Old lathe spindle setup

Hello all,

since I got the minilathe I have always wished for a bigger and especially more rigid lathe. That I found a couple months ago, and I bought a very old lathe for near nothing.

I have it now torn down, painted and am about to build it back together.

However I have a small problem with the spindle assembly: it was turning smootly before teardown but now I just put everything in place it's binding when I screw everything together.
It is an old type assembly: bronze bearings, just one thrust ball bearing in the back.

Is there a special procedure and things I have to check out to get such old bronze bearings back adjusted finely?
What are the locking rings for, they seem to have no effect. Any help will be greatly appreciated.


Plan is to try to retrofit it to CNC later on, but I would really like to have it running as is first :)

Here are some pictures of the work in progress.

Thanks
Pierre

If the head and or bed were twisted and the machine ran itself in that way, if you reassmbled it w/o the twist/bend/whatever, you may have gotten the axis of rotation askew.

The think may want to be tightened down in a certain sequence or to a certain special torque - over or uneven torquing might cause sticking and binding.

Sometimes, old sleeve bearing stuff should not be disturbed for these very reasons. You're gonna have to take your time and do some experimenting to nudge caps this way or that and try to find the sweet spots where things will be properly tightened and yet the thing will still turn.

That or else line bore the housing straight/square and grind the spindle journals to the proper fit/clearance as well.

Time and patience, time and patience, with the situation you're in....

Sometimes on those old lathes there are shims under the bearing caps. These are used as a crude way of adjusting for wear on the bronze. If you release the bolts slightly does it stop binding, if yes I suggest simply experimenting with shims to see if you can get it running freely but without excessive clearance. Coke cans make good shim stock.

Quote:

---

Coke cans make good shim stock.

---

And it comes with a very good throat lube! ;) :D:D

Smooth aluminum foil works well too - more consistant thickness if you use the non-quilted stuff. Exacto knife cuts it just fine.

Go to your local "we sell anything" auto supply store and purchase 2 feeler guage sets, minimum .0015 to at least .020. They are not expensive, cheap.
clean and remove any shims, or any trash, clean shaft and bearing housings.
Unload the belts and back gear. Assemble bearings with a light lube ( 30 wt oil). Do not tighten bolts, start with the smallest ( thinnest ) feeler guage, same on each side of the bearing housing. Lightley tighten the bolts and see if it begins to lock up, if so keep adding feeler guages ( same both sides) untill the shaft turns freely, tighten to the lathe torque specs( should be around 45-50 lbs ) if still free ( should have some drag), remove and clean the bearings and install one of the final feeler guages under the bearing (one only),Tighten to specs.You should have about the same drag as before, then install the belt , again check for binding, engage the back gear and recheck.
These are most likley hand scraped, poured, babbit bearings,which is almost a lost art, so make sure the lube wicks are in place, the lube ports are clean and free of debri. If you correctley shim, there should be some heat on the bearing housing when tested , not excessive. Give the bearings time to bed in, then start cutting..After a couple of hours , check the run out of the chuck end, may be loose, so add a thicker shim in .001 increments.
There are a lot of those old lathes that have very little , if any run out ,provided the chuck end bearings are correctly shimed.This just takes time, but is the difference between a boat anchor and a good home shop lathe.
Correct lubercation can not be over emphasized.
(hey, don't laugh, I'm old enough to have done just a couple of these)

Adobe (old as dirt)

Forgot to mention,before any shimming is done, make sure the lathe and bed are leval...leval before trying anything..Like NC cams says, any twist will affect the the head stock..You will need a good machinest leval and the proper procedure..just another thing that takes a lot of patience..

Adobe (old as dirt)

And even if you end up with a lot of slop you can still turn to quite good tolerances. The spindle is so heavy that it rides on the bottom bearing when you are taking a final sizing cut because the cutting load is so light. And if you want to take heavy cuts without the spindle bobbing up and down in sloppy bearings you just mount the tool upside down and run it backwards.

Geez, you guys are super, never thought about that..! But your right, the spindle would be forced down..Damn and I thought I had done everything with an old wore out POS to make accurate cuts.. Must be the long winter nights in Canada ..

Adobe (old as dirt )

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adobe Machine

... Must be the long winter nights in Canada ..

Adobe (old as dirt )

---

It was actually long warm days in New Zealand where I served my time and for around nine months of it ran an ancient lathe with overhead belt drive and sleeve bearings a tad bigger than this one. Making hundreds of brass sleeves that I think were used in the tracks of big excavators.

Thank you so much for your help!

I'll arm myself with patience and try to do that well :)

AM, Ref. Geof's #8 This has also been done on CNC lathes. The product was large forming rolls with deep grooves that had radiused bottoms. We used a 3/16" carbide button tool upside down on a modified toolholder; ran the machine backwards. The hydraulic clamping of the tool turret acted as a hydraulic vibration damper. Worked fine.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RICHARD ZASTROW

AM, Ref. Geof's #8 This has also been done on CNC lathes. The product was large forming rolls with deep grooves that had radiused bottoms. We used a 3/16" carbide button tool upside down on a modified toolholder; ran the machine backwards. The hydraulic clamping of the tool turret acted as a hydraulic vibration damper. Worked fine.

---

This reminded me of one time I did it on a #6 Herbert Turret lathe. I was roughing blanks for duplex sprockets and needed to put a 1" wide groove about 1-1/8" deep starting at an OD of around 8". I had a 1" HSS tool upside down in the front tool post with the machine running at somewhere around 100 rpm and a two foot bar wedged in the cross slide handwheel for leverage to take a cut of around 15 to 20 thous per rev. The chips came out looking like flexible electrical conduit. The guys in the shop were blown away because they all ran center lathes and did not have a clue what was possible with a big turret machine. I was the only one to ever touch the Herbert.

Those big Herberts were fun to run.

Hey Geof, you like turret lathes?
The shop were I ran the planers was also thick into Warner Swassy.
They had several exampels including a 1SC and a 2SC cnc turning centers, two very tough and very accurate machines. Also had some manual turret lathes, a pair of #5's and a #4 saddle type and, a huge bed type I think it was a #1, I'm not sure but , it had a 24" W&S two jaw power chuck on it with an 8" spindle hole! I thought this machine was built by God himself but, nobody else would touch it, apparently somone had a pretty bad accident on it a few years befor I got there and everyone was now afraid of it (so I was always told)
I often ran the saddle types while I was there and I realy enjoyed them.
The only time I got to run the monster was when we would run an outfeed roller job on it because the 1SC was tied up.
3.5" Stress Proof through the bar feeder, in 20 foot sticks.
I turned two diameters with two diferent box tools. One was a clean up to 3.400 and the other was a bearing journal at 2.4687 I think, then part them off at 24" when I had them all on one side I would run them back through to do the other side and , done.
The old timers there said that was just a puppy cut for that old dog but, I was sure impressed to take nearly an inch of stock off in one pass and hold the +/- .0005 on the bearing diameter, all day!
Yeah man, them big old turret lathes are cool...

merl

Hi all, the trick of running the spindle backwards and the tool upside down in the front is the same as using a parting tool in the back tool post upside down and running the spindle normally.
This method is to be preferred in lathes with bronze bearings due to the spindle rising up and climbing onto the tool or worse pulling the crosslide in and CRUNCH!
Coming back to the problem with the bronze bearings going tight, this is just a bit of misallignment when run in bearings are disturbed.
The procedure is to blue the shaft, assemble the caps and bronzes, add the original shims and lightly nip the bearing caps up while rotating the shaft.
When it starts to tighten up, remove the caps and bronzes and check for high spots.
You cannot run the lathe in this condition by adding shims if there are high spots.
The shims must bear full length and the high spots scraped down, then the bearings are nipped down untill they can be tightened fully.
When the bearing shows an even marking with at least 25 points of reference marking to the inch it is considered ready to run and will support the spindle with an oil film for a considerable period of time.
Ian.