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My new, pre loved lathe..

RC99

Diamond
Joined
Mar 26, 2005
Location
near Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia
Some of you would have followed the story of the New Visby lathe I was looking at..Well it is now sitting in the shed and I have started to disassemble it for cleaning... It is about a 17" swing...1200mm between centres, 1/2" pitch leadscrew, inch, metric, diametral and module threading, it weighs bit (about 2 tonne I guess) bed is 13 inches wide...Dunno what hp the motor is but it is bloody big..I guess 7.5 or 10..it has a ????? spindle nose, 75mm bore or thereabouts..Came with a 10 inch 3 jaw and a 14 inch 4 jaw...Also has a hydraulic copy attachment and came with an assortment of change gears

The cross slide does not seem to have any tight spots and the cross slide screw has minimal backlash(it has some backlash because it is not adjusted up properly at the cross slide handle..Bed is worn but does not appear very bad...Tailstock looks to have been bored and a steel bush inserted..Headstock gears show no wear, some still have the original grind marks..Top speed is 1500pm and slowest is 23(I think) it has 12 speeds..

Amusingly it says to use Gargoyle oil on the ways...I will have to find out where I can get some Gargoyles :D

I cannot get the lead screw to to start spinning...I think there is a stuck interlock somewhere..

The pictures are a bit misleading...It is a lot bigger than they show
All in all it is quite dirty but seems quite a nice machine..Quite happy at the moment..

Pictures here

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Starting a vegetable plot in front of the pallet are we ? Nice looking lathe...interesting to see a genuine Australian one...
 
Interesting unit. Kind of an oddball spindle nose, but it looks like it has a nice generous through-hole.

What's that angled dovetail way on the backside of the carriage? Is that for one of those hydraulic tracer units?

Doc.
 
Maybe the "SUDS" switch explains all them holes in the spindle; this thing serve Fosters?

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Interesting unit. Kind of an oddball spindle nose, but it looks like it has a nice generous through-hole.

What's that angled dovetail way on the backside of the carriage? Is that for one of those hydraulic tracer units?

Doc.
Not oddball at all, probably A6? Maybe not as quick/convenient as a camlock, but certainly the shortest, ie. most rigid.
:D Dave
 
Good on yer mate !

I've only bought two big old lathes, so IDKS, but I'd have to say it's generally a whole lot easier to get a goodun now than 15 years ago, at least in parts of the world I'm familiar with.

I do envy you the tracer: I think it's a great compromise between a manual machine and an NC for the general engineer far removed from a high-throughput, high-cost, intensive infrastructure engineering centre.

And if the bed did turn out to be quite worn, you could always make a 'fudge bar' for the tracer master, which had the opposite error, to use for jobs where you have to turn parallel over long distances, like cylinder rods or guide rods....

One way to do this is just to turn the master bar on the lathe between centres without any correction, then find a way to reverse the stylus feedback, either by sensing on the wrong side of the bar (which means fiddling with the pressure bias direction, not often practicable), or using a 'see-saw' type of lever linkage with a heavy spring bias. The master bar would ideally be hollow, to give stiffness without self-weight

0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0

A lot of guys with lathes this big don't bother changing chucks even with a camlock; they just pop the 3 jaw in and out of the 4 jaw .
For one thing, they've got such a massive grip in these big sizes. Plus you can dial the chuck in for general use, and when critical work comes along, dial the workpiece and use the 4 jaw like a poor man's "Adjust-True" facility.
You can even get fussy and adjust out the usual 'wobble' if you're keen.

You won't need some wally telling you this, but in case big lathes are not something you've cut your teeth on: this "4 jaw backplate" mode of operation *can* be a trap.

While the overhang can usually be lived with on a beefy sucker like this lathe, you DO have to be rather careful with the speed change handles. I'm not sure that I'd be running any old 14" chuck at 1500 rpm even momentarily, certainly not without some serious background checks....

At the very least, you'll end up wearing a stripe of grease a foot wide (unless the chuck has dried out)... More importantly, the centrifugal force on big heavy jaws spun at high speed, when run out far enough to grip a 10" 3 jaw, will considerably reduce their initial massive grip.

Even if they don't achieve escape velocity, the smaller chuck might be vulnerable to going walkabout should there be a bit of a jam-up.

Mates don't let their mates do dreamtime !
 
Good on yer mate !

I've only bought two big old lathes, so IDKS, but I'd have to say it's generally a whole lot easier to get a goodun now than 15 years ago, at least in parts of the world I'm familiar with.

Actually I thought the opposite...All the govt departments sold off their maintenance gear about 5 to 10 years ago along with TAFE colleges as they went into computers...Anything that comes up these days is out of an engineering shop and has had the arse flogged of it...This lathe is no exception....I have got the saddle off and flipped it upside down, it has quite a bit of wear on the slides..The apron gears have also suffered water damage whether it got contaminated with coolant or not I don't know, but some of the gears and shafts have pit marks on them...

But still it is what I expected, you don't get a $50 000 machine for $2600+ delivery...

I see now why no manual machines are made in US, AU, UK any more...After seeing all the gears and work that went into making this machine it would be horrifically expensive to do the same today...I just need to clean it all up now reassemble and get a generator to run the 10hp motor it has...

And I thing the 4 jaw is a semi steel chuck...
 
Beefy machine. !0 HP? That's a bunch for mid sized lathe. I prefer an A series spindle nose it is for heavy duty lathes. You never need to take off the 4 jaw on a heavy duty machine, anyway. It may have had a in-quill live center.

What's that angled slide dovetail on the back side of the across slide? Looks like for a tracer? I see a rail along the backside for the template mounting. Did you get the tracer goodies as well?
 
Bit of an update, I have removed the apron, saddle and headstock...Had to replace a sheared off woodruff key in the apron and I will make a new oil pump plunger as the old one is a bit worn(it is just a bit of 5/8 rod with a hollow bit in it)..

I wasn't going to remove the headstock but a missing woodruff key which may have fallen out when I took the headstock cover off made me decide to clean up the headstock a bit....It had a lot of fine fine metal, paint flakes and a few metal chunks plus a moth in the bottom......

I think it has had a gear failure in the past, the bits of metal look like ex-gear teeth (if you use your imagination) plus about 4 or 5 gears to not match up with the rest...They have a dark dark blue colour to them from heat treatment while all the others are shiny..

I flipped it upside down and sprayed about 12 litres of kerosene in there with one of those garden hand sprayers...It has cleaned up quite well..

Just have to clean the quick change gearbox and bed plus the motor housing and it should be ready to go again once I find a power supply...
 
Got it cleaned down now and back together..Realigned the head using a short test bar and over a four inch distance I measured 0.005mm misalignment.. Still have no power setup to test it out properly yet....Edit: I have jury rigged a massive 1hp motor onto it...Found out the headstock oil pump wasn't working...Some dill had removed one of the valve balls...A replacement and it started pumping...Some test cuts were in order...The rigidity is amazing, I took a 8mm deep cut and it never even chattered although the motor died pretty quick :D:D

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RC.
Jeez mate, you are not mucking about are you. I think you made a mistake buying that lathe. If you had been a real gent you would have told me about it as it was almost just around the corner. Then we could have saved the old thing all that stress of an interstate trip and just brought it to my place. LOL.

Bet you can hardly wait until you get the gen set organised so you can really pull a cut.

best of luck with it.

bollie7
 








 
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