fobco star drill spindle

Hello,

My name is Tim and new here to the Forum. I live in Belgium. I own a fobco star drill pres that I got from a friend. I am giving it new bearings and some renovation but with the first test drill a problem occurred. The drill bit wobbles. I messured it out and its quite a lot. Found the problem,the shaft is bended. These drills are not common in Belgium so I am having some problems finding a replacement shaft. Does someone have a old fobco not worth saving but with usable parts or someone has parts laying arround please let me know.

thanks

Tim

I believe that the owner of the Lathes UK site has the spares you need.

Andrew.

Thanks for the message. I contacted Tony but stock is exhausted.

If you can find a 'proper'* engineering shop in Belgium, you should be able to get your shaft straightened. Or, try to contact a model engineering club (or similar) in your area - or perhaps a vintage car or steam engineer.

You may not get a perfect result, but a drill that wanders a little is much more useful than no drill.

* proper means one that can straighten things.

Regards, Tim (yes, another one) - Wales

Hello Tim,

The shaft will not be hardened so you could try taking out the bend yourself. You don't say where the bend is but I have straightened a bent gearbox shaft as follows.

Support the two ends in hardwood Vee blocks, sitting on a hard floor and using a wooden block and hammer or better still a rubber faced dead blow hammer, rotate the shaft so that the bend is uppermost and hit it hard at that point

Now test for residual bend by rotating it in your wooden Vee blocks with a dial test indicator at the midpoint and continue in this manner to chase the bend out until it runs true.

If the bend is at the chuck end then the procedure can be varied so that position of the bend itself is supported in your Vee block and you 'hammer' the part of the shaft that is beyond the support, making sure the upward deflection at the end is maximised upwards in each test.

I hope that will get you out of a difficult situation. Don't be timid with the hammering, when I say hard, I mean hard.. I used a timber block and 2 pound lump hammer to straighten the gearbox shaft

Regards

Brian

Hi everyone,

I've just brought a fabco floor standing drill today but it has the return spring and return spring retaining cap missing, I can make a new cap on my lathe but just wondered if anyone had a drill like this, and be willing to let me know the measurement of the cap and also the measurements of the spring please,

Many thanks for the help and advise

George

You can get a new spring from lathes.co.uk web site.

David

If anyone fancies having a go at making a new Fobco spindle, I have a set of drawings for a Fobco Universal type spindle that I designed for my own drill. It has a 2MT and Myford threaded nose so you can use it with Myford collets or a drill chuck.

I never got round to making it myself as I changed to a Boxford geared head drill.

PDF files available, but do check the design meets your expectations as there are no guarantees.

Phil