Myford ML4 restoration, setup, upgrades.........improvements???

Hello there since I seem to be hi jacking other peoples threads in the quest for info on my lathe I thought an update and an introduction were probably necessary.

I bought this lathe from e-bay for the princely sum of £350, it came with a range of tooling some of it knackard, some still usable. Also 3 jaw, and a four jaw self centering, and a 3 jaw quick tightened  chuck. It also has a myford fixed and traveling steady and a couple of tapered drill chucks for the tailstock which are to be honest a little past it but may be useful at some point so have been put to one side.

Firstly some photos of the lathe as advertised

Edited By Jon Cameron on 22/09/2017 23:08:31

Edited By Jon Cameron on 22/09/2017 23:13:24

Edited By Jon Cameron on 22/09/2017 23:14:43

This useful info posted by another member shows some very useful identification for the 4 different variations of the ML series.

Given the above advice I can now say with certainty that my lathe is an ML4, though one with an ML1 or 3 type nose thread, possibly turned down to fit some cheap accessories or was because they had knackard the thread on the spindle nose.

Edited By Jon Cameron on 22/09/2017 23:30:05

Or someone machined the spindle down to fit a set of chucks etc they already had from a previous machine etc.

Looks like a good useable machine with a good selection of tooling you got there. There is a good Yahoo group for Myford lathes that could be useful source of info.

I have an old Drummond M type of similar style and vintage and it has proved to be a good and useful machine once set up and sorted out a bit. Happy turning!

There is as with any old machine a fair bit of wear, on mine the bed is worn, chipped, and in a couple of localized areas even pitted. As well as wear on the cross slide, top slide, and the dovetails and gibs.

It came time to set the lathe up and mount the motor and lathe on the 38mm chipboard worktop, and kitchen cabinet I got from freegal. Great place freegal for odd bits of money saving.

I first started with the motor using M8 threaded rod cut to length, and a nut backed onto another nut to form a good lock nut. The position of the motor was selected, with the lathe in situe. So I could gauge what room I'd need to be able to work around the lathe. Once finalised I marked the bolt openings from the motor frame onto the worktop with black market pen. These were then drilled using the cordless, and to the front edge of the markings enabling the motor bracket to move back and forth to allow tension to be set on the lathes belt.

Then once the bolts were passed through and bolted tight, I turned my attention to the position of the lathe, making sure with a long enough straight edge the pulleys were in line. Then again marked the position on the bench and drilled. What I should have done is put some silicone down the holes when putting the bolts through as this would stop oil ingress, and potentially expansion of the chipboard as it takes on oil. (Will come back to that).

The lathe was mounted on the studs (cut slightly longer than the studs for the motor mounting). To allow the lathe to be levelled, or more accurately trimmed for cutting concentric bars, drilling holes ect. Firstly a builders level was used length ways and at 90 ° to the bed, then diagonal from corner to corner of the bed. All the time watching the bubble and making small adjustments to the nuts. To get as close as I could with the level.

I hope you van appreciate that I'm a compete novice to this so I may make some errors in terminology along the way but please ignore that. I'll get there eventually.

I started painting some bits up too but you'll have to wait for that.........TBC

Keep it coming John, the lathe looks to be in good condition for its age given the photo of the bed.

Neil

I have got sick of seeing rust on my lathe and bad paint, so I stripped the tailstock down and cleaned it up, I degreased the parts and then polished some of the metal parts to get rid of the rust. I cleaned up the bore and the spindle whilst I was at it, it's amazing how much bits of metal were back there.

With a fresh coat of paint the parts were left to dry over night and baked in the oven for an hour at 50°C this evaporated the solvents and hardened the enamel paint. I was careful not to get any paint on surfaces that were machined or would be in contact with other parts, these got a wipe over with oil after painting, whilst I was at it I also decided to do the change gears and bracket.

There were three spindle nose threads used as original by Myfords.

7/8" x 9 tpi Whitform (which is what you have), with MT1 internal taper;

7/8" x 12 tpi Whitform, also with MT1 internal taper;

1 1/8" x 12 tpi Whitform with MT2 internal taper (though the tailstock remained at MT1).

I have never discovered if the two 7/8" threads were used at different times, or on different models, or according to the customer's choice. The 1 1/8" thread seems to have been introduced later, and is the same thread as used on the ML7. The thread should be slightly undersize, location of the chuck/faceplate being effected by the parallel register behind the thread. All three threads used on the ML1/2/3/4 had a register the same diameter as the nominal thread diameter. When the ML7 was introduced it had a larger 1 1/4" diameter register. This means that an ML7 accessory will fit onto an ML4 thread but without the accurate location given by a register. An ML4 accessory will not fit the ML7 spindle.

It should be quite possible to make a register ring for the 1 1/8" ML4 nose, or a thread adaptor with register for the 7/8" nose, to give you a 'bolt-on' ML7 spindle nose, which opens up a whole world of accessories off the shelf or the internet.

Just to confuse the picture, my ML4 came with a 7/8" BSF (11 tpi) spindle nose and no internal taper - somebody had obviously fitted a non-standard mandrel for some reason.

George

Edited By Georgineer on 23/09/2017 14:47:22

Hi all, some interesting reference material here on ML4 lathes from last year, and a more recent thread about half nuts, which also contains some useful references and information here

Edited By Jon Cameron on 28/09/2017 00:40:41

An explaination of setting up the tailstock by Brian Wood.

Setting the tailstock alignment on an ML 4 lathe

Ideally the method needs a 1MT test bar, the actual diameter of the plain parallel section is not important other than being a minimum of 3/8 inches. Also needed is a decent three jaw chuck with self aligning jaws, one that can be really trusted for true centreing. And finally, a sensitive DTI mounted on a magnetic stand.
Fit the chuck to the spindle nose and fit the test bar to the tailstock barrel. Slacken all the soleplate screws on the tailstock and the clamp used for gripping the bed
Slide the tailstock so that the test bar enters the chuck as close to the section just beyond the M/T taper that can be reached over the saddle and gently close the chuck jaws to grip the bar. A decent bar is hard enough to resist any marking from the jaws, but neither do they want closing up hard.
The tailstock barrel and headstock spindle should now be correctly aligned with each other. Set the DTI up off the cross slide, offer it up to the exposed section of the bar and zero it.
It is now a question of tightening the tailstock sole plate screws to avoid straining the alignment just achieved and testing that by easing the chuck jaws to watch for bar flexure on the DTI. Repeat the alignment procedure if necessary until satisfied with the result. Finally, test the effect of the tailstock clamp to check for DTI movement when that is clamped.
Some notional movement may be inevitable with this final test, in which case it might be helpful to note by how much.
For putting on a taper turning offset to the tailstock in future, a short dead centre turned to fit a tool hole in a boring head fitted into the tailstock barrel is probably a lot easier to work with than upsetting the alignment achieved above.
In the absence of a test bar, a fair substitute can be made with either a long Morse taper drill or machine reamer. They should not be slender in cross section; at least 3/8 inch diameter is suggested.
i. Myford themselves would have used a production line aid to simplify setting up these lathes; it was very probably a hardened bar, perhaps 12 inches or so in length, with Morse tapers on both ends so that socket to socket alignment was made. In use, the headstock would have been aligned to the bed first and then bolted down, followed by the tail stock soleplate setting. Any over height tailstock would have had the top surface of the soleplate scraped to fit; low versions would have been shimmed.

Brian Wood 2016

I have gone about it another way, and I've a video which demonstrated the frustration in setting it up. In that there are three items that can all influence the angle of the tailstock. 

So I put a piece of rust in the three jaw and mounted up a R/H cutting tool, I set the compound over as far as I could and turned a point onto the bar, this makes a reference point for center hieght, and eliminates if there is wear in the taper of the spindle. 

Once a point was turned the tailstock received a MT1 dead centre. Since all tools will have a taper connection to this part then it seems logical that if there is wear in the tailstock then this must be taken into account. A reamer in the chuck would be a better idea but im not that brave yet, or confident about it's alignment.

The tailstock is brought upto the chuck, as far as it'll go, then the quill extended to meet the other point on the turned bar. 

Horizontally I look good so proceed to make adjustments to the gun slide, making sure everything else is locked up, (be sure if your tightening the gibs the the clamp has opposite force applied. Ie screwing in the adjuster, will mean you have to loosen the clamp, and visa versa.

With a 6inch ruler between centers, the ruler tells you which direction the tailstock gibs need to go. To adjust the gibs make sure the bolt on top is slackened slightly to allow movement, and tightened back up after before proceeding to make adjustment to the other screw. Once you are happy that the tailstock is centred, move the tailstock up the bed, and extend the quill as far as you can, low and behold a different reading, and frustration en sues, what I did was adjust half of the difference of the duller with one screw, then the other half with the second screw. If your lucky when you move it back to the first position you'll be darn close to level, I was using the dovetail on my saddle to determine where I needed to be, and the whole thing was done by eye.

Video will be uploaded to YouTube and posted later today, just to give some insight to the daft design.

Edited By Jon Cameron on 28/09/2017 17:28:11

Edited By Jon Cameron on 28/09/2017 17:29:08

You do like to do things the hard way don't you!

I've wasted precious hours doing the job in much the sane way as you describe, only to find that the tailstock barrel is skewed on the bed and deep drilling into a job in the chuck is inaccurate.

Thinking again about it since writing those notes last year, I think there is an even easier way of proceeding; it needs no drills, reamers or test bars either.

Wind out about 1.5 inches of tailstock barrel and grip that in the 3J chuck, being careful not to grip in the anti rotation groove. Now bolt up the tailstock soleplate, the barrel is stiff enough to resist flexing.

You might have hit lucky Jon, but this would give a confirmatory test on what you achieved today.

Regards Brian

Double post

Edited By Jon Cameron on 28/09/2017 20:47:54

Brian I thought of that already tried it even, but there was too much flex in the tail stock so wasn't what I thought was accurate enough, at least the centers provide a single reference point, when I've checked the extended length then back again I'm getting closer, for those that don't know here's how annoying it is to set up the tailstock, as you think it's spot on when oops it isn't!

I also tried a rudemetary way of aligning the tailstock. Using one of the largest taper drills i have, (think it's 7/8" mounted in the tailstock. The quill was extended out as far as I could and the gib adjusters loosened off. The drill was fed as far into the chuck as I could get it, and the jaws nipped up, not locked tight just nipped up. Then the gib was brought to mate with the ways and tightened, the clamp at the rear was then loosely tightened. Just enough to give some pressure to the rear. The adjusters were then tightened up making sure the whole setup wasn't moving, and locked into place. I've yet to check it's alignment, but the quill by eye looks to be perfectly parralel to the ways. The worn gib strip is also sitting nice and flat against the ways, whereas before it was slightly tilted.

Edited By Jon Cameron on 29/09/2017 21:43:38