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Lang lathe with Hydraulic Tailstock - Why?

Peter S

Diamond
Joined
May 6, 2002
Location
Auckland, New Zealand
This 20 inch swing Lang was advertised recently here in NZ. It has a hydraulic copy attachment, but also a tailstock which looks to be piped up to the hydraulic system.

It sure isn't your plain old tailstock.

Lang 20 inch Wanganui 03a.jpg

Any ideas what this design was intended for?

Was it just a quick way of retracting/advancing the ram, power-feed for drilling or something more than this.

Hopefully the new owner reads PM and will chime in with some info!

Lang 20 inch Wanganui 01.jpg Lang 20 inch Wanganui 06.jpg Lang 20 inch Wanganui 02.jpg Lang 20 inch Wanganui 03.jpg
 
Copy lathes commonly have a hydraulic /or air tailstock ...speeds production....Does it have the later Lang trapezoidal ram in the tailstock?....Completely adjustable for wear,unlike the common round ones......Lang did make dedicated copy lathes on the standard lathe base......Havent seen one in a while....I scrapped a 22"Lang a couple of weeks ago.Was in surprisingly good condition for an old lathe......Lang also had a special chuck mount with a short taper ...works real good.....better than camlock by far.
 
Interesting.

Your are surely correct in saying that it provides a quick way of retracting/advancing the ram, power-feed for drilling.

I can also see it being useful in maintaining a constant thrust load when machining a long workpiece that's getting hot and the blue chips are flying off. For this case there is presumably a pressure regulator to go with the pressure gauge.

I note that there's a Vickers flow regulator, presumably used for the drilling power feed and fast retraction/advance features you suggested.
 
I've watched some youtube videos recently of David Wilks trepanning deep solids into tubes plus the center plug left over, and using a Lang lathe in some. I'm not sure if he used a special system attached to the carriage or not, but I think that's how he does it. (Boring steel tube to fine tolerance. - 0.005" for Honing. - YouTube)
For tubes as long as he does I'd guess the tailstock isn't used at all, but for 2' long or less I can see how the one on the OP's photos would possibly work.
 
The Lang tailstock looks remarkably like the hydraulic tailstock on the rare Monarch 1000ee lathe.
Compensating for heat expansion was one of the points in advertising, and having the power feed quill to speed up other operations.
Other then the pressure compensation, those tailstocks seem not easy to use other wise for general work.
 
The Lang tailstock also has an odd "diamond shaped-called trapezoidal" barrel,not round .....claimed fully adjustable for wear without removal from the machine.....The lathe in the OPs pics is mid 1960s.
 
I worked on one like that in Cambridge. Drilling was fun,as there was no feel whatever,unlike turning the hand Wheel! Had to judge what was going on by the chip,I got away without crunching a single centre drill!
 








 
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