Hardinge HLV-H question

Johndifunk · Apr 14, 2018

Hi guys. I'm new to this forum. Although I've read many conversation here. I've never posted anything.

I'm a total newbie. I just got lucky and found a 1971 HLV-H with DRO for a fair price. It's in pretty good shape with zero noticeable backlash on any of the feeds.

The lathe is very dirty. The feeds are all kinda yellow from layers and layers of coulant I assumed.

What it the best way to clean this up?

Also, The carriage get's pretty hard as I go toward the tailstock. Can anyone help me figure out why?

Someone told me it was because it was worn in the well used area but why would it become hard as I move toward the tailstock. Almost as if it was binding.

Thanks a lot. I'm sure i'll have a million questions. At time.

John

Lanso · Apr 14, 2018

Correct, it is worn in the much used area and the gibs have been tightened for that area causing the less worn to be tight

JRIowa · Apr 15, 2018

John,
Your title sucks. I'm not going to lock, but please read the rules. Title must tell what thread is about. HLV-H Question! About what? Cleaning question would have been better.
JRA

Johndifunk · Apr 15, 2018

JRIowa said:
John,
Your title sucks. I'm not going to lock, but please read the rules. Title must tell what thread is about. HLV-H Question! About what? Cleaning question would have been better.
JRA

Sorry about that JRA. This is my first post and I am not very familiar with the rules yet. Thanks for the tip.

JRIowa · Apr 15, 2018

That's one of the reasons I didn't lock. There is a link to the rules about titles at the top of the page. All of the rules are at the top of the "General" page. Cleaning is easy as long as you have an unlimited supply of elbow grease.
JR

SBAER · Apr 15, 2018

If you can take a test cut near the collet you can learn a lot about what the lathe is capable of. I have owned a very worn out HLV lathe, it had about 0.002 taper per inch at the collet, making the lathe pretty useless.

JC Price · Apr 15, 2018

Sorry, I did not notice you had already posted here so I responded on your older thread in the General forum. This picture shows the location of the wear step I was talking about, marked with an orange line (click to enlarge). You can see that the carriage does not quite reach to the bottom of the back side of the dovetail. So the part of the dovetail above the orange line will wear, and below it will not. On mine, the height of this step gave a good indication of the amount of wear on the sides of the dovetail bed. (This picture is how it looks currently, so the step is not there anymore.)

Johndifunk · Apr 15, 2018

JC Price said:
Sorry, I did not notice you had already posted here so I responded on your older thread in the General forum. This picture shows the location of the wear step I was talking about, marked with an orange line (click to enlarge). You can see that the carriage does not quite reach to the bottom of the back side of the dovetail. So the part of the dovetail above the orange line will wear, and below it will not. On mine, the height of this step gave a good indication of the amount of wear on the sides of the dovetail bed. (This picture is how it looks currently, so the step is not there anymore.)

View attachment 225891

Thanks a bunch JC, I will explore mine this week. Hopefully it's not too bad. I would hate to have to have the bed reground. I'm in Canada. I wonder if anyone does this kind of work around here.

FredC · Apr 16, 2018

Hopefully the tightness towards the tail stock is caused by the accumulated gunk. Many years ago I ran a shop under a lease arrangement. The owner used some kind of vegetable based cutting oil, it hardened into a sticky mess when not used for a couple of months. He said just circulate the same oil to loosen it up. I could not bring myself to do that, dumped the crud and cleaned for a week. Replaced it with real cutting oil.
Another hopefully, is the cutting fluid was not water based coolant which can cause the wear strips on the cross slide and the Turcite under the bed to let go.

majohnson · Apr 20, 2018

When I got my HLV-H I spent 3 days scrubbing all the old oil that had accumulated. I used Zep 505, and found it work at getting all the old build up. Home Depot also sells a pack of brushes(stainless, bronze, nylon)they are cheap enough you can toss when used up.

Pulling apart the conpound and cross slide are important. There is a pocket the crossslide leadscrew it fills up and hold all kinds of stuff.

Good luck on your clean up. It amazing what these lathe will do. And threading is system works so well.

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