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Neat Roll Around Lodge and Shipley

Almost bought a 16" gearhead Monarch with factory trucks a few years. It had roller bearings so moving it was almost effortless

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Almost bought a 16" gearhead Monarch with factory trucks a few years. It had roller bearings so moving it was almost effortless

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

Moving my 10EE on three "permanent" Northern Tool skates becomes effortless once rolling.

As they can be intentionally pointed in any direction - including moving it sideways - it is the STOPPING that requires finesse.

First is that ball-bearings ease of roll or no, there is rather a lot of mass in motion and no "brakes". One needs to respect the intertia, and take care to not let it near the ramp-down to the rollup door's sill, shred the door enroute to a new venue.

The other is to stop it gradually so it doesn't offer to face-plant. Merely kicking a "scotch" block under the bearing/wheel not recommended. Better to "lean into it" and bring it to a stop first.

Abilty to spin it in its own length and crab it diagonally has been a Godsend for taking motors and MG or DC Drive replacements in and out alone. Painting - "soon" I hope, will be another where that ease of maneuver is a plus.
 
Those roll-around lathes are so neat. I've always wanted one, even though my shop isn't big or un-cluttered enough to utilize the roll-around feature.

Andy
 
It might be hard to get the lathe precisely level on both axes. Many times, this forum has discussed the need to get a lathe precisely level at both ends when precision turning is needed. Several posts have discussed the use of "Master Precision Levels" for this goal.

I wonder if the designers of this wheeled lathe included any means to accomplish precision leveling? It's a three-point suspension, which would not tend to impart any twist to the bed. Twisting of the bed is the real issue; exact level is not important provided the whole bed is in one geometric plane. Precise levelling is just one way to insure this parallelism.

I also wonder if the wheeled legs are directly interchangeable with the stationary bases. I see no reason why this could not be designed-in.

John Ruth
 
In theory, a machine in good condition should have no twist when resting on 3 points. The need to "level" comes when you get some wear or other issue you want to minimize.
 
It might be hard to get the lathe precisely level on both axes. Many times, this forum has discussed the need to get a lathe precisely level at both ends when precision turning is needed. Several posts have discussed the use of "Master Precision Levels" for this goal.

I wonder if the designers of this wheeled lathe included any means to accomplish precision leveling? It's a three-point suspension, which would not tend to impart any twist to the bed. Twisting of the bed is the real issue; exact level is not important provided the whole bed is in one geometric plane. Precise levelling is just one way to insure this parallelism.

I also wonder if the wheeled legs are directly interchangeable with the stationary bases. I see no reason why this could not be designed-in.

John Ruth
Wheels at HS seem to be removable, HS "plinth" probably still has the cast-in "pads" at bottom - same as its statonary cousins. There doesn't seem to BE a "plinth" at the TS end. One would have to be fabbed or sourced, then fitted.

In theory, a machine in good condition should have no twist when resting on 3 points. The need to "level" comes when you get some wear or other issue you want to minimize.

Hits close to home with me. I MUST keep most of my harem mobile, acually move some of the machine-tools out of a "parking place" into the scarce elbow room reserved to USE them. Works OK for a now-and-then hobbyist. More space would, of course, be far the wiser route for anyone trying to earn a crust who hadn't the time to waste playing musical chairs with the machinery.

Here's an example. The 10EE's were designed from the outset to sit on three points. Putting roller-bearing skates under each designated point doesn't alter expected stress distribution one wit.

The Cazeneuve HBX-360 is weird. It has a slightly lesser all-up mass than the smaller 10EE.
From an Engineer's eye, its base & bed are actually more efficiently shaped as to delivering stiffness.

That said, it expects to be supported on four points, and at the most extreme ends possible of its 6'-7" length - as if it were a single-span railway bridge, through-plate, OR truss.

Seems to have worked well-enough for 30 or 40 thousand HBX lathes over a long life and still running. Their present-day Optra CNC/manual hybrid still uses esentially the same structure.

Even so, it looks like a "missed opportunity" to me. Into the bargain, I badly need to NOT have to put the sort of miniature Manhattan Island UNDER it the manual calls for. The mass of concrete is cheap and easy. A place to put it, permanently, not so much.

Supporting it "closer to" Bessel points, AKA - as Monarch did - at least "somewhat" inboard of the extreme ends - seems wiser.

Three-pointing would require some experiments and damned good measuring, but I shall probably chase that at the same time. Stress of trying to move it on four-points could be far worse than minor leveling challenges.

My slab is a decent one but still enough short of perfectly flat that the several machines I have had on four skates chronically lift one during repositioning. Not to be ignored when that happens as the floor dictates, unpredictably, AND NOT where locations for a proper span and stance were first chosen a-purpose to insure good balance, regardless.

The OP's "veteran" lathe?

"Engineered" for the position of its wheels, much as the 10EE's were, I am sure.
Calculating for such things was already ancient art and science, monumentally significant structures and bridges long before fine machinery.
 
In school there was a SB lathe, 14 or 16 inch, as I recall, it had a single leg/pedestal at the tail end. Only one like it that I have run across.

Seems like American, Monarch, or Lodge and Shipley could pull off the single leg better, due to their generous use of iron.............or maybe even Axelson?
 
In school there was a SB lathe, 14 or 16 inch, as I recall, it had a single leg/pedestal at the tail end. Only one like it that I have run across.

Seems like American, Monarch, or Lodge and Shipley could pull off the single leg better, due to their generous use of iron.............or maybe even Axelson?

Wrong list, actually. Greater mass commanded the opposite direction.

In their day, the "heavies" were big-buck revenoo-generators, easily earned the right to fixed perches with special 'crete under them. They were not meant for suffering costly downtime to move about or have to do overly-frequent re-leveling for twist and such. "Work" came to where they were, they didnt "DO" house-calls.

:)

Any lathe much heavier than the SB class as had "mobility" usually had a niche-case rationale for it, not just across the machine hall moves for redecorating.

Think artillery, armour, civil or military watercraft or rail system support, where it might be loaded in one place, off loaded many miles away for use, machinists, millrights, and other tools and such gone with it or ahead of it. Mining operations where the work area and its equipment moved periodically to chase the ore, canneries that chased the fish, were shutdown out of season, etc.

Otherwise not that hard for those types of entities to rig and move a conventional lathe. They had the rigging capability "organic".
 
In school there was a SB lathe, 14 or 16 inch, as I recall, it had a single leg/pedestal at the tail end. Only one like it that I have run across.

Seems like American, Monarch, or Lodge and Shipley could pull off the single leg better, due to their generous use of iron.............or maybe even Axelson?

The single-leg South Bends seem to appear in Navy ship and submarine machine shops a good deal- perhaps a way to help deal with any floor instability brought on by the movement of the seas.

Andy
 
The single-leg South Bends seem to appear in Navy ship and submarine machine shops a good deal- perhaps a way to help deal with any floor instability brought on by the movement of the seas.

Andy

Seems reasonable.....though, I had wondered it SB did it in consideration of the "auto shops" that they were catering to, making it less critical to level them up. I have to hand it to SB, they tried to be all things to all people, after reading some of their publications.
 








 
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