Alternative Lathe that would fit Myford Ind cabinet for a long bed

I recently purchased a Myford Industrial cabinet (version for a Long bed), however when I retrieved my 1948 ML7 from my parents house to put on it it became apparent that it's worn out and needs quite a bit spent on it. Therefore I am considering buying another lathe as it's probably more cost effective than reconditioning it.

As Super 7's are beyond my budget at the moment does anyone have any experience of fitting other makes of bench lathes ideally with a larger swing on to this cabinet?

Could do with obtaining an understanding what has worked for someone previously, I am 6' tall so can cope with it being a bit higher. Otherwise I will needs to consider selling on the cabinet but I am reluctant as I have repainted it.

Rob

Height is not a problem. Just fit raising blocks in the form of heavy-wall square tubing between cabinet and lathe as needed. Or blocks under the feet of the cabinet.

Length of a Myford longbed should accommodate any of the Chinese lathes with a similar swing and centre distance. Their sellers' websites usually have all the specs posted. The popular Sieg SC4 should drop on there with room to spare at 1 metre overall length. You might even be able to go a bit bigger if you shop around.

Edited By Hopper on 19/11/2019 08:09:42

Thanks I will look into the Sieg SC4.

I was looking at a Harrison L5 that was missing its makers stand on ebay but it sold early, according to the diagram on Lathes.co.uk it would just fit for length and width but may be too high and require altering the motor position. It was quite easy to find out about the size of the L5 but other lathes are not as well documented on the internet.

Is anyone aware of a lathe database to quickly find swing, centre and perhaps overall sizes.

I had been under the impression that the industrial stand was only available for the short bed lathes.

Did they make a long bed version of it?

Edited By Mark Rand on 19/11/2019 14:18:15

Yes, I managed to get it cheaper than some of the short bed ones on e bay and welded some extra channel and drilled holes for the short bed lathe.

Robert, if it's not too personal a question, what roughly is your budget?
Bill

p.s. Hello and welcome by the way; it's pretty friendly and helpful round here. 

Edited By peak4 on 19/11/2019 17:00:37

Thanks Bill

Around £900

We know it is ‘probably’ less than restoring a ‘worn out’ ML7 and less than a Super 7!

What is maximum length of lathe You can accomodate and can we have a picture of cabinet?

Not enough for an SC4.

Might be worth looking at a SC3 brushless mini lathe, although it might look a bit 'lost' on that stand, aside from the gap it has similar capacity to the ML7.

If you really like the idea of an ML7 consider either getting it refurbished (900 should be enough for a bed regrind and getting in an expert to set it up, but you may have to do a lot of other jobs on it).

OR sell it, either being honest about condition or even breaking for parts(!)

THEN buy an ML7 in good condition, £900 plus the proceeds should get you a nice ML7 with plenty of accessories if you know what you are looking for in a secondhand machine.

Neil

When you get a lathe to fit the cabinet, you will know how thick the raising blocks will need to be for comfort. You have two choices, raise the cabinet, or raise the lathe on the cabinet, the latter would need metal blocks drilled to fit both parts. Or a bit of both. I got the Smart & Brown at the museum lifted up by Rod using the forklift and a 40mm thick prefabricated wood plinth put underneath, it hasn't budged since, despite not being bolted down. The Tom Senior mill is also on a wooden plinth, but is bolted down.

When you make tour raising blocks from box section, consider mounting the lathe on studs with a load of nuts.

The first nut is inside the cabinet, the second nut is inside, on the bottom of the box section. The third nut is inside the, at the top of the section. The fourth nut is outside the box section. The sixth nut is above the fifth one, with the foot of the lathe resting on it. The seventh nut is above the the foot of the lathe.

In this way, the box section is firmly clamped to the cabinet. The upper two nuts clamp the stud to the box section, and carry the weight of the lathe, minimising risk of the box section distorting. The nuts above and below the foot of the lathe allow the lathe to be adjusted to remove any twist from the bed.

This should ensure that you do not turn any tapers, inadvertently!

Basically, my 300Kg lathe is supported by six 1/2 UNF setscews, in this way, without problems!

Howard

Thanks for the advice so far. Lots to think about.

Below is a picture of the cabinet with the ML7 on it.

The flat area of the tray is 4'4" * 17" In this space I have 5' * 2'8" that could be used if some of the lathe were to overhang. The person I bought it of did say they had had a Raglen on it but I am not sure I would get on with one.

As can also be seen I begun to investigating reconditioning it. When turning my test piece to finish setting the leveling jacks at the back it was 0.1 mm out over 125 mm there was also chatter and 0.1 mm movement in the headstock. So I abandoned the leveling and blued up the bearings with a view to scraping them. Also got a quote for a new hardened spindle and bronze bearings at £325 if it does now work. As its a 1948 machine and could also do with a bed regrind I started to explore the options of what else would fit on the stand, possibly a larger machine.

Whatever you mount on the stand, do allow space behind the Headstock for material passed through the Mandrel to hang out the back. without fouling the other machine

Also allow just enough room to remove the Tailstock, if you ever need to do so for any reason. It would be pretty galling, having once levelled the machine to have to undo all that work because the Tailstock needed removing for some reason!

Howard

It looks in better shape than my ML7 before I refurbed it.

Have you measured the actual bed wear? Myford allows up to five thou on the top of the way before it's considered worn out.

And three thou on the vertical rear face of the front way, the one that takes most load. However, you can get around this on a 1948 model by doing a wide guide conversion, as described in detail in the current issue of MEW. Its a simple job.And no need for a regrind.

Headstock bearings might just need a couple of layers peeling off the shim packs that go between the bearing halves.

To look at its ok, Its being in a pretty dry workshop for the last 20 years, that's why I was optimistic about using it again I , just conscious its something that i could be easy spend more than its worth improving.

Yes the worst place its 6 thou but some of the surfaces are a lot better so I think I will try the wide guide conversion.

With the white metal bearings its about the only subject I cannot find a comprehensive video on you tube about. Putting all the info I have looked at together I am inclined to rub the flat faces of the shells so they grip the shaft, blue them up and scrape down the high spots, ensure they still just grip the shaft. Then bolt them back down with a few less shims so it rotates freely with around 2 thou of movement. Previously there was a mixture of all sorts of bits of shims so presumably its best to have the same thickness on both ends of the cap?

You shouldn't need to file or sand the flat faces of the shells. Usually those faces are separated by shims. Usually those Myford shims are actually stacks of thin aluminium foil that can be peeled off layer by layer. Each layer is about 2 thou thick. So if you have 0.1mm up and down movement, you might try peeling off two layers from each side.

If yours does not have the aluminium foil stack type shims, you can either buy them from Myford's website or just make your own solid shims from shim stock in whatever size is needed.

It is common practice for shims to be thicker on one side of than the other. It's a way of getting one thou of adjustment, roughly, by removing a two thou foil layer on one side only.

YOu can leave the shims out when doing the bluing and just use light pressure on the bolts to make shell contact shaft.

Most of the time they do not need scraping, just the shims reducing.

There will eventually be an article in MEW on scraping the bearings, but couild be some time away as there is another article on completing the wide guide conversion to come first and they seem to run every second month.

Edited By Hopper on 21/11/2019 11:32:03

Hi Robert,

It does look very pretty, I hope you can save it.

@Hopper - wide guide was in MEW 287, head should be heading for Aus! Checked for the bearing scrape and to my horror found I had pencilled it in for issue 282 instead of 292, along with three other articles by mistake! Found now so they should all appear fairly soon.

Neil