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Elgin Toolworks bearings

trland

Plastic
Joined
May 12, 2021
Hello all, This is my first post here. If this is not the correct sub-forum for this post, please let me know and I will move it. I'm in need of some expert opinions.

I'm an amateur machinist and a bamboo fly rod maker. We (my brother-in-law and I) have an old Elgin Toolworks lathe (2 actually) from about 1920 that we use for many operations. One has recently developed what seemed like bad bearings or some debris had gotten in between the rotating spindle and the castings so we were forced to disassemble the headstock and bearings to at least clean it up and see what the problem was. After getting the spindle completely disassembled it appears the bearings may be OK but never having done this it's hard for us to tell. The bearings are New Departure 3206 for the rear and New Departure L07 as a pair on the front. The odd thing is that there appears to be a prefix and suffix that looks like it was added later (by Elgin maybe?). The rear bearing is PT3206 with the PT in a completely different font appearing to be hand printed. The front bearings say POL07DBL with the PO and DBL in the different font. It also has a W on it in another place. The other front bearing says PNOL07DB with the PNO and DB in the different font. So in trying to see if we can get replacement bearings it is very difficult to see if anything is available to match them. I found a New Departure 3206, never used and cheap but I can't find L07. Also the PNOL07DB bearing has a flange on it. Those two bearings were mounted back to back with their part numbers facing out. I attached some photos to help try to make sense of it.

Any recommendations on whether we should just try cleaning it up and reassembling with the old bearings or try to find new bearings? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.
 

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The front bearings appear to be marked as a pair, set up for a particular (DB) orientation. They were surely special, and the odds of finding original NOS New Departure are extremely low.

If you need to replace them, you may be able to get ones that will fit and mount the same. But they are not on every street corner.

Bearing types

Duplex bearings | Principle Engineering
 
Any bearing with a flange on the outer race will surely cost a fortune ,if available .....often the flange can be got around by placing a rear seat for the beaing into the housing.....if there is enough space ......if the bearing isnt pitted and rough,the by all means put it back,and find some means to eliminate the play.
 
The lathe was made closer to 1940 than 1920. It is a Chicago machine, quite different from the lathes made in Elgin before 1930.

The flange with the screw holes is a retainer, not part of the bearing. Those retainers are cast iron and thin enough to be fragile.

Those were precision bearings, hand fitted and rated for 4000 RPM service. The stamped numbers were from the lower precision versions used as raw material. Then the final high precision bearings were marked with the new part numbers after meeting inspection requirements.

Larry

DSC00496.jpg Hardinge Elgin nameplate.jpg
 
Thank you all for the great information so far. I’d love to hear more so I can keep learning.

Larry: thanks for the info on the mystical part numbers. Makes perfect sense. This is not a Hardinge, Elgin Toolworks division lathe from Chicago as in your picture. It is an Elgin Toolworks 4 x 5 Precision lathe from Elgin, IL. Here’s a pic from before we got it a few years ago.

imagejpeg_0-1.jpg
 
Ah. Sorry for the delay.

Bearings in mine were totally worn out, the angular contact pair had negative preload from wear. The replacements were from
Alpine Bearing.

BB59_1.jpg


BB59_2.jpg


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BB59_4.jpg


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BB59_7.jpg


Some comments:

The front bearings are held in place by the two side plates, which bring the outer races into contact.
The rear bearing is a single radial bearing that floats inside the bore of the casting. In one photo above
you see where the outer race has marked the bore in the casting, that's where the bearing sits in operation,
about midway between the read side plates.

The inner races are all clamped up by a single nut, with the spacer (sits inside the cone pulley) in between the
inner pair in front, and the inner race on the rear bearing.

Once you press the bearings off the spindle you will probably wind up pressing through the balls, which will
degrade them badly. I seem to recall the three bearings cost me around 300 dollars or so from Alpine. I may
still have the boxes from them in the shop at home, and they'll have part numbers.

Alpine Bearing is pretty good, I think I gave them the numbers on the old bearings and they crossed them to
new part numbers.

The paper gaskets are actually rather critical, they need to be the correct thickness so the outer races in front
are clamped up, and the side plates sealed to the castings so the oil can be retained. In the headstock shown
above, the oil cups had been replaced with zerk grease fittings which is wrong for that vintage on mine. I retrofitted
the reservoirs with oil cups.
 
Thanks Jim. That is really helpful to know. Can I ask what sort of precision did you end up with after rebuilding the bearings? We were getting about 0.001" runout right at the end of the spindle on the inner tapered surface so I'm hoping we can get back to that after this teardown. Not that it is critical for what we do but just knowing that we are doing it right.
 
The older bearings were so bad, they had noticeable axial play - a few thousanths.

I will double check what the runout in the spindle is tonight, also see if I kept the old bearings or
the packaging for the new ones.

Be aware that on high mileage machines you *will* see what looks like runout if you check inside the
spindle - because if collets were used a lot, the bore will wear at the locations where the collet bears,
and will show that it has "grown" ridges where the three slots in the collet are. Tip-off on this is the
'runout' has a three lobed pattern.
 
Thanks Jim. That is really helpful to know. Can I ask what sort of precision did you end up with after rebuilding the bearings? We were getting about 0.001" runout right at the end of the spindle on the inner tapered surface so I'm hoping we can get back to that after this teardown. Not that it is critical for what we do but just knowing that we are doing it right.

with new bearings installed properly, if you get .001 actual runout (as opposed to wear pattern on the spindle taper), then you definitely didn't do it right! should be 1/2 that max, less when warmed up.
 
1) the lathe is stored in a crate in my crawl space, forgot about that.

2) unless the original bearings are in there they are probably gone.

Will attempt to extract it this weekend, probably good idea to inspect it anyway now and again!
 
The lathe was made closer to 1940 than 1920. It is a Chicago machine, quite different from the lathes made in Elgin before 1930.

The flange with the screw holes is a retainer, not part of the bearing. Those retainers are cast iron and thin enough to be fragile.

Those were precision bearings, hand fitted and rated for 4000 RPM service. The stamped numbers were from the lower precision versions used as raw material. Then the final high precision bearings were marked with the new part numbers after meeting inspection requirements.

Larry

View attachment 320996 View attachment 320997

Larry,

Your post made me investigate a bit further and I found other posts from you from a number of years back where you said often times the lathe beds may have been swapped since parts were pretty interchangeable. So it seems that this lathe is not a 1920s 4 x 5 since it has the ball bearings but the bed may be from one of those since it says Elgin, ILL. on it. It's also one of the "backwards" headstocks with the bigger belt pulley toward the front that you pointed out in another post. Do you know anything more about that headstock? The other Elgin lathe we have looks like a No. 4 as it does not have a ball bearing headstock. Both of them take odd sized collets (4E? of which we have a few) in their non-threaded spindle nose. Thanks for the history lessons.

Mike
 
1) the lathe is stored in a crate in my crawl space, forgot about that.

2) unless the original bearings are in there they are probably gone.

Will attempt to extract it this weekend, probably good idea to inspect it anyway now and again!


Jim,
Thanks for the effort. We got it put back together with the original bearings for now. We were careful to line up all the index marks we found on the bearings and fittings. Seems to be quite smooth but we'll test it out this weekend. Please post with any specs you get if/when you pull it out of storage.
Thanks,
Mike
 
Run out is less than 0.0005 at the inner surface of the spindle with it all cleaned up and back together.
 








 
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