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Cataract Tool and Optical Co. lathe

D. Ravizza

Aluminum
Joined
Mar 4, 2005
Location
Honesdale, PA
Hi,

I would like to share a few photos of a lathe that I brought home this past Saturday. The lathe was made by Cataract Tool and Optical Co. in Buffalo, NY. I have always liked the style of these old bench lathes. I actually bought this lathe along with a slightly larger Stark Tool Co. lathe.

From what I have learned online, Cataract was bought out by Hardinge which continued very successfully to make Cataract brand lathes. I find this to be quite interesting as I expected this lathe to be a Hardinge before I went to look at it. I would love to learn more about the history of the machine plus get it up and running.

The lathe has a 7" swing and is about 32" inches in length. The spindle takes 3c collets. The spindle nose is tapered but lacks the slot/cam of Hardinge machines. So it seems to be a collet only machine.
The cross slide is a later one made by Hardinge.

I have a few questions and concerns about the lathe. My intention is not to fully restore this lathe but get it clean and operational while keeping its patina.

The tailstock taper does not appear to be a standard Morse taper. The lathe included an early Jacobs chuck, a dead center and a Hardinge brand crotch center all with this odd taper. Does anyone have data on the taper?

The headstock bearings appear to have some play. There is about .002" of radial movement if I shake the spindle. Is this a normal clearance for this type of bearing? Can the bearings be adjusted? I would like to disassemble and thoroughly clean the spindle/bearings before running the lathe. Also, what is a safe maximum RPM for this lathe?

The last difficulty is wear in the base of the tailstock. As I have gathered from reading the forum, this seems to be a common problem with this type of lathe. The vertical wear of the tailstock was surprisingly little about .005" below center. But the wear on the sides is considerable. The tailstock can easily twist side to side. I was able to slide an .011" shim in. I have thought about gluing on brass shims. Or machining out a pocket and screwing in a brass wear strip then scraping it to fit. Not sure that I want to modify the machine that much. Has anyone fixed this problem?


Thanks

Dan
 

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Cataract (Buffalo) envelope.jpg 1901 Cataract envelope
Cataract (Buffalo) lathe 3.jpg How someone fixed a worn tailstock
Cataract (Buffalo) lathe 5.jpg Possibly an original Buffalo slide rest

The pre-Hardinge (1902) Cataracts are rare. I saw one other one on eBay a few years ago. The tailstock taper and, I think, collet dimensions were carried on by Hardinge. But I think the Buffalo Cataracts were all number 3, the one that eventually was called 3C. Cataract taper tooling is very rare. Some owners have modified the tailstock to 1 Morse. Cataract's other line of goods included rifle telescopic sights. Occasionally a copy of the sight ad is sold on eBay.

Hardinge patented his cam-slotted spindle nose and his spindle bearing design. So I do not know what the older spindle bearings look like. I bet they can be adjusted, since that was standard practice on bench lathes. Chucks would have been mounted on 3C collet arbors, just as the Levin instrument lathe chucks still are. Sit down if you look up the price of the Swiss-made Levin chucks.

I will add a set of dimensions for the Cataract taper.

Larry

Hardinge tapers.jpg
 
Nice looking lathe Dan. I like the compound. Very finely cut. Not like some after-market compounds I've seen.

Sloppy tailstocks, one of the joys of flat-bed lathes. Probably not originally considered a problem as one would dial-in the taper on the first piece of a batch then, leave the tailstock set for the rest. With 5 thou of elevation needed also, I would make a saddle out of brass shim with spacers soldered on the ends to constrain the tailstock base. Shims can also be soldered or epoxied in place thus leaving the original casting unmodified.
 
Nice looking lathe Dan. I like the compound. Very finely cut. Not like some after-market compounds I've seen.

Sloppy tailstocks, one of the joys of flat-bed lathes. Probably not originally considered a problem as one would dial-in the taper on the first piece of a batch then, leave the tailstock set for the rest. ...

The OP slide rest, as was mentioned, is a Hardinge. It is the model made from around 1838 to 1955 or so for 7 inch swing lathes.

The Cataract and Hardinge tailstocks, right up to the late models, had no taper adjustment except for a couple of scarce screw cutting toolroom lathes. If they wore on the bottom, you had to replace them or resort to various tricks or a complete rescrape of both head and tailstock.

Larry
 
The nuclear option for the tailstock problem is to re-scrape the bottom of the mating surfaces. In my case that meant removing nearly
10 thou of cast iron from the underside, just to get to cleanup, before scraping. That's more or less how tall the ridge was in the center,
where the split in the bed is.

This leaves your tailstock centerline even lower than it was before.

Now the trick: make a new tailstock ram, with the hole offset to compensate. In my case I made up the ram, mounted it, and used
a boring head in the headstock to start a short bore in the ram, exactly on center. Then I transferred that to another lathe, and
centered the offcenter bore using a four jaw chuck. Important to get the ram parallel with the machine ways, *and* centered on the
new bore.

Then it's a matter of step boring a new taper, and reaming to fit a morse taper. This allows you to give up the proprietary hardinge
taper and use MT1 tooling.

It's a lot of work but you wind up with a nice machine. It won't be new in any sense of the word, but it will work a heck of a lot
better than it does now.

FWIW I've done this for two machines, a 9" split-bed hardinge cataract (chicago era) and a 7" pratt whitney bench lathe.

The pratt whitney one, I ran for years with a screwed-on stainless shim, which worked more or less OK.

Another approach would be to raise the tailstock up with wear inserts from moglice. Mill pockets, glue in inserts. You'll still
have a tricky scraping job to get it all fixed up, but you can dispense with the ram manufacture.

Tailstocks like this are tricky. You need to get the underside flat, the dovetailst in contact when the flats are in contact, and alignment
in both axes - vertical, and horizontal - in an anuglar sense. And you have to get the centerlines to match up. Both in height, and front to
back.

BTW most lathe manufacturers set the tailstock centerlines HIGH by about 5 thou or so at initial setup. This allows the machine to
remain in tolerance for that feature for *twice* the time, as if they started at exact height.

Good luck, those are fun projects. BTW the toolmaker's compound you have, is tough to find in that size, and you have a fairly modern version
of that - cylindrical dials. That compound makes this machine well worth fixing up.
 
Thanks for all of the info guys. I am pleased to hear that this machine is somewhat rare and that it's a predecessor to Hardinge machines.

Larry, thanks for the photo of the Cataract envelope and data on the Cataract taper. One neat thing I noticed on the envelope is that Cataract offer a "jumbo head with 1-in wire capacity". Could this "head" have taken 5C collets?

I have started scraping the bottom of the tailstock. It turns out there was about .006" more wear in the back than the front. So far my plan is to scrape the bottom so its parallel to the axis of the quill and then scrape the sides of the base so the quill is parallel to the ways of the lathe. Then I will figure out what is needed for shims. So far I am hoping to glue the shims on. I may do a test with some superglue to see how much thickness the glue adds and how flat it is. Has anyone tried this with superglue?

Jim, I like your idea of making a new tailstock ram and boring it from the headstock. Can't get it in location better than that! At the moment I would like to keep the original ram with the Cataract taper. However, I am tempted to make a new one as there is some play in the old one.

I attached a photo of two pieces of tooling that came with the lathe. A faceplate with 3c shank that has an internal Cataract taper. The other photo is a crotch center made by Hardinge Bros. in Chicago.

I agree that the compound is one of the nicer features of this lathe. It's very smooth. It was made by Hardinge in Elmira so it's quite a bit newer than the lathe.

The last question I have is what is a good range of speeds to run a machine like this at? And what is a safe maximum speed? Since it is so old I don't want to run it too fast but for collet work speed would be nice.

Thanks

Dan
 

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"At the moment I would like to keep the original ram with the Cataract taper. "

You can! Just take the old one out, set it aside, and put your new one in. Same as I've done, keeping the
original for posterity. You can always go back.
 
Bearing bad news

I proceeded to disassemble the head stock on the Cataract. I wanted to assess the condition of the bearings and give everything a good cleaning.

Sadly, the front bearing is heavily worn. The rear bearing is a little scored but overall in good shape. The front journal on the spindle is heavily scored and is worn about .005" undersized. The front bearing seems to be at the end of its adjustment life. Each bearing is adjusted by two screws. After cleaning everything I ran the screws in as far as I could and spindle was still loose (about .003" radial play).


I am a little disappointed as I was hoping I could tighten up the bearings a little and put the lathe to work. Now I don't know if should mess with bearings and just let the lathe retire. Or find a away to fix it.

I have thought up a possible repair for the bearings. It would be a fun challenge. My idea is to first grind the worn journal down so it's smooth and parallel. Next I would machine a new bearing with a smaller bore perhaps out of a bearing bronze. Perhaps it could be sprung open enough to slide over the unworn, larger section of the spindle. Or made oversized and just tightened down over the smaller journal. The existing bearing was compressed about .015"

Any thoughts?

I suspect the original bearings are made of cast iron but they could be steel. Would bronze be a good choice for a new bearing? Bronze might have a better chance of flexing. What type of cast iron would be suitable for this type of bearing?

I also attached a photo of one thrust bearing. Its a very simple design, no balls. Simply a flat surface with an oil hole and small oil groove. There is a thrust bearing on each end of the headstock pressed into the casting.

Thanks for all the help!

Dan
 

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Cataract 5 bearings 1.jpgCataract 5 bearings 2.jpg

For comparison, here is a pair of Hardinge Cataract no. 5 iron bearings. They have more flexing slots and a much simpler adjusting screw. The oval opening holds a felt pad fed with a yarn wick from an oil reservoir in the base of the headstock.

Hardinge filed his patent for his improvements on the Cataract headstock in November, 1903, fairly soon after buying the Cataract Optical lathe. See US patents 894634 and 894635. The design was good, and lasted for many years. The tapered chuck mount is still in use.

I once took a Hardinge headstock apart that had been fitted with home made bronze bearings. Both spindle and bearings were in horrible condition. Usually the headstocks with original parts and oil still in the felts are in pretty good shape.

Larry
 
The plain bearing 9" machine I bought, had the exact same symptoms. Rear bearing useable but a bit worn, front bearing beyond worn.
It had been fitted with a conical piece of brass shim between the headstock housing and the cast iron bearing, so it could be brought
up to clearance with the adjusting screw.

One approach would be to get the spindle plated oversize with hard chrome and then re-ground. A new home-made bearing
from bronze or durabar would be another good approach.
 
How far to take the TS rebuild depends almost soley on whether you need/want to do a lot of drilling with it.

As far as a work support ("work between centers") the tailstocks were made fixed because all these lathes have drop on compounds. So as long as the compound is set to go 0 -0 end to end on a 5" test bar held between centers (about the limit of cut without resetting the tool or compound) it will be unnecessary to do anything much with the TS except make it a good snug fit on the ways so it repeats when taken off and put back on the lathe. (yes, I usderstand that as the center drops, even a 0 - 0 indication from end to end will *minutely* cut a hyperbolic form. But if the center is anywhere close, it won't be noticeable in 5" or so)

If the need is to do a lot of drilling with it, I like Jim R's approach. Save the old barrel, but make one that is actually useful for a 1/2" chuck (besides the little but capable 1/2" that Hardinge used to provide) with a #2MT.

I've scraped a lot of older Hardinge and cataract accessories. Usually goes fast due to tiny areas; so long as a good survey is done, plan made, and stuck to.

However, if base need scraped too thin in the flat areas, the cam studs may need replaced or reworked, too; especially if those parts also already have a lot of wear. There is not much leeway in order to make them effective and still tight against vibration.

If you get fascinated by these cute & useful old lathes, the 9" split bed parts don't tend to be overly expensive and there are a lot of them around. But it would be nice to see that old girl put back in useful shape.

smt
 
One cheat on the pull-downs is to tap the square portion that slides into the slot, and thread the vertical shank that extends down from the cylinder with
the cross-hole. They don't *have* to be hardened - although even the oldest cartarct ones I've got are harder than billy-goat dicks.

Tailstock rams ideally want to be a honed fit into the body of the tailstock - but they work just fine if reasonable manufacturing tolerances are
used for the replacment. I've turned them between centers. Putting the tapered socket in there offcenter to compensate for wear on the
underside works actually pretty well.

These photos are too big and will screw up the forum so I'll just put the links:

http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/cat_tail_1.jpg

http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/cat_tail_2.jpg

http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/cat_tail_4.jpg
 
It is not either kind of Cataract. There were many makes of similar lathes in that era. The one on Craigslist is over priced. It has distinctive features than could lead to identification, but I don't know what it is.

Larry
Larry,

I didn't think it was a good deal, but was just curious. Several things looked similar, like the bed feet and the square-ish ways (hard to tell if they are really square).

Was mostly curious, I don't think I need any more lathes at this point. ;)
 
The headstock on that is definitely pratt and whitney. Somebody's monkeyd with the oiler though.
The tailstock might or might not be P&W, the shape's right but the handle for the screw is not what I'm
used to seeing for those.
 
update

Hi,

I would like to post an update of the progress with the Cataract lathe. Thanks to all the helpful information provided here its coming along fine.

I reground the front journal on the spindle. I ground the spindle between centers using a soft live center machined to the internal 3C taper. It's now about .01" undersized. It turned out well after a lot of polishing.

Next, I made a replacement bushing out of class 40 gray iron dura bar. It was a little complicated to machine it but it came out ok. The new bushing will just slide over the unworn portion of the spindle and has enough range to close down onto the newly ground journal. It should have about .011" more adjustment life left in it before the adjustment screws bottom out again. This is approximately the same amount of adjustment that's left in the other bushing which shows very little wear. The new bushing should hopefully last for the next 110+ years!

After reading Hardinge's patent of improved bearings I feel confident that the new bearing will work with this extra compression. The patent states that the bushings should be compressed about .01" to seat correctly in the tapered bore in the headstock.

The other nice thing about the improved bearings is that the screw will both compress and expand the bushing. In my machine the adjustment screws will only compress the bushing. It was a real pain to get the old bearing to expand and loosen up. About the only only way to get to it was through the oil hole on top.

On the new bushing I machined a slot to enable prying it loose through the oil hole.

The Velocite No. 10 arrived so, the headstock is almost ready to go back together. I am thinking of powering the lathe directly using a three phase motor and VFD. Has anyone else used a VFD on this type of lathe? What is a safe maximum speed for this lathe?

The tailstock is still a work in progress. I did decide to go nuts and make a new ram for it. The main reason being the old ram had worn rather loose.

Thanks again for all the help.new journal.jpgnew bush.jpg

Dan
 
That replacement durbar bushing is really phenomenal work sir. It's really a pretty complicated
part with lots of geometry that has to be pretty much right on and from the photo it seems like
you've nailed it.

I'm really curious about the sequence of operations you used to get to the final part. I suspect
that the round features were turned all in one setup on a stub, then the milling was done, and then
it was parted off. But any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I am interested in doing the
same job for my plain bearing cataract machine.

Thanks much - Jim
 
Thanks Jim! I would be happy to tell you how I made it.

It was a good challenge.

First, I faced and bored a length of bar slightly longer than the finished length then faced the other side. Next I surface ground the second face parallel to the first. This may not be needed but I wanted both ends to be parallel and square to the bore.

The next step was to turn the taper. I mounted the bushing on an expanding lathe mandrel. Using a mandrel between centers allows it to be removed from the lathe to check the taper. The taper was checked with a test indicator and a sine bar. The sine bar was set off the old bushing. I believe the angle was about 4 degrees. Not exactly 4 though. Once I got close to the finished size I removed the bushing from the mandrel and tried it directly in the headstock checking the fit with a sharpie mark.

This expanding mandrel was frustrating as the bushing kept slipping especially during roughing. In the end it worked fine. The run out of the finished bushing was less than .0005.

If I were to do it again I would have turned, between centers, a soft arbor with a shoulder and a cap/washer and nut to secure the bushing. A soft arbor is needed anyway for milling.

To fixture the bushing for milling I made up a soft arbor and a cap that had a step to fit the ID of the bushing. The arbor was chucked into a small dividing head on the Bridgeport. First, the grooves were cut using a mill/saw that was .125 thick with a .0625 radius. This cutter gave me trouble as it wobbled a bit leaving the groove even wider. My fault really for not checking. In the end the wider grooves seemed to make a more flexible bushing. The original grooves are about .1"

Five grooves are cut leaving the sixth space uncut. A slitting saw was used in the sixth space to split the bushing. I cut right through the bushing into the arbor and cap.

Next, the dividing head was tilted vertically and the counterbores were cut with an endmill. Last, the removal slot was cut with a .125 end mill.

I had to do some trig and head scratching to figure out exactly how deep to make the counterbores. It was tricky considering that the bushing has to compress to close down on the new journal and still have additional adjustment life.

The most critical features on the bushing are the taper and the depth of each counterbore. I would have liked to machine all the round features in one set up but I really think the best way to do the taper is between centers. That way it can be removed from the lathe and checked. But perhaps there is a better way to do it.

What size is your Cataract lathe?

Dan

lathe mandrel.jpgarbor mill.jpg
 
Mine is a 9" machine with a spindle that takes 5C collets. When I bought it the cast iron bearing
was already worn out, it had a loose front spindle, and also two pieces of 0.005 thich brass shim
stock between the headstock casting and the bearing!

Your photos are an inspiration to me and I am thinking of getting the spindle journal surfaces
ground.
 








 
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