Forrest, I think we need a special Monarch 10ee forum..

concerning dealing with the variable speed drive. I'm kidding, but it would be good if you have some of the previous discussion in your electronic files to add to the archives. I had 2 10ee's in my past, one with motor generator set and the other with vacuume tube drive.

i'll be the first to agree with the idea of a monarch "ee" forum.........i've worked on a number of those over the years, and somehow managed to get them going by following the manual.......but.....i really don't have much more than a generalised, fuzzy partial understanding of the electrical theory involved....

how about.......what we really need is for someone who is a real electrical engineer and understands all the technical fine points of these drives to volunteer to write up a "ee's for idiots" manual.....with the theory of the various circuits explained in the most basic of terms......

are any of the engineers who originally designed the drive systems for monarch still living????

does anyone here have any idea of how to make contact with any of these gentlemen, or any of the monarch old-timers who worked on the "ee's"????

cheers

carla

A sales rep who used to work for me, also was a sales rep for Monarch in the 1960's. I'll try and contact him and find out. Re the Monarch 10ee drive info, Forrest's recent posts on the subject have been today transferred into the "Greatest Hits" section.

Having just taken apart my entire 10EE for rebuilding purposes, I can report to this board that there are two "tricks" to be aware of when putting the spindle back in the headstock. 1) Put the speedometer back in first, including the wheel which engages the spindle. Don't actually put the engaging wheel on the speedo shaft, but get it down in there before putting the spindle all the way through. It is not possible to insert this drive wheel with the spindle in. Tighten the face of the speedo up first against the cork gasket, then adjust the brass spigot housing up on the rear, inside the headstock, so that the pinion take-off is meshing correctly - then tighten the gib screw. If you don't do it this way, the speedo will leak oil. I had to grind down the two bolts on the back of my speedo housing as I suspect someone previously had put it back together with the wrong screws and they hit the inside of the headstock, thus preventing the front ring from seating on the face. 2) BEFORE putting the first main bearing onto the spindle, find the little "high spot" marking on the front face of the bearing and use a permanent marking pen to not this point on the side of the bearing. Then assemble the two separator sleeves and put the secondary main spindle bearing on, lining up its' "high spot" mark with the mark you made on the first one. Tighten up the lock ring to hold the two bearing in alignment. You can't really overtighten this locking ring because the pre-tension for the bearings is determined by the spacers. When starting to insert the spindle with its' front bearings already assembled, make sure the groove along the side of the larger outer spacer is facing the rear of the headstock and that the oil access hole is at the bottom of the spindle (not the top, which it will be if you slide it on back to front).

All else is straight forward. I found that my bearings and other various parts slide onto the spindle with hand effort. Getting the whole thing into the headstock casting is a little more difficult. I used a lead filled rubber faced persuader to gently tap the spindle into the headstock, making sure nothing was catching along the way. It goes in pretty smoothly. After it is in, insert the rear bearing onto the spindle. I used a piece of copper tubing that slide over the spindle and rested against the inner ring of the rear bearing, thus enabling me to tap this gently into place. This is after tightening up the front retainer ring (with the six large Allen screws on the front of the headstock). Once the rear bearing cover and gasket was nipped up, I gently tapped the front of the spindle and the rear of the spindle a couple of times each way to seat the bearings. Lastly, I re-tightened the lock ring around the front bearings to a fairly firm degree and locked the ring. I had "pre wet" both bearing before assembly with spindle oil, so I was comfortable in rotating the spindle now to check for smoothness. Everything turns nicely. I clocked the front of the spindle for run out and have not detected any movement on my .0005 reading dial. A good sign.

As a last note, my 10EE is a 1949 model and the headstock bearings are the original "New Departure" ones that they used in this lathe at the time. I did not dare to price replacements but had the existing bearings checked by a bearing expert from Fafnir who declared them "good for another 40 years" as long as the proper spindle oil is kept clean and topped up to the correct level.

Thanks for sharing your newfound double "e" experience...good post for the archives.

I actually paid real money for the .com address of monarch10ee.com just for the purpose of trying to get a bulletin board of 10EE information together in one spot. With my buying VersaMil, my plate has been rather full, but as time presents itself, I am going to pursue this further. I actually use two 10EE's to produce parts for VersaMil, and obviously am rather enthralled with these machines. I do have a rather long explanation of the electronic drive used in the bulk of these lathes, written by an electronic tech in Ohio. I outbid him on a set of metric transposing gears and we communicated for quite a few months. I've owned the earlier motor generator lathe and then bought a fifties toolroom lathe and a 10EE turret lathe. Both of them were dead when purchased and I managed to get both of them back to life.
There is a wealth of information out there on these machines, as I've gotten e-mails from at least a dozen very knowledgable people with information on them. Once my VersaMil inventory is where it needs to be, I hope to spend a little time and get back to my 10EE project. I do plan on running 10EE leadscrews on my threadgrinder at some point in the near future. I'm going to buy the leadscrews for my Excello thread grinder to match the lead of Monarch leadscrews and just run a bunch of them. It's what bugs me the most on my lathes, are the slop in the screws. Sure you can turn new screws on a lathe, but there's just no comparison to a ground leadscrew. Anyone out there with anything words of encouragement for the monarch10ee web site, let me know.

Brian@versamil

My impression from seeing so many over the years is that thousands of 10ee's are "out there" so there should be a decent size "audience" for a 10ee web site (I wouldn't bother with www.omniversal.com on the other hand )

I've owned a couple of 10ee's over the years, but to be honest I prefer the Hardinge HLV-H for precision work. The 10ee is much heavier duty of course and has the advantage of being much more reasonably priced on the used market, but I prefer the infinitely variable feed motors, threading setup of the Hardinge, and all the cool acessories available for the HLV-H. But used prices on the Hardinge has really gotten
out of hand. I always cringe when a dealer wants $15,000 for a late 1970's model which is always followed with the comment by him.."well, you know they cost $40,000 (or whatever it is now) for a new one"...to which I'm thinking "uh yeah, so what, that Pratt and Whitney jig borer ya got sittin over there would cost $400,000 if they still made 'em, and now you're asking $2,000 and can't get even that" In other words, what a used machine tool is worth has *nothing* to do with what it cost new...it's all supply and demand.

well, i suppose its mostly a matter of taste and preference......we've never owned a "hlvh", but i've run a few of them from time to time......to my taste, the "ee" is much faster and easier to use for all but the very tiniest of parts......thats not to find fault with the "hlvh", tho, its a good machine for small parts work.....

altho....its incomprehensible to me that the monarch works didn't standardise on a variable speed feed motor system like that used on the "hlvh"......seems to me i remember seeing a monarch advert of the '90's in which they finally offered something like that.......

in fact.....there's a wonderful opportunity here for someone.....the versa-mill works, maybe???....to make up and sell a retro-fit package to set the "ee" lathes up with a variable speed carriage feed........a friend and i sketched this up about twenty-ish years ago, and might have prototyped one, but his health was failing, and he passed away in '83.

the idea was simplicity itself, tho....as you know, the "ee" machines of the late '40's onward had a little cover plate at the right hand end of the bed.....replacing that cover plate with a suitable casting which would carry a variable speed gearmotor.....the one from an "hlvh' probably, at least for prototype,
and suitable bracketing for an extended feed rod ( the feed rod coupling to the existing feed shaft from the feed box could simply be replaced with a suitable little sleeve and bearing, so that the feed rod would be supported on its left hand end by the feed shaft, but turn independently)

just a thought.......

and.....yes, i for one would really enjoy a "monarch ee" forum.......

is anyone in contact with kurt keebler, who was talking about forming a monarch "ee" owners group, some years ago????

cheers

carla

Speakin' of incomprehensible things Monarch didn't do with the 10ee, I wonder what their thought processs was when they put those thin aluminum carriage handwheels on ? Seems like almost every 10ee I ran across had a crooked handwheel cuz it had broke and been welded at one time. Just seemed ironic to have designed the ultimate in heavy duty/precision combination machine and then slap the ultimate in fragility on the part your hand actually touches the most !

hi, don,

there's actually very good reason for making the carriage longitudinal feed handwheel from aluminium........

a couple of reasons, actually.....the negligible weight of the handwheel does make a very slight, but real difference in controllability when moving the carriage that last fraction of a thousandth....

and.....just like the zincs you put on the bottom of your boat, the handwheel is a sacrificial part......if the machine is bumped with sufficient force on the handwheel, the handwheel breaks before the shaft its mounted on will be bent....and the handwheel is easily replaced....far simpler than having to take the apron off the machine to replace or straighten the handwheel shaft......

if you had several "ee" lathes running in a production environment, you'd keep a spare handwheel in stock, just as you'd keep a couple of spare c16j valves, or brushes for the motor....... and also dynamotor and exciter brushes for the older machines.

there are a few noticeable design flaws, tho,......one of the simpler ones is the lack of a "neutral" detent for the back gar shifter lever.....to hold the shifter in a positive neutral when dialing in a workpiece in a 4 jaw chuck, or changing chucks.

and....the "ee" machines really should have been provided with some sort of easily operated switch control to inhibit max top speed to some pre-set level, to be used when using larger (8", say) chucks. a simple additional dial graduated in "max top speed" for speed pot over-ride should be a relatively simple modification, i'd think.

one of the real hazards of the "ee", if the operator is the least bit absent minded or fatigued, is that its easily possible to bring the spindle speed up to 3500 or so, on the 4000 rpm machines, with a partial turn of the speed pot knob........if the operator speeds up the spindle to polish a workpiece, and inadvertantly speeds up too far, the centrifugal force will open the jaws of a chuck, releasing the workpiece.....this is especially noticeable with large machinable soft jaws, which add a good bit of rotating mass.

(add your own last line to the old navy hymn....."for those in peril on the "ee")

its no joke, tho.......it doesn't happen often that inadvertantly speeding up a spindle too far will get a part thrown from a chuck.... but it can be a somewhat unpleasant if your head is in line with the trajectory of the part.....

cheers

carla

Carla, I had considered the handwheel weight aspect and agree the light weight gives it a slightly better feel and control but hadn't considered it's possible "sacrificial" inclinations. If this is what Monarch engineers were thinking, it's one of those ideas that seems reasonable in theory, but in actual practice the end result is alot of 10ee's with brazed crooked handwheels. They could have simply made the handwheel arbor so stout as to defy bending and the aluminum handwheel a bit less sacrificial.

Good point on the max. speed inhibitor. I used to turn an eccentric part on mine for which I had designed a special chuck. Due to the offset, if I went beyond 1,200 rpm the vibration would start and I always worried I'd have a laspse of logic similar to the one my friend had while talking to a salesman where he rested his hand on a woodworking shaper table. He neglected to notice that the shaper was still running and came away from the experience with noticably shorter fingers...

Hello All, I'm a new member but have been reading posts for several months now. I own a 1951 Monarch 10EE and am very pleased with it. I have a thorough understanding of its sophisticated MG set and if anyone has questions about it, I would gladly try to help. I appreciate every aspect in the design and all the thought that went into it, when they built this machine.

In the past, (old technology) perhaps the best way to vary the speed of a drive system was to use a DC motor. The motor/generator set was required solely to produce DC voltage. A DC motor (is used to act as a generator) directy coupled to the AC motor is used to power the DC drive motor. (spindle drive)

A separate exciter motor (self excited DC motor that is also mechanically coupled to the AC motor via belts)is then required to supply the field voltage of the DC generator. By varying the field voltage of the generator, the speed of the DC spindle motor varies.

The 10EE with the Reliance MG set therefor actually has four motors. The main one being the 5HP AC motor (4.6 to be more precise) and three DC motors. The spindle DC motor is a 3 HP motor. The other two DC motors are used as generators, one of them is called an exciter.

This is quite straightforward electro-mechanical and very reliable the same kind of drive system used in elevators and too the diesel-electric trains. Instead of using an AC motor, they use diesel motors to turn the generator. That is how I can try to explain it in simple terms. Hope this helps. I have no experience with the later model EEs with the tubes but I can imagine this is used to produce DC voltage.

The 10EE is very massive and use of aluminum on removable panels makes them easy to remove and set aside when necessary. To date I have not found need to vary the feed speeds other than those already available but in case I do need other speeds, I have ideas on how it can be done with minimal $ and modifications. Rene