First lathe - installation questions

First post here, so hello to all.

I am about to install my new (well, new to me) Myford Speed 10 which came on it's own stand with chip tray. The manual mentions "shims". Could anyone tell me where I can get a pack of the appropriate material to get the lathe correctly set up? And what bolts (size and material) I should get to bolt it down?

Any anything else that might be useful for a novice?!

Thanks in advance for any help.

regards,

Richard

I recently bought the SPG equivalent of Warco's WM290 (albeit it doesn't have the vfd ).....

It too came with a stand....All I did was ensure the floor where it was going to finally rest, was flat and level.

I placed a 4 ft long piece of 3/4 quality plywood on the floor, put the stand on it. On the top of the cupboards that form the stand, I glued a 300 mm square cork floor tile,put the suds tray on top then bolted the lathe to the stand.....I reckon there's plenty resilience without making it too rigid that could cause anything to bend/twist/warp whatever......

All good, turns bar nicely with plenty swarf.....

My smaller Chester 9x20 is also set up like this and has not been a problem in 10 or so years.....

Edited By John Rudd on 30/07/2015 14:29:10

Edited By John Rudd on 30/07/2015 14:29:56

Hi Richard What size holes are in the lathe feet? Probably 8mm or 5/16 inch. You can get raising blocks for the ML10 but I can't remember if they are adjustable. A look on Ebay may find a photo of a lathe with riser blocks.

Looking on Ebay they are not adjustable but if you don't have a pair they would make the lathe easier to use. There is a cheap pair available from myford stuff (Ebay user).

Edited By David Clark 1 on 30/07/2015 15:01:15

You speak as if it is already mounted so the advice to leave as it is an try to get the legs on the stand all sitting on the floor is good. The speed 10 and ml 10 are pretty solid beds as they come and the tray is more likely to distort than the bed.

I wonder about comments concerning shimming and bolting down beds to avoid distortion. I feel it came from a time when lathes were mounted on very rigid cast iron stands that might even weigh more than the lathe.

There is a simply way of mounting lathes in a stress free way without shims etc. It just needs longer bolts of the same size that the lathe normally needs for mounting. Fasten these to the tray or frame thread pointing up, fit nuts and tighten. I add washers. Fit another nut loosely, a penny washer ideally then place the lathe on them. Adjust each of the support nuts to that the lathe sits evenly on them. I do that by just adjusting lightly finger tight. Fit a washer and another nut to each and lightly tighten down. Maybe use nylocks. To be honest I don't and just do the top nuts up finger tight. They don't work loose.

Some lathes come with an adjustment just like this. The mounting holes in the lathe are threaded and accept a sort of flanged bolt with a hole through it. This is used to get the lathe sitting evenly and then it's simply bolted through.

Myford made a casting for these lathes that accepted the lathe and the motor assembly. On some of these lathes the motor assembly is just bolted to the tray. You might need to use the same arrangement on the motor assembly if you don't have the casting in order to get the belt tensioning to work correctly.

Lathes can also be mounted on items like these, there are a lot of different sizes available.

**LINK**

Much cheaper than lathe resilient mountings and will achieve the same thing. Personally I don't think they are much use unless they isolate any vibrations from the motor to the lathe itself.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 30/07/2015 15:43:10

Just use it to start with, once your up and running and starting to make accurate parts then you can look into leveling it properly but for now just make smoke and swarf.

Steve

If you look up Workshop Practice series #15 "Workholding in the Lathe" by Tubal Cain, ch9 is a fairly detailed account of setting up a lathe.

Edited By john carruthers on 30/07/2015 16:59:42

Thanks for all the advice. It seems that I already have the mounting blocks, so it's just a case of getting it to turn true. I have found some bolts and fixed it down, and will follow Bowber's advice for the time being, and see how I get on.

Edited By Richard Parker 1 on 13/08/2015 02:07:26