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Darren's active projects

Darren

Darren

Ultra Member
Premium Member
I always have a lot on the go, so i figured i'd start a thread. It'll probably be picture heavy if theres any interest, because everyone loves pictures, right?.

Right now i'm working on installing the new Ditron 3 axis DRO on my Emco V13, so lets start with that. Tomorrow I'm going to pickup my brand new to me Monarch 10ee, which will be a project in itself.

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I'm going to add an elbow to the display arm to raise it up and move it back. It interferes with my tool holder rack and is too low for me


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This lathe had a DRO on it before, when it lived in the robotics lab. I wanted to reuse the existing holes, as much as possible. The original scale was 2" longer than the new magnetic scale, so i made up an adapter/backer out of 3/16" stainless flatbar. It ate 2 endmills and one tap. Should have bought the aluminum.....



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The Ditron D80 has a built in tachometer function, which includes a pickup and a magnet. I took some ABS pipe and bored it to be a tight sliding fit onto the spindle, then drilled a hole for the magnet. I hacked up an ABS coupler to create a ring that would slide over and retain the magnet.


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A few drops of crazy glue hold it all together. Its not going anywhere. I left the inner sleeve longer in case i had to add a hose clamp/zip tie


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On the compound, i also had to make an adapter. I cut the scale down to make it fit my travel needs. Again, I used the existing holes from the previous DRO install.


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Man i need to clean my lathe... Here you can see the existing holes for the reader head mount.

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Fortunately I had a chunk of cast iron sitting nearby to make a mount for the reader head.

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facemill is a bit faster at hogging off .500"


My pup likes the mill. Extra points if you regognize the voice on the TV in the background

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Now i need to work on cable management and guarding. The compound scale presents some challenges for cable management, but i have a plan. Guards will be aluminum and leather.

More to come.
 
Nice work.

I see you chose magnetic scales. I am leaning towards them as well. You mind sharing your thoughts why you chose magnetic vs glass?

Also, did you buy the Ditron DRO from a seller in NA or did you go straight to Asia to order it? How was that experience?
 
Does your Maximat cross slide have any kind of table lock? My 14x40 has the rudimentary screw acting against the gib strip on the RHS. It's not the best system in the world & I made some subsequent improvements to the locking mechanism. But I was unwilling to do without it, so I ended up putting the DRO on the LHS which wasn't my favorite option. Its reasonably well protected with the guard. So far so good..

My compound also had a DRO axis but after many years I think it was cable movement that caused an issue. One day I noticed some glitching digits, next day was out for good. It might also be the encoder hardware itself but my hunch is repeated flex right where the armored cable enters the unit. I decided for the $ replacement I didn't use it as much as I thought so the compound is bare dials again.
 

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Yes. I came home to probably 12" of snow. More where it drifted. Almost done plowing. I'll give more details shortly
 
RobinHood said:
Nice work.

I see you chose magnetic scales. I am leaning towards them as well. You mind sharing your thoughts why you chose magnetic vs glass?

Also, did you buy the Ditron DRO from a seller in NA or did you go straight to Asia to order it? How was that experience?
Click to expand...
I had glass scales on my other Emco V10P lathe. They were fine, but a bit bulky on a smaller machine. Also, magnetic scales can be easily trimmed, which i did on two of these. Lastly, these are said to be unaffected by chips/coolant. I ordered from Amazon. I did find it slightly cheaper elswhere, but i trust Amazon a bit more. With a bit more patience I could have ordered direct from Ditron with the scales cut to my needs. I did it myself, it was easy to trim them.
 
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Stopped at Can Tire in Fort Frances , about an hour before our destination to grab a tarp, bungie cords and Fluid Film. As you can see, the roads were the shits. The Ram had no problem though.


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My buddy Rob had the job of clearing the deck while I handed over the cash as fast as I could.

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I wasn't too trusting of those tine forks, all I could see was disaster happening in front of my eyes, but nothing happened. The man selling the lathe was a smooth operator.
(He was also a super nice guy!)

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First pee break on the way back. The straps were getting loose. Should have stopped sooner, but there was nowhere safe to do so. Lots of tongue weight. More than i wanted even. Glad my welds held up. All i could picture was the tongue snapping off and the lathe getting launched into the ditch.

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Winter Wonderland back at the shop
 
Here i will add a bunch of pics and some details on the lathe itself

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Its a 2500 rpm machine, July 1949 build date, motor/generator drive. Got to see it run. Purrrrrsssss like a kitten! sooo smooth, and very quiet.

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Motor/generator unit.

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The two images above are a transformer mounted on the main electrical inlet box at the back of the lathe. I assume to provide the 115v for excitation.


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BIG dc drive motor and 'back gear' gearbox. Everything works as it should.

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Saved the best for last. Just very minor staining. No major wear that i can see, no nicks, no pitting. Nothing that can be felt with a fingernail. Of course I'll run an indicator on it and see for sure.


The biggest issue i can see is the rusty feed shaft and lead screw. They will need to be polished and examined. The leadscrew shows no wear by the naked eye though. Might look different once polished up. I hit it with a rag in a few spots and some of the rust came off, like its flash rust of something, not deep rust.

Now to get it off the trailer, cleaned, and I have some research to do, but at least its home!
 
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It was the best they had at the time for variable speed with full torque available from near zero rpm to 4000rpm. It sure runs sweet. I really want to keep the MG setup and feed it with single phase. I may build a RPC even. Or tear everything out and install a servo drive. There are many options to explore. I do like the DC MG drive though, as it works.
 
Very nice looking machine.

It is very hard to beat a fully operational MG set-up in those lathes. I would try my hardest to keep it original.
 
RobinHood said:
Very nice looking machine.

It is very hard to beat a fully operational MG set-up in those lathes. I would try my hardest to keep it original.
Click to expand...
This looks simple enough:

Converting Monarch 10ee motor-generator 3-phase to single phase, Steelman method

After recently acquiring a 1953 Monarch 10ee with a motor-generator I've been reading all the threads pro and con about preserving the M-G, using a phase convertor, using a DC drive or putting in a vfd and 3 phase AC motor. I then found the thread about...
www.practicalmachinist.com

I'll probably give it a shot before i do anything else. I agree with you about keeping it original.
 
Congrats on getting what is one of the finest lathes ever made.


dfloen said:
It was the best they had at the time for variable speed with full torque available
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Its a lot better than that! It would be expensive and difficult to replicate its performance and it is a superior to a VFD, AC motors can be constant torque, but a DC with field weakening can be close to constant HP. HP and Torque seem to get confused. Constant torque does you little good - you want torque to go up as speed goes down to maintain constant HP.

Like Robin said, try hard to save it.

I've had two 10ee's. One had the MG, ended up selling it. the only complaint was the noise, but that is the function of the fan and as noted in the link below can be replaced. The current one arrived with the MG stripped but with the 2 speed backgear cut off from the DC motor. I adapted the gear box to a 5 hp AC motor and run it off or a SEW VFD. All controls are adapted to the machines original controls. Its as good as I can make it, but still rather inferior the original 3HP DC MG drive. I'm not sweating the performance degradation as it would really only be an issue at low speeds and I've bigger lathe for such work....but there are times when very slow speeds with lots of HP are nice to have.

Some of these guys are quite credible with electronics

 
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@dfloen, thank you for adding a great string of photos with your post #1, 4, 6, 11, & 12. Wish more members would do that along with project details meaning the background music so to speak.

Appears you have quite a sized shop, mine is puny compared to that.

Thanks and good luck with your new to you lathe.
 
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