Beautiful old American Iron and Steel

I successfully finished the chuck adapter. It wasn't easy with all the wear and damage. I got the face of the body within 0.0015". I'll dial in a test bar tomorrow and see how straight it holds.

I made a truck load of chips today. You can tell the lathe is 88 years old....lol. It does good work on short stuff so far.
 
I used my Edge Technologies lathe test bar to check the tailstock against a turned center in the chuck.

I adjusted the tailstock to center and then I checked the vertical height. The tailstock showed 0.010" low. Then I ran a dial indicator along the top of the tailstock ram, which showed it was dead nuts flat to the carriage travel.

Tomorrow I'm going to check the side of the tailstock ram to be sure it's true to the ways as well. Then I will have to pull the top of the tailstock off and shim it 0.010" higher.

The ways are very accurately leveled side to side and lengthwise. I just got the 4 jaw chuck on and have not run a test bar yet. That will come. The wear in the ways is pretty significant. I don't expect too much on long stuff.


Today I checked the perpendicularity of my chuck and chuck adapter. I dialed in a nicely ground piece of 2.5" diameter titanium in the 4 jaw. With 0.001" of run out at the chuck I had 0.020" of run out at 24" from the chuck without tapping it in.....
 
If you asked me if this could happen I would not have believed it....


I shimmed the tailstock with two sizeable pieces of 0.010" brass shim. The height is within 0.0015"

Then I checked the parallelism of the tailstock ram. Along the top and side we are right at 0.001" of parallel running a dial indicator along its length locked down tight.

Then I started turning a test bar. I cut the full length so I could check along the length for variation.

I got it within 0.0005" in 12". The best part is that the variation is linear! Next weekend I'll work on getting out the last half thou, although it is plenty close enough for most of my work.


With the significant amount of bed wear, a foot of straight shaft has me tickled pink. I rarely ever do long cuts.

She is a noisy old girl in her highest gear. 510 rpm. I'm starting to fall in love with the old girl.

 
Nice. Pretty well for old American iron!

And here at my day job, I’m fighting .001- .003” taper in 3-4 inches on my 2015 Summit Lathe. I’m getting better at tapping the cross slide with a block of aluminum as it’s going and getting most of the taper out, especially when I’m doing more critical bearing fits on shafts.

Sometimes you just have to learn the machine’s capabilities and work within them.


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toprecyler said:
Nice. Pretty well for old American iron!

And here at my day job, I’m fighting .001- .003” taper in 3-4 inches on my 2015 Summit Lathe. I’m getting better at tapping the cross slide with a block of aluminum as it’s going and getting most of the taper out, especially when I’m doing more critical bearing fits on shafts.

Sometimes you just have to learn the machine’s capabilities and work within them.


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Click to expand...
Try putting an indicator on the carriage against the cross slide and watch it as it starts the cut.

On the WWII lathes I used to work with we would watch the cross slide back off aa the cut started and we would just dial it back in.
 
toprecyler said:
Nice. Pretty well for old American iron!

And here at my day job, I’m fighting .001- .003” taper in 3-4 inches on my 2015 Summit Lathe. I’m getting better at tapping the cross slide with a block of aluminum as it’s going and getting most of the taper out, especially when I’m doing more critical bearing fits on shafts.

Sometimes you just have to learn the machine’s capabilities and work within them.


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Click to expand...
If you can turn between centers you can eliminate that easily.

The hard part is resetting the tailstock to zero afterwards.


Batmanacw said:
If you asked me if this could happen I would not have believed it....


I shimmed the tailstock with two sizeable pieces of 0.010" brass shim. The height is within 0.0015"

Then I checked the parallelism of the tailstock ram. Along the top and side we are right at 0.001" of parallel running a dial indicator along its length locked down tight.

Then I started turning a test bar. I cut the full length so I could check along the length for variation.

I got it within 0.0005" in 12". The best part is that the variation is linear! Next weekend I'll work on getting out the last half thou, although it is plenty close enough for most of my work.


With the significant amount of bed wear, a foot of straight shaft has me tickled pink. I rarely ever do long cuts.

She is a noisy old girl in her highest gear. 510 rpm. I'm starting to fall in love with the old girl.

Click to expand...


Being limited to 510rpm kinda sucks, but if its any concellation, consteneration........, if it makes you feel any better about it. these lathes sounded like this when they were new.

All straight cut gears and loose tolerances (By todays standards) were common being the money was spent on the bed and the ways.

You may be able to tame some of that by looking at the change gear bushings and backlash. Setting the backlash and getting them to run quiet is a chore if the bushings are worn.


My old 9" atlas used to sing in high gear....
 
RaisedByWolves said:
If you can turn between centers you can eliminate that easily.

The hard part is resetting the tailstock to zero afterwards.





Being limited to 510rpm kinda sucks, but if its any concellation, consteneration........, if it makes you feel any better about it. these lathes sounded like this when they were new.

All straight cut gears and loose tolerances (By todays standards) were common being the money was spent on the bed and the ways.

You may be able to tame some of that by looking at the change gear bushings and backlash. Setting the backlash and getting them to run quiet is a chore if the bushings are worn.


My old 9" atlas used to sing in high gear....
Click to expand...
I actually fixed all the loose bushings in the feed gears under the end cover, but I'm getting noise from the head stock and feed gearbox too.

There are two gears in the end cover that are repaired with brazing. Neither are dead true but I got them much closer than they were.
 
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