resurrecting a Myford ML1

To start, this is a shoe string project, my aim is to repair/ recondition the lathe to good function and not to a concours / museum piece standard. the Lathe is now bolted to a strong bench, started cleaning decades of dirt off. First job to do is get some temporary drive system. The spindle pulley is for 3/ 4 flat belt but the medium and small pulley have been freehand filed to a rough v belt profile leaving only the largest one for a flat belt. It will be some time before I can make a new triple pulley so my current thinking is to run a flat belt from spindle to a lay shaft and to have the speed change pulleys on the lays haft and the main reduction shaft. Do people still use flat belt , can you buy them, are there synthetic belts ?

Literature on early myfords makes reference to flat belt pulleys being "correctly crowned" how would I do This?

My little cowells 90 lathe has a reversing motor so I am planning the same for the ML1.

II have a 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 hp motors which size is best Suited?

More when I can get down to the shed.

If you don't already know here is how crowned pulleys work. Don't know how well tooled up you are. Ideally a radius turning tool on a centre lathe cutting the crown into a cast iron pulley. I bet making some plywood discs with a jig, mounting them to the motor and using a file to put a slight radius on as it spins would do you just as well.

I think 1/3hp was used on early lathes and 1/2hp on later ones.

Also check ebay for flatbelts, other sources might be available. I would probably try and use v belts personally.

Thats an interesting tailstock, mind taking some pictures of it?

Certainly an interesting assembly of parts. Polyvee fan belts used inside out seem to be popular for flat belts.

You might want to put cross braces the bottom of the legs on your bench - you will kick them, often.

Louis.

Try www.lathes.co.uk for all sorts of belts including flat belts.

Usual disclaimer.

Keith.

I have a letter from Myford, dated 1966, in which they recommend 1/3 h.p. for the ML4. The motor for yours would be the same.

Geo.

here is a closeup of the tailstock, this one of my priorities to sort out, dont know if it is true but the plunge shaft is worn, there is much slack ! need to replace it with something more conventional that i can put in a live centre.

yes i will brace the table legs once i have fitted the motor, the motor has to go down as there is a window behind lathe, so it cant go up, as well as bracing i will put a shelf in.

thankyou for the link on flat belts, no i did not understand how they stayed on, now i do !

like the idea of using timber pulleys

I have 3 poly v pulleys from my old toyota, they may get used, also have the timing gears, big toothed belt and a ratio of 2:1, trying to think of any other useful parts i could use

I live in Paphos Cyprus, availability , selection and cost is not in my favour but also getting stuff sent here is not great either. so i will try to source things locally or remake scrap.

saw on you tube some one turning a steel reinforceing bar , rebar, anyone know what properties the steel has in terms of engineering.

Thanyou for the feed back, keep it coming

glad i joined this forum.

Sorry not a good picture, the large all steel poly v pulley could be used as a blank to make a face plate.

The roughly filed out Vs could be filled with something like JB weld to get you started, or even 2 part epoxy mixed with iron/steel filings mixed in.

Ian S C

For flat belt on my similar vintage Drummond, I use poly V belt, but not turned inside out. The V's run on flat belt pulleys just fine and have better grip than the backside of the belt if you turn it inside out. Available at any car parts store.

The tailstock is an interesting one. You may be able to bore out the hole and fit a bronze bush to take up the wear. Then make up an insert to adapt to an MT1 live centre.

Excellent, that's a plan, I will fill the spindle pulley with a loaded filler, then make a wooden triple pulley the same and maybe coat it with filler and use a poly very belt. Then I can dispense with my extra layshaft idea and keep things simple. Just need to extend the shaft in the main reduction pulley , it is about 15cm at present and need to extend it to about 25cm, being 3/4" it should take a small overhang either end.

What should the top spindle speed be on the ml1, seems to be a Secret?

Here is the pulley before repair , looks as though the headstock has been relieved as well to give room for the V belt.

Edited By Louis Showell on 27/07/2017 12:54:02

Pulley after application of out of date epoxy putty, hope it goes off sufficiently hard. also the ruffed out ply pulley, it is 18mm ply so I am looking for 16 or 17mm poly v belt. Intermediate shaft is 20mm.

6mm shaft used for centralising during gluing, also 6mm is ideal for the 20mm cutter which has a 6mm pilot.

Very clever.

Re top rpm, it seems those old lathes with bronze bushes in the headstock, or white metal even, usually had a top speed of about 800rpm. I've run my old Drummond of similar vintage with bronze headstock bearings at up to 1,000 rpm without problems. But 800rpm, with 400 and 200rpm using the other pulley steps seems to give a more useable range of speeds. Usually the pulley ratios are 2:1 from headstock to countershaft or vice versa so you want the countershaft running at about 400rpm.

Avoid rebar like the plague!

Don't know what is in it, but it is foul stuff to machine, in my experience.

Have only used it a couple of times, when forced to, doing a favour for friends.

Howard

Re flat leather drive belts, most leather-work hobby suppliers carry heaps of stock. Even your local shoe repairer might be able to lay his hands on some, as they are often requested to repair broken straps on hand-bags etc.

I got mine from a shoe repairer who was also a leather carver in his spare time. It is 3mm thick and came in a strip 50mm wide and 2m long. I just cut it to the width i needed using a stanley knife and straight edge, then cut to the length i needed to wrap around the pulleys with the tensioner up close to the stop.

To fasten the two ends together, i shaved a scarf on each end about 25mm long tapering from full thickness to about 0.5mm. It took a while with a craft knife and small plane, followed by coarse sandpaper. I then put the belt on the lathe, smeared the scarfed ends with PVA glue, clamped them together between two blocks of wood and waited for it to set. The PVA glue retains sufficient flexibility for the belt to run smoothly over the range of pulley sizes normally found, and has not come apart in 2 years of regular use. It must be said that i don't run a lot of tension on my belt, just enough to provide a decent metal removal rate, but not too much that the belt won't slip if i dig the tool in too agressively (or get my sleeve caught in the rotating work  . Photos of my lathe are in my album.

Hope this helps.