor parts, not to mend them.

Manual lathes hung on in education but most UK schools and colleges have dumped them over the last 3 decades. It's because very few employers need manual machinists, certainly not on the scale needed when I left school, which was much reduced compared with my father's day.

Depends on what the school is teaching and why, but maybe the 70 year old Boxford lathes should be replaced with a new Boxford Machine Centre. It would need a substantial change to the curriculum, switching from developing hands-on metalwork skills to computer skills including CAD, and modern production methods.

The metalwork, woodwork and Technical Drawing skills taught by my school remain hobby relevant today, but they were old-fashioned compared with industry trends when I was in short trousers.

Modernising education isn't easy - unlike Latin, engineering changes rapidly. Unfortunately, many opportunities are missed because the necessary leaps are too much for the teachers! A friend made redundant early when BT modernised, became a School Technician. The school became an academy, and received a Denford CNC lathe. To my friends knowledge, it was turned on once after installation by Denford to prove it was working, and never used again. Good school, but strong on Arts rather than Sciences, and weak on Technology. None of the teachers had a clue what to do with a CNC lathe, and because actually using a CNC machine wasn't a curriculum requirement, it was ignored.

Providing the Denford was a good idea, but as is common with rah-rah government initiatives, the implementation was botched - no-one had realised teachers would need training, or that the way school performance is measured by exam results positively discouraged actually running the machine. This was 15 years ago, he's long since retired, so possibly the Denford is in full use now. I doubt it, the machine itself is obsolete.

Not a complete waste of a school technician, because plenty of lesser practical work went on but the pupils missed out on CAD/CAM, and no doubt some of them will become Model Engineers inculcated to think a 1947 Super 7 is the best of all possible machine tools...

Dave

On the other hand being able to drive a manual lathe or mill is good solid grounding for using a CNC machine as it should give the student an idea of feeds, speeds, cutting tools, workholding etc.

There are still plenty of jobbing and repair shops running manual machines like good old JS did where it is often quicker to repair a part than wait several weeks for a replacement to arrive from the other side of the world if one is even available.

When you learned to drive, Dave, did you jump straight into a Formula 1 car having done a few laps on a Scalextric track?

As Jason said, learning the basics of turning on a lathe that you drive with your hands teaches many things that are advantageous later on should the trainee move on to CNC machines. As part of the CNC retrofits / rebuilds where I used to work I had to run a 2-3 day training course for the operators. In part this was to force the machine into production & allowed us to find any aspects of software, set-up etc. that had not been addressed - like a final de-bugging before leaving site. With experienced operators this was an easy 2-3 days for me, but often the victim was a manual machinist who the machine buyer wanted training up on CNC. Some were older and, on occasions, quite worried at the outset. But a bit of time spent on the basics usually brought the realisation that they were basically doing the same job they were familar with in a different way - rather than approaching a job as a series of seperate operations they were defining the operations as a series of events & programming the machine to complete them in the required order. They knew workholding, tool setups, feeds, speeds etc - it just required a bit of a mind set change to write the operations down & program them into the control.

I can only recall one chap who didn't make the grade, and he was "let go" after a couple of months. Not because he couldn't grasp the concepts or operation of the control - it was because he couldn't get to grips with using a 4 jaw manual chuck ! It is rare to find a vertical borer with a power chuck - most have a manual 4 jaw arrangement or face plate. This otherwise experienced CNC turner had only used power chucks and just couldn't set the parts up with the 4 jaw - maybe more time spent on a manual lathe earlier in his carreer would have helped here ?

Last place I worked before escaping still used a Harrison 330VS lathe for some batch jobs, as it was quicker and easier than setting up one of the 7 CNC lathes. Manual lathes are not obsolete in industry.

And never miss an opportunity to get a dig in at Myfords !

Nigel B.

This has proved to be a most interesting thread indeed !

Just reading two of the recent posts, one from Dave, the other from Jason, both make very valid points.

I dont think anything is lost by learning the basics on a manual machine, makes sense to me, but if these kids are hoping to move into industry, it seems they will have to get to grips with CNC gear So perhaps the way to go is to use the machines you have to teach the basics and invest in a few CNC machines ? Might not be the answer, but no point in teaching them all about manual machines, when they will end up working on CNC [assuming there will be jobs for them, that is ]

I,m a bit long in the tooth to even think about CNC, and dont need it anyway, but I dont shoot it down, it,s here to stay and it works, so, what,s not to love ?. The only thing that makes me uneasy about these Super Duper machines is----what happens when you can no longer get the chips they live on ??? This happened to a man I know who runs a machine shop. He has three milling machines standing by the wall, useless because he cannot get suitable chips for them. The chips have been "upgraded" so quickly over the years that the first ones are now old hat! There are no operating handles on the machines, so you can do nothing with them.

The small shop still has a part to play, but for how long ?, their market is getting smaller by the day.

Not voting Yea or Nay, just making a few observations.

Education is not about utility - learning a foreign language is unlikely to make one a fluent speaker in a couple of hours a week for 5 school years - but it will exercise and develop the mind, so the utility of learning how to do CNC or manual machining is not about what someone will do when they leave school.

I was teaching CAD/CAM on BBC Micros in the late 1980s but putting the software on several machines enabled several pupils (occasionally in pairs) to work on machining projects at the same time. As an introduction we gave them part completed designs to complete or alter, and while you could give someone a part finished physical item to finish I suspect one would need to allow sufficient time and material for a complete item to be produced on a manual lathe for pupils to gain a useful set of skills.

So from the entirely practical point of view of sufficient numbers of the pupils finishing an object, even if only as a CAD design it has to be CAD CAM in the classroom every time. After all designs are produced on 3D CAD and 3D printed so I don't see what is magic about a manual machine tool today.

I enjoy using my own manual machine tools, but in the classroom no.

This is a really interesting discussion. From my standpoint, use of the lathe is more about teaching concepts than anything else. We're not a technical college so we don't have any expectation that students will go straight from us to an industry position, but hopefully if they have experienced what is actually involved in machining various metals and using various processes then they will be able to make better informed decisions about a wealth of other things - be that career or hobby orientated. One thing I am noticing with this generation compared to mine is that none of them have the faintest idea how anything works or how anything is done. I am often having to teach 14 and 15 years olds how to read a ruler, what a millimeter is and why it's a different number to the bit that says 'inches', how screws work, why you use oil, etc etc. All the stuff that I learned from my Dad and Grandad and utilised countless times in hobbies and life in general is sorely missing. I have kids coming in to ask if I can repair things, from some which are trivial in the extreme and they could easily do themselves if they understood basic practical concepts, to the other extreme such as failures of SoC hardware that anyone (you'd think) can see are irreparable) and everything in between - but they simple don't understand.

The gasp of realisation and joy from a student when they screw together two pieces of metal that I've shown them how to thread is the best thing in the world. I have students coming in and proudly telling me about how they've applied things I've taught them to practical use at home (the best one was the 11 year old girl who I taught to solder, her Christmas presents that year were soldering related, she loved it and has just kept going!).

So it's true to say that we're not teaching students machining skills that will be directly applicable to a job scenario, but the concepts that I'm teaching them through the medium of machining will stand them in good stead for hopefully many different aspects of their lives.

We do actually have a Boxford MT2 CNC machine. It (like much of our equipment) came from another school that was closing its DT department. This was long before my time here and the machine is still wrapped in plastic in the corner of one of the other workshops, it was delivered and promptly forgotten as CNC is not part of the syllabus and no-one (especially me) has the time to get it working and come up with a scheme of learning. I yearn for the day when I only have to do my own job and therefore have time to spend bringing it online and having a play

Can't agree more Tristan but we not that persuasion seem to be going the way of the dinosaur

Edited By bernard towers on 11/05/2023 13:15:49

I agree with Jason's comments above, I worked for Anglian Water for many years and we had manual mills and manual lathes for the specific repair jobs needed for sewage treatment machinery and pumps etc.

Currently I work for a company that has a small engineering workshop with a 3d printer as well as a manual lathe and mill dedicated to prototyping and proving a new widget - before its sent to China or India to be made.

Loads of firms (most of them very well known food and drink suppliers) that I visit to support my companies equipment that they have installed, have manual lathes and mills to enable them to repair stuff 24/7 without having to keep loads of expensive spares in stores

So at the risk of straying off topic, learning cnc at school without having the basic understanding of a machine tool may not prepare the student for life in industry.

I suppose the attraction of cnc, suggests that programming the machine is the key interest rather than what it does and how it does it.

Perversely a recent thread was about how we in the UK dont make anything anymore, now we have a discussion about learning how to use a cnc lathe to turn out thousands of widgets !

Oh and I have an elderly myford S7 and it does everything I ask of it, but not sure I could afford or justify buying a new one.

I used my firms large manual lathe the other day (a popular make of lathe from china) and it was an awful piece of kit, it was like an old mangel and it's only 6 years old used a few times a week for basic stuff....give me a colchester lathe (manual !) anyday for big stuff.....