Myford Super 7

Hi

I'm thinking of looking for a super 7 any ideas what I could expect to pay please.

Cheers Martin

1,000 to 3,000 Pounds seems to the range of asking prices. There are glue sniffers everywhere. Some selling. Some buying.

Edited By Hopper on 29/05/2018 08:22:06

... and you might contact the poster of this thread **LINK**

You might get lucky. It looks quite nice in the photos.

From a dealer, fitted with all the gizmos, £ 4,495 today.

But why do you particularly want a Myford S7? The downside is they attract premium prices for what they are. Plenty of alternatives offering better value for money if you just want a lathe. (Be careful making this point in front of Myford fans, some of them get very angry!)

Back in the day Myford lathes hit a marketing sweet-spot. Well-made reliable machines that would fit in a home workshop while being big enough to do serious work. Most important, no serious competition in their price range. The cheap alternatives were inferior and better industrial machines and imports unaffordable. For about 50 years the obvious sensible advice was to buy a Myford. Trouble is the advice seems to have become folklore even though the market for lathes has changed substantially, mainly because of CNC.

Now there is much more choice. Buy Far Eastern and you get a lot for your money. Or there are plenty of affordable ex-education and ex-industrial machines about that are better specified than Myford.

I have a Chinese lathe; it does all I need and I'm unlikely to replace it. If I did, now I know more about the good, the bad and the ugly in machine tools, I'd probably look for a Boxford in good condition. But I'd keep an open mind during the search and might well buy something else. A machines condition, size, and accessories are more important to me than who made or badged it.

Dave

I have bought from him in the past, that seller is about the most expensive out there, and machines are stripped to the bare minimum of accessories.

The Myford 254S he is currently advertising didn't sell with the previous owner on eBay after a couple of listings a few weeks back, he now has it up for £5,950 (!), which is £2,400 more than it was on eBay, and now stripped of its 4 jaw chuck, travelling steady, and other bits.

Or there is this

**LINK**

regards Martin

I'm with Dave (S.O.D.). There are an awful lot of lathes in the world and most of them aren't Myfords!

If you want new then probably Chinese. If you want 2nd hand then a good Boxford or Colchester is hard to beat. If it really must be a Myford then be careful in your choice there are many vastly overpriced examples out there.

John

Many Thanks for all your advice and I will have a good look round at all the alternatives.

Regards

Martin

Athough I have owned a super seven for around 45 years nowadays I would go for a Boxford 5 inch centre height not 4 1/2 ins , they are cheaper currently than a myford though when I bought my super seven a Boxford just not affordable,though I would have preferred one as I had used a Boxford a lot during my apprenticeship and found they were very good lathes, a Myford is a very good lathe though limited by the ridiculous small bore of the headstock spindle,the Boxford has a larger spindle bore,another downside with a used Myford is a lot have been abused by ham fisted and really amateur operators. Both are good for model making ,if you intend motor cycle restoration or similar work the later Colchester Bantams are more suitable.

On my Myford super 7 , the spindle runs to better than 0.001mm truely amazing. It was new in 1972, still has the original shaft and taper bronze bearing, and has been very well looked after over all. It was re fitted and I did lap the spindle back to being round again, and then fitted the taper bush to the spindle. But before I reworked the spindle, it had done more than 100,000 parts in a production environment that I know of, and who knows how many parts it made when used as a production small parts lathe before that. The roundness was about 0.002mm which is still way better than most Eastern machine tools today, except for their Tool range of lathes that do have better bearings. Most I have looked at recently only have a spindle that is about 0.006mm to 0.010mm of roundness. Depending on what you want to make will determine the roundness you require. For the competition model engine pistons that I trim on my S7, they perform better than the ones supplied by the factory who makes the engines. If I trim them on a lathe at work that has only a roundness of 0.002mm, they do not run anywhere near as well. If you can get a Myford second hand like one recently that came up on a thread with lots of accessories, I am sure they will be happy that it is going to a home where is will be used and appreciated. Yes they maybe a little more up front, but no one complains about a quality product or the really good surface finish that is achievable .

Neil

Hello All.

I am a drives and controls engineer, I have applied this knowledge to customer with machine tools all my working life. I AM NOT A MACHANICAL ENGINEER, but have a reasonable understanding and a real interest.

I have recently purchased a Myford Super 7 to restore and convert the spindle and main feed screw to CNC with positioning servo’s on both axis. I am fitting a 16mm dia, 5mm pitch ball screw to replace the main screw, this is the axis that will have one of the servo’s.

As a learning process, I restored a basic lathe and fitted a vector spindle, just to understand the mechanics and understand what I needed from the next lathe to deliver the quality I needed.

YouTube - **LINK**

When the Myford is finished, I will sell the first lathe.

The main use of the lathe will be to produce clock gears and pinions, but also parts for my vintage motorbike.

The lathe is stripped and the bed is away being ground.

I am going through each assembly and restoring as I go along.

I selling the clutch and counter shaft, motor, all pulley’s including spindle pulley, rack, screw and apron and all other bits that I do not need. Some bits have all ready been sold.

My first question is the top and bottom slides. There is backlash, I think it will be the nuts as these are made of an alloy. Where would I get 2 bronze nuts to replace the original nuts?

I understand that backlash is not always a problem as it can be overcome with good practice, but I want to reduce it to a minimum

I am tempted to replace these primitive screw’s with rolled ball screw’s and include a locking mechanism on each axis as the ball screw will not hold position as it does not have enough friction. This would allow servo’s to be added on these slides. But this may be a job for latter.

I have many pictures I have taken along this journey and I will have many more before I reach the finish line. I am not sure about the norm of this forum but I am happy to share them.

I would welcome the answer to the above question.

Sounds like an interesting project. Myford are still in business and sell those feedscrew nuts, and feedscrews if you want them. Either off their website or they also list on eBay. Not sure if they sell them in bronze or Mazak (the diecast zinc/aluminium alloy) though. If you wanted to make your own bronze nuts, taps are available from various suppliers such as Tracey Tools and maybe Myford themselves, but not sure on that. You could screwcut them in the lathe and finish them with the taps.

I have been in the machine tool industry all my life. Reworked solid machines are far better than most new machines on the market.

Major global companies invest in reworked machines for this reason. (Landis grinders for example)

The S7 is well built, very solid, very adjustable and has a good spindle set up.

Unless you have the space for a much bigger lathe, the S7 is the way to go.

These are my opinions, but I am a drives and controls engineer.

Do you think that replacing the nut without the screw is the way to go??

.

That would probably depend upon the condition of the screw

If it's [significantly, and variably] worn, you will never get a nut to fit precisely.

If it's near perfect then it should be worth a try.

MichaelG.

[This posting has been removed]

Hi

I paid £500 for S7 inc base from e-bay about a month ago. I have started a thread with a couple of photos.

The lathe was in reasonable working condition, but I have decided to completely rework it.

The great thing about Myford lathes is they are easy to work on, well documented, spares are available and they are well made with plenty of fine tuning possible with the adjustments provided..

Over the next couple of months I will be detailing the work carried out.

All the best.

Andrew

You did well at that price. Keep us posted on your progress. Quite a few of us on here have fiddled about with Myfords in the past so may be able to point you in the right direction if you get stuck. And always interested to see how others approach the same problems.

Sounds like a bargain Andrew, well-done. As there's a dearth of recent information about how long it takes and how much it costs to completely rework a Myford, it will be very helpful to others if you document what you do.

Cheers,

Dave

No-one's mentioned Emco lathes. I have a Maximat Super 11 and a Myford Super 7. The Emco easily handled large-ish nose radius tipped tooling that the Myford couldn't, unless the headstock bearing was so tight that any significant tailstock force caused the lathe to stall. Myford headstocks are not very rigid. The larger Emcos are capable of accurate work. Buy oriental and take your chances...