What's new
What's new

semi OT: non monarch but just rescraped a lathe

WILLEO6709

Diamond
Joined
Nov 6, 2001
Location
WAPELLO, IA USA
As the title states,,,, its a little off topis because its not a monarch, but I did just finish rescraping the saddle, cross, compound, and tailstock of my " large engine lathe". After I Ran out of money on a an auction of o Monarch IM 613.... I swore I was going to fix all that ailed my colchester 17 x 75. Its saving graces were the 3 inch thru hole, d1-8, inch/ metric gearbox, and 1600 rpm headstock. At one time it was my only operational lathe, not I have 3 10EE's, a larger cnc universal turning center, and a 7 axis cnc swiss, but I digress. The colchester had had a hard life before me and I must admit I contributed to its derelict state at times myself. The rack and pinion under the bed had been damaged in crashes throughout its life, and I wound up buying an apron gearbox off ebay just to get the drive pinion. I got some boston gear rack, machined it to fit, and replaced all the rack with new to go with the pinion. The pinion had a couple rolled teeth and the rack had been getting worse at the "revolution pitch" of the pinion. The bed was in decent shape, but the oil passaged had clogged, and it was riding on straight grooved surfaces. I did not do as detailed a job as Harry.... but she looks good. I had work to get it back together for, and have not taken a test cut of any length yet. Test cuts out of the chuck look better than they ever have in the time I have had it.....
 
Wille

Sounds like you put a ton of work into the machine be sure to show off you lathe if you have any pictures.

Hal
 
With those attributes it's a worthy machine to rehabilitate. Did you redo the ways or do a best effort scrape to align with the original bed? In either case it's a lot of work and at that size the pieces get heavy and hard to handle. Fixing crash damage can be challenging, buying an apron to get a pinion shows real dedication to the cause. Kudos!

X3 for photos, many here would like to see what you did.
 
The bedways showed no galling or visible wear. There is probably a bit, but it really was not bad at all. Spooting various places along the bed showed no appreciable difference. I was able to bring the bed within 0.0010/ ft all without tiedown clamps ( my horizontal boring mill I had to anchor to the floor to pull some areas down to get column to table alignment). I may have to clamp it to the floor yet, we'll see how it maintains. I'll try to get some pictures this week. I love the 3 inch through hole.... through hole size is really my only complaint on most monarchs. Many times I could stick the bar through the spindle on the colchester instead of it being steady rest work. I wound up buying a biax part way through, and figure it at about 125-175 hours to do all the scraping and rework. Fair warning - the paint is not pretty at all right now and I still have to replace all the felt wipers this week yet. 1 part I had in this lathe was a pallet crusher shaft - big sob that would not swing over the cross slide and took all I have in bed length - guessed at 100 rpm and the lathe was about hopping off the floor, so it got turned at 50... Its not a real heavy machine, maybe 4500-5500 lbs , but does decent. I will say my opinion of colchesters went down a bit as it looked like it had never been scraped before. There was no evidence of scraping anywhere on it that I found. I did not take photos as I went....I had things to do and just wanted it done. All told I had to shim the tailstock back up 0.004 after scraping the base.
 
Willie
My Colchester Chipmaster shows no signs of ever being scraped either. I say so what, because it is a very accurate machine. Good for Colchester if they can machine and grind an accurate lathe without having to scrape.
RKlopp
 
Wille,
Would love to see a photo of this machine finished. I have the next size up colchester with the carriage hand wheel on the right. They are great with the large spindle bore. Does your machine have any graduations on the carriage handwheel?
 








 
Back
Top