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New garage "toy" . . . but not as big as 747Mopar's . . . and rebuilding

conv67bdere

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Found this "little" number on CL . . . and after viewing the lathe, we determined that it was a good deal . . . but . . . the seals in the head were leaking. The seller agreed to split the cost of the seals and bearings and it came home . . .

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12" on the chuck ( it does have a removable "gap" in the bed and 37" in length . . . should work out very well for my needs ( I hope )
 
Found this "little" number on CL . . . and after viewing the lathe, we determined that it was a good deal . . . but . . . the seals in the head were leaking. The seller agreed to split the cost of the seals and bearings and it came home . . .

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!2" on the chuck ( it does have a removable "gap" in the bed and 37" in length . . . should work out very well for my needs ( I hope )
Nice lathe Larry.:thumbsup: .......you could always contract out your big jobs to '747.:lol:
 
The next step was to assess the damages to the lathe . . . so time to tear it down . . .

The lathe was very dirty . . . and we determined:
- - someone "ate" the bearing in this lathe ( tons of fine metal sludge in the right side bearing race )
- - they got new bearings, quickly installed the seals ( not very well - as they leaked ) and dumped it to any unwary buter
- - the owner that we got it from, was not aware of the leaking bearing - so I guess he was the lucky "chump"
- - but he decided that the lathe was far too big for his needs and decided to sell it . . . so now it's mine . . .

The inside of the lathe head tells the story . . . pretty ugly . . .

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Tear down and cleanup - gutted the head, spent hours cleaning, deburring, grinding, sanding and preparing the carcass . . .
- - then it got a good coat of Epoxy Primer . . .

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Here's yet another view of the cleanup work . . .

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And the final story . . . how the inside NOW looks for this lathe . . . So much better . . .

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Next - get the new seals, get them installed, and put this thing back together . . .
 
Progress on the rebuilding . . . oh what a task that was . . .

First, used the same tool that I use for the dimple dies to get the seals installed . . . worked like a charm . . .

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Seal number 1 ( actually this is number 3 ) . . . number 1 in the head carcass . . .

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Now for the last seal . . . using the Greenlee tool again . . .

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This is how it looked on the inside - we flipped the cutting tool upside down so it did not get damaged . . .

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Then the rebuilding process . . . got the first set of gears installed with the seals - the two removable end caps were then screwed into place . . .
- - the yellow arm in the pic - we forgot to install it, lucky (2) screws on the front panel allowed up to get it installed
- - no, did not have to pull out the first set of gears . . . barely . . .
- - did have to do a little grinding on the arm to get it in place . . . but it's done.

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This part was the fun part . . . and what a day that was . . .
- - can't even count how many times I took this apart and put it back together during the day . . .
- - forget to put a part on ( in the proper order )
- - pull it off add the part, now it won't go back in . . . back out more building till it can fit . . .
- - put it all back together, it's grinding . . . find the fault, so it can be fixed - take apart again . . .
- - grind the faulty parts . . . put it back together - the belts don't line up - take it apart . . . again . . .

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The final rebuilding . . . everything is lined up, fitting, no grinding, and ready to be reattached to the bed . . .

BUT - got a couple stripped out bolt holes that will need to be heli-coiled so the can be used to bolt down the head . . . the plan is to eventually paint the head with something . . . don't know what yet . . . still thinking that through . . .
 
Looks like a solid lathe, congrats. That thing is going to look brand new at the rate your going... excellent work!
 
You are going to have yourself a nice piece of machinery when completed.
I have a much smaller lathe/mill combo that has served me well and saved the day more than once.
Congrats on the new toy.
 
Continuation of the lathe rebuild . . . made some progress today . . .

First, this is a gap lathe - but the ways on the gap part were not lining up properly with the rest of the bed . . . and we'll have to do a little tweaking on the teeth that extend onto the gap piece - they are not too good ( now ) . . . we'll fix them up . . . but the ways not being aligned might be caused by this . . .

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And this - looks like they installed the gap with a bunch of "crud" under the gap . . . duh . . .

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And the base needed a little ( make that a lot ) of cleanup too - this is after the surface was cleaned . . .

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This is a picture of part of the lathe before I cleaned it ( guess it would help if I took one after for comparison . . . )

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One of the bolt holes was stripped ( the one in the rear - not this one . . . and we were thinking that both of these would be drilled, taped, and a heli-coil installed to allow us to get the head properly attached. This apparatus is to help keep the drill bit vertical when drilling for the heli-coil - clamp it in place and drill through the hole . . .

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Just before we drilled . . . I was working on the holes and notice we had plenty of threads deeper in the hole, but getting a longer bolt into the hole ( see the pockets on the head in the next picture ) was not going to allow us to do that. So I found a long bolt, that we cut off and installed as a stud and will run a nut and locking nut on the top to hold it in place. This prevented all the work of drilling, tapping, and installing the heli-coil . . . YAY . . .

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Lathe head getting installed to the bed . . . the studs worked out very well . . .

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Now to get the teeth on the lathe chuck cleaned up, greased up, and put back together to make it as good as new . . . the top one was how they came out of the chuck, the bottom one was after I spent some time cleaning it up . . . they needed it bad.

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Chuck installed on the lathe . . . thinking about getting a Bison Chuck before we go through all the effort to true this up . . .

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Looks like I'm going to have a whole bunch of tooling that i'll need to be getting . . . soon . . .
 
More work today on truing up the lathe . . .

Keep finding things wrong, and working on fixing them, and working toward putting this thing back together . . .
- walked out to the lathe to find that the right side inspection window had leaked out the oil . . . the metal face plate on the lathe was not cut properly to clear the window and seals, along with a minor casing imperfection, caused the oil to leak out. The good news is that none of the newly installed seals are leaking - and I've already modified the front plate to make sure that the inspection window grommet will sit down against the casting as needed ( one more thing fixed ).

First, the side that I worked to get cleaned up - and forgot a picture . . . he's the cleaned up picture

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Next the backing plate needs to be trued . . . this was fun as we needed to work on the backlash, and then found out we had a little too much play in the slides, as we were working on getting the head trued up - this is considered the "rough" alignment.
- first the slides and ways were worked on as it seemed we were chasing the slop in the slides to get good readings . . .
- then we worked backlash, and finally got that set up so that there is no play in the backing plate . . .
- then we finally worked on squaring the backing plate to the bed . . . by measuring on the outside edges of the backing plat at front and back ( or 8" of difference )
- got the backing plate to within 0.0005 and snugged it up . . . now we're waiting on a 24" long hardened steel polished rod to help the "final" tuning of the squareness.

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Decided that we'll give this chuck a chance to see how it indicates. So, with that in mind, I've taken it apart, and cleaned it all up, and put it back together to make sure that there is no shavings or chips stuck in the teeth to force the indication to be off as a result of it being there. If this chuck does not indicate well, then I will be looking for a Bison 4 jaw chuck for this lathe . . .

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More work on the rebuild and tuning to come . . .
 
Your rebuilding a lathe and I'm wrestling one lol, wanna trade places? A sasquatch sure would have been handy moving it.:poke:

Glad to see your moving right along on it, you'll find many uses for it. My dad taught me as a kid how the bore out my dirt bike cylinders on ours... even did a few sleeves as well. You can easily do woodwork on them as well which I'm sure you'll do. Very hand to have.
 
Your rebuilding a lathe and I'm wrestling one lol, wanna trade places? A sasquatch sure would have been handy moving it.:poke:

Glad to see your moving right along on it, you'll find many uses for it. My dad taught me as a kid how the bore out my dirt bike cylinders on ours... even did a few sleeves as well. You can easily do woodwork on them as well which I'm sure you'll do. Very hand to have.

Lmao - Sashquatch help to move that "beast" of a lathe you got ! wish I was closer to help out . . .

I consider myself lucky - my friend who is a great machinist and engineer is working with me and teaching me how this needs to be done, and I'm learning a lot ! can't wait to get on the lane and use it to make stuff . . .

For now, I've been doing a LOT of cleaning on this thing !
 
Your work is exemplary conv67bdere, that is going to one sweet machine when you are finished. :thumbsup:
 
Nice score! Neat use of the dimple die tool as well. :thumbsup:
Actually . . . It's not the dimple die tool, rhe tool is electrical in that it cuts holes in panel boxes to get wires into the box . . .

I re-purposed it for the dimple dies and for the seal installs
 
I enjoyed reading about your adventure with your new lathe.

My first lathe was a 6 inch craftsman. I went through it like you are doing. It was a satisfying pleasure. --In the eighties, I bought a 12 in. craftsman with all the accessories and went through it with the same enjoyment. (used it all the time)
Ten or so years ago I found an - Emco Maximat V13--(Not enco:))for sale on ebay with two hundred pounds of accessories and tooling. I won the bidding and think I got it for a bargain at 3K. It did not need to be rebuilt.


Once you get a good working lathe -and start relying on it-- you will begin to wonder how you got along without one.:thumbsup:

BTW--I have never been trained on lathe working. It is a tool and like most tools they can do lots of stuff that is "out of the box"--Have fun and don't let the stainless string chips reach out and grab you.

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Example of out of box stuff that can be done. I made this fireplace screen on my lathe out of stainless and copper wire. IMG_0358 (Large).JPG
 
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Rebuilding the cross slide . . .

The cross slide has 12/1000 play in the dial . . . not too good, so my engineer friend "suggested" that the ACME screw and nut get swapped out for a ball screw and ball-nut . . . I had never heard of these terms so I had to look them up . . . All that I can say is WOW ! ! ! The play in the dial "would" be decreased to 0 . . . so I thought it was a great idea . . .

How a ball screw works:


Until . . . we started looked for one to replace the on on the lathe. The cross slide moves 1/10 of an inch per rotation - so 10 turns per inch. About the best that we can find in the ball screw is 8 turns per inch . . . so, that would mean that the markings on the dial would not be correct for the cross slide.

So . . . we might be replacing the cross slide Acme screw and Nut with new parts to get them working better - and he also suggested an Acme anti-backlash nut be added to the assembly to help assist with reducing the play in the dial . . .

Digging into this to find out what/how the upgrades will be done . . . more to follow . . .
 
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