Van Norman No.12 12-8467

[Scra99tch]

Found this one on Facebook marketplace.

Went down 2 hours to Warwick RI. Paid the guy to hold it for me and came back this weekend.

Broke it down with ab gantry lift was able to prop it up.

Looking through the machine I am amazed at the condition.

It looks like a one op machine there is no wear on y axis. The top of the saddle where table meets shows very little wear. The backlash nut does show wear.

I did not get any tooling as the place was packed and I looked as much as I could.

It can with the overarm support and bar.

Looks like it was made in between 1944-1945 without the war finish tag.

I already have a subhead and a couple collets so looking for draw bars or collets if you have some extras.

 

[OTmachine]

Good machines! Ran them when I worked for the Navy.

 

[Choiliefan]

You should buy a powerball ticket tonight!

 

[Scra99tch]

Looks like the misread the sign on the spindle saying “DO NOT OVERGREASE”. No oil in sight, so I’ll pull it back off disassemble and redo the greasing procedure and fill it with oil.

Is there any type of grease that may be resistant to being diluted and thinned from spindle oil?

 

[Scra99tch]

After reading through Cal Haines write up it looks to me like this was the correct way to do things. Both bearings and gears take grease.

I'll clean it up anyways and replace with what I know to be the correct grease per Cal's post. Who knows what they used prior.

Mobilith SHC 100

 

[Scra99tch]

Got the machine all back together. I will scrub the surface rust off and probably pulled apart the spindle to clean out the older grease. I posted in the Electrical help forum section on a sluggish 3PH spindle motor. I made sure my wiring matched the incoming rotary phase wiring. I could not get the motor to not trip the breaker and was even able to stop the spindle with my hand (It was moving that slow in highest RPM setting). It would eventually trip the heaters and de-energize the breaker coil. I pulled all the contacts and gently filed any oxidization off the silver contacts.

I put that all back together and fired her up as it wound up it eventually broke loose and ran to full speed. So the motor seems a bit weak but it did not trip the breaker. I think it just was a combination of dirty contacts and old grease. I'll wire up the feed motor and post a video at some point.

 

[OTmachine]

Old bearing grease can get pretty stiff.
Do you have this manual?

Van Norman Machine Tool Co. - Publication Reprints - Van Norman No. 12 Installation and Parts Manual | VintageMachinery.org

 

[Scra99tch]

Yeah thanks I am familiar. It'll be useful cleaning out the old grease and replacing with newer more modern stuff. I don't think they used the correct stuff when the filled it. Plus it looks to me to be overfilled. Prior to 1952?? the whole spindle required grease instead of oil/grease lubrication.

 

[Scra99tch]

Looks like it’ll need a rewind. I was watching the motor and the sluggishness was causing the smoke to escape the motor. Once heated up a little it would eventually go but the motor is too hot.

I’m tempted to do it myself. But realize I could save a whole lot of frustration just buying a crappy modern one.

The feed motor wires are also coming apart and the windings are soaked in oil.

 

[OTmachine]

Should be able to adapt a newer motor pretty easily. Seems that it was about a 1 1/2 hp 1150 rpm motor on those from what I recall when I ran them, (looked it up). My Rockwell mill let the smoke out of the 1 hp 1ph motor about a month ago because of old, bad wire insulation. Luckily, I had a 2hp 3ph on hand that I adapted to it.