Raglan rebuild

Hi Folks,

I have just read the article on rebuilding a Raglan 5 inch and wondered about the wisdom of fitting a reverse to the motor on a lathe with a screw on chuck? I have a 5 inch myself and rebuilt it to similar standards but left the motor drive as original as possible. I was considering a new motor and drive package which obviously includes the capability to reverse motor direction and I would appreciate any opinions on whether the chuck would be likely to screw itself off.

A brilliant job on the lathe by the way which looks good and will do some great work.

Regards Tractor man

Hi Tractor man,

The reversing VFD seems to work just fine on a Myford, so should be equally fit for a Raglan, just set the ramp down time to somewhere about 2 seconds. As they say, "it works for me"

chriStephens.

It depends what you are going to do with the motor in reverse. I only use reverse when screw cutting metric threads on an imperial lathe to go back to the start without disengaging. I wouldn't try cutting in reverse.

Russell.

Like Russell I fitted my old imperial lathe with reverse to facilitate cutting metric threads . It is also useful for unscrewing dies. This is a big lathe that is very tedious to turn by hand. If the ckuck is just screwed on with a gentle nip there should be no trouble.The only time i hve known a chuck unscrew is when a three phase motor was snapped into reverse whilst still rotating forward. I would not try machining cuts in reverse Colin