M.B. Naegle
Diamond
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2011
- Location
- Conroe, TX USA
So I'm no longer a proud Logan lathe owner. I sold my model 200 a couple years ago, and my 820 went away on Monday (I kept my T-shirt though!). I'm still set with small tool-room lathes so other than the regret of letting go of old iron, I can still turn parts. Letting go of the 820 made some room, which my wife loved, but I got the eye-roll this morning when she saw what I drug into the garage last night.
I struck a deal with a gentleman south of Houston for an Ames Triplex. It's fairly complete minus a few small pieces. Biggest issue at the moment is that the spindle was partially disassembled by a prior owner. Not sure what the issue was, so I'm doing visual inspection, cleaning out the gear-box, and putting it back together to start with. I don't have time to do a full rebuild right now, so I'm going to focus of getting it running and learning all I can about it.
There's a good write-up on Lathes.uk Ames Triplex Multi-function machine and a couple other threads on here giving some spindle info and pictures of other machines, but not a lot else, so I'll share what I learn as it comes.
Mill-Lathes get a bad wrap in general as they're a "jack-of-all, master-of-none" machine, but some initial impressions of this machine now that I have my hands on one is that for its limited size range, it looks fairly ridged and well built. Regardless of how it was marketed, I get the impression that it won't completely replace a mill and lathe, but the size and adaptability of it make it a great 2nd-op machine.
There's no power feeds or screw-cutting capability, but the spindle has 3 geared speeds and a 2 step belt drive (6 speed head). It has a small but present through-bore that's in the range of a 9" tool room lathe, and accepts tooling in the size/power range of an M-head Bridgeport mill. The ways are built similar in size to a 10" South Bend.
It looks like you can quickly set it up, but to what accuracy I want to learn. Once it's running, I want to see how well everything holds tram and how repeatable it is. So, pictures to come...
I struck a deal with a gentleman south of Houston for an Ames Triplex. It's fairly complete minus a few small pieces. Biggest issue at the moment is that the spindle was partially disassembled by a prior owner. Not sure what the issue was, so I'm doing visual inspection, cleaning out the gear-box, and putting it back together to start with. I don't have time to do a full rebuild right now, so I'm going to focus of getting it running and learning all I can about it.
There's a good write-up on Lathes.uk Ames Triplex Multi-function machine and a couple other threads on here giving some spindle info and pictures of other machines, but not a lot else, so I'll share what I learn as it comes.
Mill-Lathes get a bad wrap in general as they're a "jack-of-all, master-of-none" machine, but some initial impressions of this machine now that I have my hands on one is that for its limited size range, it looks fairly ridged and well built. Regardless of how it was marketed, I get the impression that it won't completely replace a mill and lathe, but the size and adaptability of it make it a great 2nd-op machine.
There's no power feeds or screw-cutting capability, but the spindle has 3 geared speeds and a 2 step belt drive (6 speed head). It has a small but present through-bore that's in the range of a 9" tool room lathe, and accepts tooling in the size/power range of an M-head Bridgeport mill. The ways are built similar in size to a 10" South Bend.
It looks like you can quickly set it up, but to what accuracy I want to learn. Once it's running, I want to see how well everything holds tram and how repeatable it is. So, pictures to come...