ballen
Diamond
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2011
- Location
- Garbsen, Germany
I've found it useful to have a surface grinder, and have been thinking about geting a cylindrical grinder. Well, one came along that appeared to be in such good shape that I made an impulse purchase. As with my J&S 540 surface grinder, I never saw it in person, just talked with the seller on the phone, and thought it was a good risk.
The machine is a Studer RHU 450 from the mid-1960s. The centers are 100 mm (4 inches) above the table and the left/right travel is 450mm (18 inches). The work head can be rotated up to 90 degrees, the wheel head can also be rotated 90 degrees, and has both a cross slide and an angled slide. The table can be rotated +- 10 degrees and locked. The wheel head has a 300mm (12") wheel on the left side and has a smaller taper on the right that take a 200mm (8") wheel.
The work head has a variable-speed DC drive motor which can go from about 10 rpm to 650.
The machine was manufactured in Switzerland, and that's also where I bought it from. The nameplate has been removed, but I found the number 587 stamped on table and on the work head, so I'm pretty sure that's the machine number.
It was delivered yesterday, and I spent most of the day today going through the maintenance schedule, learning how the controls work (obscure!!) and trying to see if there were any "gotchas" in the deal. The machine came with 200 pages of German-language documentation, and I've also gotten a copy of the English language manual (50 pages shorter).
The paint matches inside and outside, so I believe that either it's original or the machine has been completely refurbished. The only thing I have found so far that doesn't work is that the handwheel for the long axis (on the left in the photo) is supposed to have two modes, 25mm per revolution and 2mm per revolution. The 2mm per rev doesn't engage. I suspect that the planetary gears inside are gummed up. I'll take it apart and free it up.
The hydraulics feels a bit 'soft', for example when I slow down to a crawl, it sometimes comes to a complete halt, pauses for a second or two, then resumes. I suspect that there is still air in the hydralics.
The bottom side of the slides still has a nice set of scraping marks, as well as a couple of deep scratches. I put a 1 micron/division indicator (0.00004"/division) on the wheelhead and ran along both axes of the table the full travel. The indicator didn't budge. There is no wear under the tailstock or in the tailstock barrel, again a good sign.
Both the work head and the wheel head have plain bearings. The first calls for Mobile Velocite 6 and the second for Mobile Velocite 3. The work head bearing is spring-loaded, and I adjusted the end play as per the manual. It seems to have a 10:1 internal taper, because the 0-10 micron range play correponds to 1-100 microns of axial float. A two micron indicator inside the MT5 taper shows no deflection when rotating.
I was going to also adjust the wheel head bearings, which at first I thought felt a bit tight. But I have never had a machine with plain bearings before (my mill, lathe and surface grinder all have greased ball and needle bearings) so decided just to try it. (My late father's voice, saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" was also echoing in my head.)
I ran the wheel head for just a few seconds, then for a couple of minutes, then for longer. It gets warm to the touch, but not hot. I had an "oh shit" moment when at first a bunch of oil got flung out, but that stopped and the oil level stayed OK, so I think that might have been oil that got sloshed around into the wrong place during transport.
The machine can accomodate W25 collets in the work head, but came with an almost-complete set of W20 1-20mm Schaublin collets along with an MT5 holder, a regular drawbar, and a "quick-open" drawbar. There are also a bunch of dead centers for the work head and tailstock. I have a very complete set of metric and inch 5C collets, so I might buy a 5C to MT5 taper adaptor and modify one of the drawbars to hold the 5C collets from the inside. (The spindle is about 30mm = 1.2" ID).
The downside was that the machine came without either a fixed or traveling steady, without a work head chuck, with 2 extra wheel flanges that are the wrong size, with a balancing mandrel that's the wrong size, and without an internal grinding spindle or extra pulleys for changing the wheel speeds. So I'll have to watch for these to pop up used or make my own.
If anyone out there has one of these machines and can help me to figure out some things, I'd be grateful. For example there seems to be an automatic stop system which I have not understood. This microswitch is "parked" on the end, but obviously is meant to be fixed where the table can contact it.
Is it meant to be contacted by this set of 4 adjustable preset stops?
Cheers,
Bruce
The machine is a Studer RHU 450 from the mid-1960s. The centers are 100 mm (4 inches) above the table and the left/right travel is 450mm (18 inches). The work head can be rotated up to 90 degrees, the wheel head can also be rotated 90 degrees, and has both a cross slide and an angled slide. The table can be rotated +- 10 degrees and locked. The wheel head has a 300mm (12") wheel on the left side and has a smaller taper on the right that take a 200mm (8") wheel.
The work head has a variable-speed DC drive motor which can go from about 10 rpm to 650.
The machine was manufactured in Switzerland, and that's also where I bought it from. The nameplate has been removed, but I found the number 587 stamped on table and on the work head, so I'm pretty sure that's the machine number.
It was delivered yesterday, and I spent most of the day today going through the maintenance schedule, learning how the controls work (obscure!!) and trying to see if there were any "gotchas" in the deal. The machine came with 200 pages of German-language documentation, and I've also gotten a copy of the English language manual (50 pages shorter).
The paint matches inside and outside, so I believe that either it's original or the machine has been completely refurbished. The only thing I have found so far that doesn't work is that the handwheel for the long axis (on the left in the photo) is supposed to have two modes, 25mm per revolution and 2mm per revolution. The 2mm per rev doesn't engage. I suspect that the planetary gears inside are gummed up. I'll take it apart and free it up.
The hydraulics feels a bit 'soft', for example when I slow down to a crawl, it sometimes comes to a complete halt, pauses for a second or two, then resumes. I suspect that there is still air in the hydralics.
The bottom side of the slides still has a nice set of scraping marks, as well as a couple of deep scratches. I put a 1 micron/division indicator (0.00004"/division) on the wheelhead and ran along both axes of the table the full travel. The indicator didn't budge. There is no wear under the tailstock or in the tailstock barrel, again a good sign.
Both the work head and the wheel head have plain bearings. The first calls for Mobile Velocite 6 and the second for Mobile Velocite 3. The work head bearing is spring-loaded, and I adjusted the end play as per the manual. It seems to have a 10:1 internal taper, because the 0-10 micron range play correponds to 1-100 microns of axial float. A two micron indicator inside the MT5 taper shows no deflection when rotating.
I was going to also adjust the wheel head bearings, which at first I thought felt a bit tight. But I have never had a machine with plain bearings before (my mill, lathe and surface grinder all have greased ball and needle bearings) so decided just to try it. (My late father's voice, saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" was also echoing in my head.)
I ran the wheel head for just a few seconds, then for a couple of minutes, then for longer. It gets warm to the touch, but not hot. I had an "oh shit" moment when at first a bunch of oil got flung out, but that stopped and the oil level stayed OK, so I think that might have been oil that got sloshed around into the wrong place during transport.
The machine can accomodate W25 collets in the work head, but came with an almost-complete set of W20 1-20mm Schaublin collets along with an MT5 holder, a regular drawbar, and a "quick-open" drawbar. There are also a bunch of dead centers for the work head and tailstock. I have a very complete set of metric and inch 5C collets, so I might buy a 5C to MT5 taper adaptor and modify one of the drawbars to hold the 5C collets from the inside. (The spindle is about 30mm = 1.2" ID).
The downside was that the machine came without either a fixed or traveling steady, without a work head chuck, with 2 extra wheel flanges that are the wrong size, with a balancing mandrel that's the wrong size, and without an internal grinding spindle or extra pulleys for changing the wheel speeds. So I'll have to watch for these to pop up used or make my own.
If anyone out there has one of these machines and can help me to figure out some things, I'd be grateful. For example there seems to be an automatic stop system which I have not understood. This microswitch is "parked" on the end, but obviously is meant to be fixed where the table can contact it.
Is it meant to be contacted by this set of 4 adjustable preset stops?
Cheers,
Bruce