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9" SM Utilathe Restoration
- Thread starter YYCHM
- Start date
I have a belt tension hinge plate on my lathe motor & if I leave it loose so the weight of the motor holds tension, it starts doing some happy dance harmonics & I see it in the cut finish. I think the way its supposed to work (or at least the conclusion I've come to on my lathe) is to get the correct belt tension but also fix the motor position so its secure. I think I saw a 'hanging motor' tension setup on a tablesaw or something & probably stuck in my brain.
In high gear the machine sounds like it's surging and the motor bounce is less pronounced. The pully is canted such that the amount of eccentricity is more at the small sheave end. In any event, too much vibration and fuss. This needs to be rectified. I'm hoping the scored motor shaft doesn't demand a new motor be sourced.
The motor shaft measures out as 0.625". It's chewed up pretty good. Looks to me someone deployed the motor without a key installed. The pulley measures 0.643" on motor side and 0.624" at the outboard side, so no wonder it's flopping around. Jamming the key as far as it will go towards the motor seems to improve things BUT still not good.
Your rescue package is in Calgary and should be delivered tomorrow. THANKS!
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Brent H
Ultra Member
Cleaning up the Mill after some cast iron work and went off to machine a tailstock piece for YYC ..... interesting process. It was a chunk of 4140 I made my new tailstock from. This one donated itself to my scrap bin after I bored my tailstock 0.010” over sized - argh - anyway, I had made a #2 morse taper in it already so it was a good candidate. Also the cast iron work was for the slide part of my sexy taper attachment that came with the 9 inch donor lathe that now resides in many places.
to start I machined a #2 morse taper mandril using the taper attachment. The taper is some ridiculous 0.5994 in/ft or 1.4307° so I made the piece out of 3/4 round stock, reduced diameter to .7000” (max diameter of #2 Morse). The length of the taper is 2.56” and the small diameter is 0.5720”. Basically if I went in 0.064” on the small end the taper should end at 0.00 at the big end over 2.56”. (Hopefully not confusing). I used a dial indicator to make sure the cut was 0.064”.
So after dialling things in on the 4 jaw and getting set up I started cutting away. At work I can plow off 0.050” at 1200 Rpm and all is good. - no so on the wee baby lathe - amazing chatter and made for a neato art deco piece but YYC would not be a happy camper with more oil grooves. LOL
Shooting a final dimension of 1.180” , I was happy to stop here:
shows about 3 to 4 tenths over top and bottom - some spit and polish should do’er up fine!
Will ship it off to you soon YYC
hopefully it fits a-ok. When I did mine I did not mill the 1/4” groove right through. I left an inch without it so it was not a place shite could collect. I will post about the taper attachment more on my discussion about fixing my 10 inch - also about scraping in a taper key for my compound without proper tools
to start I machined a #2 morse taper mandril using the taper attachment. The taper is some ridiculous 0.5994 in/ft or 1.4307° so I made the piece out of 3/4 round stock, reduced diameter to .7000” (max diameter of #2 Morse). The length of the taper is 2.56” and the small diameter is 0.5720”. Basically if I went in 0.064” on the small end the taper should end at 0.00 at the big end over 2.56”. (Hopefully not confusing). I used a dial indicator to make sure the cut was 0.064”.
So after dialling things in on the 4 jaw and getting set up I started cutting away. At work I can plow off 0.050” at 1200 Rpm and all is good. - no so on the wee baby lathe - amazing chatter and made for a neato art deco piece but YYC would not be a happy camper with more oil grooves. LOL
Shooting a final dimension of 1.180” , I was happy to stop here:
shows about 3 to 4 tenths over top and bottom - some spit and polish should do’er up fine!
Will ship it off to you soon YYC
hopefully it fits a-ok. When I did mine I did not mill the 1/4” groove right through. I left an inch without it so it was not a place shite could collect. I will post about the taper attachment more on my discussion about fixing my 10 inch - also about scraping in a taper key for my compound without proper tools
3 weeks in transit and my $22.65 Amazon MT2 reamers finally arrived.
Not a stitch of English on the packaging. Oh well, time to clean up that trashed tailstock spindle bore.
For a first go, I attempted a manual ream using a chucked center as back stop. This arrangement didn't appear to be doing anything. If it was, it would take forever to remove the spindle damage.
Next I tried driving the reamer with the chuck using a socket as a driver. The reamer was essentially free floating and should follow the insitu taper (Dabbler has his doubts). Turning the roughing reamer at 50 RPM had the spindle bore blemish removed in less than a minute. I was rather surprised at that. I then used the finishing reamer for approx. 30 sec. These things can remove a lot of metal very quickly. It would appear that the spindle is made of a very soft steel (the bandsaw cut through it like butter).
Spindle bore before reaming.
Spindle bore after reaming. Bore looks and feels 200% better. Finish ream a little bit more?
Because the taper moved back, I had to trim some material off the spindle nose. I cut off thin slices with the band saw until my centers and chucks started engaging the MT2 again. So far I've only had to trimmed 9/32 off.
Something that surfaced in all of this, is that the taper on my BB 1/2" chuck is garbage. At it's max dia it only measures 0.656". No wonder that thing wobbles around.
Not a stitch of English on the packaging. Oh well, time to clean up that trashed tailstock spindle bore.
For a first go, I attempted a manual ream using a chucked center as back stop. This arrangement didn't appear to be doing anything. If it was, it would take forever to remove the spindle damage.
Next I tried driving the reamer with the chuck using a socket as a driver. The reamer was essentially free floating and should follow the insitu taper (Dabbler has his doubts). Turning the roughing reamer at 50 RPM had the spindle bore blemish removed in less than a minute. I was rather surprised at that. I then used the finishing reamer for approx. 30 sec. These things can remove a lot of metal very quickly. It would appear that the spindle is made of a very soft steel (the bandsaw cut through it like butter).
Spindle bore before reaming.
Spindle bore after reaming. Bore looks and feels 200% better. Finish ream a little bit more?
Because the taper moved back, I had to trim some material off the spindle nose. I cut off thin slices with the band saw until my centers and chucks started engaging the MT2 again. So far I've only had to trimmed 9/32 off.
Something that surfaced in all of this, is that the taper on my BB 1/2" chuck is garbage. At it's max dia it only measures 0.656". No wonder that thing wobbles around.
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Two live centers, two dead centers, and my 3/8" Jacobs chuck all fit nice and tight now. I blued them all and checked them for high spots and didn't find anything to be concerned about.
That BB 1/2" has been a problem since day one, I should have taken it back. Not only did the taper not hold, it chewed up drill bit shanks. I just drove the MT2 taper off only to find the JT33 taper is galled and chewed up as well. Total garbage.
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Another to-do-list item bites the dust.
A new carriage stop. This one I made of aluminum and it actually works. Can't budge that puppy.
As opposed to this one, which I made of steel. This one you could bump along with carriage, it didn't hold well at all.
Bad design from the get go, the way clamp(jaw?) had a tendency to cant.
A new carriage stop. This one I made of aluminum and it actually works. Can't budge that puppy.
As opposed to this one, which I made of steel. This one you could bump along with carriage, it didn't hold well at all.
Bad design from the get go, the way clamp(jaw?) had a tendency to cant.
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I attempted to order a 1/2x10tpi LH tap on-line from MPI. Canada wasn't a shipping option. How did you order yours?
I asked the same thing. I ended up sending an email request through the MPI website, and through a series of emails I ordered them through Paul @ MPI tools. He was super helpful and they should be at my house today once I get home. Paul needed my address for shipping costs, and then sent a paypal invoice that I had to accept. Sent the taps USPS with tracking the whole way through USPS. There are also some available on Ebay from a different seller.
Ok, I emailed them as well. What did the shipping come to?
Paul was quick to reply. $10-$11 US is pretty much the min rate for international USPS these days. Even for a 5 cent screw in a padded envelope.
Well..... that was easy. Exchange rate sure sucks though.
And...….. I just got the USPS tracking #. Man that was a quick transaction.
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Today's project was operation scrounge. I need a piece of brass in order to make a ACME 1/2" 10tpi LH nut to sleeve into the tail stock spindle Brent H is sending me. Looking around my shop area and shed the only thing I could find was a brass valve I had liberated from a 20# propane tank with my Sawzall. Well.... there was a good inch of usable brass there so I set out to make a sleeve out of it.
Here I'm lobbing off all the valve appendages with the band saw. The piece with the white thread tape is the prize.
I milled all the corners off in an attempt to come up with something somewhat cylindrical.
Think we can turn that into a cylinder? Let's find out.
50% turned. Hey this is working.
That will do for now. Will figure final dimensions once the spindle and ACME tap are here.
The only part that gave me grief was attempting to drill out the last 1/8" of the center, most of it was 13/32" to begin with. The 13/32" bit grabbed the 1/4" exit hole so hard the stock spun in the chuck. Ended up drilling it out in 4 steps. (not sure my description makes much sense?)
Is brass fickle that way?
Here I'm lobbing off all the valve appendages with the band saw. The piece with the white thread tape is the prize.
I milled all the corners off in an attempt to come up with something somewhat cylindrical.
Think we can turn that into a cylinder? Let's find out.
50% turned. Hey this is working.
That will do for now. Will figure final dimensions once the spindle and ACME tap are here.
The only part that gave me grief was attempting to drill out the last 1/8" of the center, most of it was 13/32" to begin with. The 13/32" bit grabbed the 1/4" exit hole so hard the stock spun in the chuck. Ended up drilling it out in 4 steps. (not sure my description makes much sense?)
Is brass fickle that way?
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