beckerkumm
Hot Rolled
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2014
- Location
- Wisconsin Rapids WI
I'm new here and fairly clueless about metal working so bear with me. I started out with woodworking as a hobby which morphed into buying and rehabbing old WW machines, Oliver, Yates, Wadkin, Robinson etc. My friend is a machinist who makes parts for me as needed ( I have about 50 machines ) and I've gotten interested in metal work.
Even though it doesn't make sense to start out near the top end, a 1954 Monarch 16x54 lathe came up close to home. Quiet through all the gears, ways look good to my eye and enough KDK tooling and a Mitutoyo DRO to make the lathe pretty cheap. No lead screw reverse and a top rpm of 700. I haven't gotten it yet but believe the motor to be 10 hp 1200 rpm.
I've read other threads about speeding up the machine but hoping someone here has info regarding the tapered bearings. A high precision bearing bathed in oil generally has a pretty high speed rating in comparison to a standard although load can screw that up. The manual says the machine could be ordered with top speeds of 1500. It would seem to my uninformed mind that monarch would not have loaded bearings for a slow speed machine differently than a high speed which would eliminate bearing issues from the decision. If anyone knows better, I'd appreciate it. I can figure out the change as I have vfds and motors to swap, probably would just do sheaves, and usage would be low but want to do it right.
Thanks for the help. Dave