An American in England (ATW Lathe)

[Greg Menke]

A few pics of my ATW. Looks like mine is not equipped with the reversing clutch.

 

[Greg Menke]

This is the only ATW documentation I have on the relieving attachments for High Duty lathes, in this case teens vintage machines;

 

[Bokoshoko]

This is the relieving attachment gearbox - it sits above the threading/feed box and has a separate gear transfer to the back of the spindle


From a different angle, you can see the output where the drive shaft goes to the attachment itself


This is the actual attachment... judging by Greg's most recent post this is the universal version


From the other end...


Very hard to capture this but there are a series of markings here, the two large bolts can be slackened off and then another bolt at the top of the image is rotated clockwise or anticlockwise for a purpose I don't know as I've not read Greg's post fully yet!

 

[Bokoshoko]

This is the inside of the attachment, I stripped it all down to clean it today - it's pretty much perfect inside with the original flaking in place on all sliding/rotating surfaces. My mind is suitably boggled at what/how/why it works


The only part I'm missing is the output shaft from the relieving gearbox to the input shaft at the attachment but that looks "simple" enough to make.

After stripping it down (not that simple) and putting it back together I was able to clamp it down to my work area and then rotate the shaft by hand and the watch the motion. I'd be interested to see it under power but probably wouldn't want to be to close to it!

 

[Bokoshoko]

Huge thanks to Greg for digging out all this information...

 

[Greg Menke]

That thing is bonkers lol thanks for the pics! I guess you're going into business making hobs and reamers now

But it looks like the gearbox fits yours like the old ones did, another aspect of the design that didn't change a lot. There are a couple youtube vids of lathe relieving attachments operating, generally quite low spindle rpm- though I guess the # of lobes matters a lot.

The spindle nose on my (and your) 12" is the same as the 14" lathe going back into the mists of time. My 1st ATW was a circa 1912 14" High Duty- the 1936 tooling fit it just fine- the only difference was a nice radius where the shank meets the shoulder on the new machine's spindle, the older machine's spindle had a sharp corner there. By the time I got the newer machine I had turned a backplate for the older one, which assumed that sharp corner, so I had to do a bit of rework on the backplate so it would fit. That meant chucking the 10" 4-jaw chuck in the other 10" 4 jaw, wishing I had a jib crane over the machine the whole time lol.

 

[plannerpower]

Thanks, Greg, for posting the scans of the ATW documents; my question is answered.

 

[Greg Menke]

While you're working on the lathe its well worth taking the quill and screw out of the tailstock for some cleaning too- a nice thrust bearing inside and oil passages to clean where the screw journal runs, mine has a ball oiler just in front of the handwheel.

I'm toying with a DIY ER32 through coolant system for the tailstock- for rough/deep drilling mostly. I left the MT3 arbor with an 8-32 hole which I didn't plug with a setscrew so the tailstock assy gets flushed with cutting oil along with the tooling. Washed a fair bit of dirt out, the split cotter assy was particularly dirty. The downside is the MT ends up thoroughly lubricated so quill and tooling need cleaning afterwards.

 

[EmanuelGoldstein]

There are a couple youtube vids of lathe relieving attachments operating, generally quite low spindle rpm- though I guess the # of lobes matters a lot.

Probably amateurs I've seen relieving lathes (Reinecker, I think ?) in operation, they run faster than you would expect. Not 1,000 rpm but still, pretty quick. And noisy !

Really neat find, now you must do something with it !

 

[Bokoshoko]

While you're working on the lathe its well worth taking the quill and screw out of the tailstock for some cleaning too- a nice thrust bearing inside and oil passages to clean where the screw journal runs, mine has a ball oiler just in front of the handwheel.

I'm toying with a DIY ER32 through coolant system for the tailstock- for rough/deep drilling mostly. I left the MT3 arbor with an 8-32 hole which I didn't plug with a setscrew so the tailstock assy gets flushed with cutting oil along with the tooling. Washed a fair bit of dirt out, the split cotter assy was particularly dirty. The downside is the MT ends up thoroughly lubricated so quill and tooling need cleaning afterwards.

I took it all apart (the tailstock) because the quill lock was jammed in place. I replaced the oilers and added a new one to stop the jam recurring. It's all nicely made and could be described as "overbuilt" for just an MT3...

 

[Greg Menke]

you'd think a tailstock would be simple, but they did fancy it up a bit. The taper on mine is a bit chewed up and only holds well if both taper surfaces are very clean and dry. I ran a MT3 reamer in it a little which helped some but I didn't push it and the steel is pretty hard- grinding seems a better option.