Beautiful old American Iron and Steel

I copied this from my other thread.

Okay. I learned a ton today.

The knob in the carriage handwheel is the clutch for the carriage power feed.

The knob in the middle is the power feed for the cross slide. That clutch was very, very stuck.....

The grinding was from the carriage feed clutch not fully disengaging. I had to pull the clutch knob off and the handwheel and clean it all up and get lots of oil onto everything.

The cross slide clutch needed some tapping with a plastic hammer and working back and forth and it finally released. Then I pulled it and cleaned everything.

Now the carriage moves super smooth with no gear noise. No need to pull the apron now.



I will add that I pulled the compound and cross slide and cleaned and stoned everything. I decided to leave the taper attachment off for now.

The lathe is amazing....I can't wait to make chips.
 
Forgot to add. The lathe should swing 14" with room to spare. It looks like one could sneak 40" between centers.
 
Do you oil both the top holes and the oil cup in the sides? Is SAE30 good enough?
What oil for the gear box oiling points? I'm thinking SAE30.

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I think that based on the lack of a manual or lube schedule, the oil you select should be based on speeds, tolerances, and bearing material. 30wt is middle of the road, probably ok. Spindle oils are usually thinner, but they're also spec'd for new machines. It's a total loss system, so it's hard to go wrong so long as it provides enough cushion.

My bet is the original spec for spindle oil on that machine is something like this:

1_73c373abd8d88b1032c00244984d4d0a.jpg
 
The gearbox and motor are in place......and I have to babysit for an hour.......Then I have to align the pulley and figure out how they tensioned the flat belt. Lol! I'm getting pretty excited.
 
The progress so far.

20240519_174618.jpg

The motor mount and gear box are both on the same pivot. I can use a couple existing bolt holes to tension the motor above the gearbox, but I also need to devise a quick way to tension the flat belt by pivoting the heavy gearbox and motor.

The remaining belt that came with it shows what they might have done to counter balance the heavy gearbox.

20240519_174650.jpg


I'm not doing it that way....lol. I'm going with bolts setting proper tension and pivoting the whole mass to tension my flat belt.
 
She's alive! No chips yet. I don't have a proper tensioner on the flat belt yet. The parts are on the way.

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The top speed is only 350 rpm. It has lots of gear reduction so I'm going to go bigger on the motor pulley. From 3" to 4" or even 5". The driven pulley is 10".
 
Less than two weeks to get it running. Very good.

Early on, you asked a couple questions about oiling the spindle. I've been waiting for an "old iron guru" to chime in, but haven't seen it yet, so here are my thoughts. I'm envisioning a felt wick in the top holes with an oil reservoir above. The glass on the reservoir provides a quick visual verification that the spindle is lubricated. Regarding the lower holes, I would want to determine if they lead to only the lower part of the spindle bearings or if they service other bearings. It occurred to me that one could fill the top holes with Marvel Mystery Oil (which is redish) and see if redish weeps from the lower holes. That wouldn't preclude that there are additional bearings involved, but your physical inspection might. Those thoughts don't solve all potential spindle bearing lube issues but I hope they help.

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