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Rulon strips to mitigate further wear

tobnpr

Hot Rolled
Joined
Sep 27, 2015
Interesting video here.
Rulon strips added everywhere...
Ostensibly to prevent further permanent wear.
Haven't seen this done before, as long as ALL way surfaces are done (including under the headstock) seems doable, but doing the saddle v's as well has gotta raise up the saddle quite a bit, would that affect rigidity?

If the material is consistent thickness, and can be applied consistently, why wouldn't it work? Again- nothing scraped in, so it's not going to improve tolerances, but why wouldn't it maintain what's there, longer- without all the sloppy way oil needed on a soft bed- and replace strips as needed?

South Bend 9 inch lathe restored with tachometer, DC motor - YouTube
 
Interesting video here.
Rulon strips added everywhere...
Ostensibly to prevent further permanent wear.
Haven't seen this done before, as long as ALL way surfaces are done (including under the headstock) seems doable, but doing the saddle v's as well has gotta raise up the saddle quite a bit, would that affect rigidity?

If the material is consistent thickness, and can be applied consistently, why wouldn't it work? Again- nothing scraped in, so it's not going to improve tolerances, but why wouldn't it maintain what's there, longer- without all the sloppy way oil needed on a soft bed- and replace strips as needed?

South Bend 9 inch lathe restored with tachometer, DC motor - YouTube

Painted.. then epoxy clear-coated.. the final drive pulleys?

"Polished" but did not MEASURE, assess, plan, then plane, mill, grind, nor scrape anything?

I might hire him to re-furba-shit my damned kitchen cabinets.

But the lathe is a travesty bred of a cross between ass-umptions and ignorance as to what really matters, where, and whyso.

Rulon and cousins work well enough. Work best on the protected UNDERSIDE of the carriage where chips and dropped tools and such don't tear it all up right away. Less spend on expensive materials, shorter stress length on as much as a 40 to 1 difference in thermal coefficient of expansion that wants to break the bond as well.

And works well ONLY when the surfaces to be attached to have been corrected FIRST, space made for the plastic and its binder, surface tested again and further touched-up afterwards, and yes, oil is still expected, most real-world applications.

AND NOT mere doll-house decorative furnishings.

Barrel of salt on this one. Really.

May as well have used the Teflon tape sold to correct sticky drawers, old all-wood furniture. Rulon ain't as cheap!

Far better guidance is out there.

Or right here on PM - South Bend and easily a dozen others. Mills and such as well as lathes.
 
That might the dumbest thing I have ever seen!

Richard will get a kick out of it.

Aneurism, rather!

Hope he sees my post first, goes off in the habitual and familiar bitch-overdrive rage instead, and never-ever watches what his bedrock of all fame and glory - the Ewe's Toobs video - has served-up in competition.

Otherwise, it will be like the poor sod circumcised by a lumberjack, double-bitted axe.

No end to the prick.

:(
 
Aneurism, rather!

The problem nowadays is there aren't enough Richard Kings left in the world who know how to rebuild machines correctly. Like what happens in any information vacuum situation, people who have a problem to solve do so however they can, but their solution doesn't benefit from all the lessons learned with the [now lost] prior art. They fill the void with something that might or might not be practical, useful, or prudent.
 
The problem nowadays is there aren't enough Richard Kings left in the world who know how to rebuild machines correctly. Like what happens in any information vacuum situation, people who have a problem to solve do so however they can, but their solution doesn't benefit from all the lessons learned with the [now lost] prior art. They fill the void with something that might or might not be practical, useful, or prudent.

I have found the reverse, actually. Seriously good scrapers out, there, and plenty of them. Some are/were his students. Others had never been. The "art" isn't lost, nor will it be. The learning curve just gets longer - if even that.

Alex' comment as to SIP Genevoise may have been a tad OTT. But it was also true.

Great, or just good amongst other greats, Rich holds neither patent nor any other form of exclusive on the craft.

None among us are irreplaceable nor indispensable, else the whole damned world may as well have ended when first guy ever to be named "Adam" left it.

It did not.

If it does do?

Won't be for lack of scrapers. Even fishermen, goat-herders, or dirt-farmers only "maybe".
 
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The surface tension of scraped iron is what holds the oil. I guess if starting with a corrected lathe like Tom has it would be nice if there was a product to keep it correct. Like oil! The high wear spots on machinery get polished and lose the oil holding surface then wear faster. Does this product act like a scraped surface with oil?
Good maintenance and oiling are the key to a machine lasting. Lack of oil and maintenance is why there are worn out lathes. A magic solution would be nice but probably not going to work for long. The uneven wear will show it ugly face if the surfaces aren't reconditioned.
 
The surface tension of scraped iron is what holds the oil. I guess if starting with a corrected lathe like Tom has it would be nice if there was a product to keep it correct. The high wear spots on machinery get polished and lose the oil holding surface then wear faster. Does this product act like a scraped surface with oil?
Good maintenance and oiling are the key to a machine lasting. Lack of maintenance is why there are worn out lathes. A magic solution would be nice but probably not going to work for long. The uneven wear will show it ugly face if the surfaces aren't reconditioned.

By convention, we want the lower surface free of oil pockets as they also become abrasives pockets. They belong on the underside of the saddle in this case.

What with SB's soft-enough CI saddle bearing against a not so hard bed - even IF "flame hardened" - which a depression-era tight buyer's budget had probably not purchased if even offered?

Far wiser to plane it, mill & Moglice the saddle, scrape that for oil, then just keep it clean and be willing to waste some oil.

E.A. Myers kept iron-bearing SB 9's going that way 1923 - 1960 in light production that shudda had Hardinge 20 if not 30 years before they finally bought their first one.

Sure wish I had what they spent on oil and uber-anal cleanup time to make those SB's last so long between in-house rebuilds though!

Sorta like re-flavouring chewing gum to extend its mileage, that was.

Need a lathe as has to work 8 hard hours a day every day making small parts?

Yah buys a lathe specifically meant to work harder and faster YET and three shifts if asked. It will end up a good deal cheaper than adapting a general-purpose light lathe. About five to one, as it was to prove-out, so four staff could also be freed-up do other work.
 
Interesting video here.
Rulon strips added everywhere...
Ostensibly to prevent further permanent wear.
Haven't seen this done before, as long as ALL way surfaces are done (including under the headstock) seems doable, but doing the saddle v's as well has gotta raise up the saddle quite a bit, would that affect rigidity?

If the material is consistent thickness, and can be applied consistently, why wouldn't it work? Again- nothing scraped in, so it's not going to improve tolerances, but why wouldn't it maintain what's there, longer- without all the sloppy way oil needed on a soft bed- and replace strips as needed?

South Bend 9 inch lathe restored with tachometer, DC motor - YouTube

I'm certainly no expert on it. But I researched it when I raised the table on a B & S surface grinder and found it on vee and flat ways.

You are not supposed to just apply it like a piece of tape or weatherstripping. As mentioned above you need to straighten out the machine with either a grind or epoxy, then scrape it in.

If I recall, a selling point was you could recondition ways less expensively by not doing a regrind, but epoxy and scrape. But the rulon, or other similar types are pretty expensive anyway, probably in the area of $1000 for a machine. Then you still have the expense of the scrape.

A down side is when you traverse or crossfeed, and if the strip of rulon breaks free and slides off table, saddle, or what ever, now the machine is down. You are not just going to put that broken or entire piece back. And it definitely still needs oil.
 
It's hilarious...he glues a mile of Turcite down to exposed way surfaces on the premise of reducing wear!

you can't make this stuff up!

No.. but he'll have raised the bar for f*****g it up!

Lesse;

- plasticoat grip-dip to tame the vibration of that POS treadmill motor

- truck bed liner to protect better against condescending cat urine, the only "coolant" it is likely to ever see.

- epoxy or crazy glue so it cannot MOVE, thereby delivering ZERO wear.

- aluminium foil as the tin-hat as wards-off criticism

- thin layer of squirrel poop so a blond-haired operator need not dye his moustache for visibility

- perhaps a layer of packaging tape as it wanders-off, protected from the damage of wear by sheer unsuitability for use and into the hands of someone who actually gives a damn, appreciates an SB, and is willing to take it off his hands and do it over, proper-like.
 
Lol, you guys are killing me. I just read the thread without watching, first. I though he put it on saddle ways, not bed ways. Lol.

I doesn't look like a lathe he intends to use, but if he does it'll be expensive the first time a part or tool touches it.

Just looking at his vid line up, I'm thinking he's maybe more of a woodworker, handyman.
 
Lol, you guys are killing me. I just read the thread without watching, first. I though he put it on saddle ways, not bed ways. Lol.

I doesn't look like a lathe he intends to use, but if he does it'll be expensive the first time a part or tool touches it.

Just looking at his vid line up, I'm thinking he's maybe more of a woodworker, handyman.

Professional U-tuber, mayhap. And here they said Vaudeville was dead?
 
It should be enshrined as a monument to stupidity...it's awesome....like Rube Golberg smoked some crack with a meth chaser and a hit of acid to even things out awesome...
 
It should be enshrined as a monument to stupidity...it's awesome....like Rube Golberg smoked some crack with a meth chaser and a hit of acid to even things out awesome...

Usta think the Rube Goldberg devices in cartoons actual COULD be made to work.

By the time I sorted the nerve to try it? BMW was already shipping it in motorcars, and Harry Shugart was hiding it inside Seagrrrrate Hard (to keep online) Disk drives.

Too slow, Iyam.
 
OK, so I had to go back and see the rulon job- that's pretty funny.... but then saw he painted and epoxy coated the pulleys "to prevent future rust"????? That's funny right there.
 
OK, so I had to go back and see the rulon job- that's pretty funny.... but then saw he painted and epoxy coated the pulleys "to prevent future rust"????? That's funny right there.

For his next video, perhaps he'll "pot" the whole shebang in casting acrylic and hang it on the wall above the fireplace as a hunting trophy, kilt by ensnaring in red tape.

Sure hope he ain't raising children.
 








 
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