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Pre-1960 Hardinge HLV - Project or Parts?

aschafer14

Plastic
Joined
Apr 4, 2018
So I came across on older Hardinge HLV at an auction and decided to pull the trigger. I got it for $750 which I felt was too good to pass up and now I am trying to decide if its worth bringing back to life.

The good news
  • I saw it run fwd/rev high low speed (didn't see it cut chips though).
  • It came with a full set of collets plus extra tooling, centers, drill chucks and some hex collets.
  • It came with the taper attachment and the steady rest.
  • Carriage moves nicely in working area started to get tight towards the end of the bed though, crossing my fingers its more due to the surface rust/grime than needing a re-grind.

The bad news
  • Carriage feed motor and cross slide clutch lever/housing lever were nowhere to be found.
  • Collet closer has been rigged with some tape and zip ties - not sure what the issue is here.
  • Headstock has some sort of repair, also not sure what they did there.
  • Carriage lock not functioning, can pull straight out.

So as it stands I have a full manual machine that I know was up and running at an aerospace shop. However it looks like it was pretty poorly taken care of, lots of little knobs and bolts that have been crudely replaced.

I have a feeling finding the power feed carriage parts are going to be next to impossible unless the newer HLV-H parts are cross-compatible.

I should know more once I get it in my garage Friday but wanted to get this up to see if anyone else might see something I didn't or has any suggestions on other things to dive into and check on Friday.
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I would take that one on for sure! The missing parts are not that hard to find..........I should say, be patient, you probably wont find the parts right now, poke around, you will find them in time.

The collet closer sleeve is aluminum, has a latch that adjust tension on the collet, these get buggered up and thats why it has tape to hold the latch in, I was able to repair mine with a file, but that is a common part.
The repair at the headstock is just on the rear cover.
The feed clutch, I believe is also common to the HC model.
The feed motors seem to be the same, you need just the carriage bracket as specific to the HLV models but, the whole units show up on ebay.
I have the HC chucker.
 
"headstock repair" isn't really headstock, it is just a gearbox housing, it covers up the first gear on the spindle that transmits torque down to the gearbox, gearbox bolts to the bed, not the headstock, so the repair and possible distortion shouldn't affect the position of the gearbox in relation to the headstock/bed

carriage feed motor + worm gear might be a problem, maybe not in the US, but I just don't see any pop up on ebay at all, not even motors, my HLV-V is missing the same thing and I decided to make a new housing+worm gear+shaft going into the apron for another motor

judging from the looks of lube on the dovetail, the teflon might have embedded particles in it and might need replacing
 
You are in luck with this m/c, it looks pretty reasonable, and it is fitted with a toolpost from the much improved later HLV-H model. And a dual dial unit on the cross slide dial! Odd that it's just the one - they used to be fitted as a set (made by Vickers Engineering, UK).
Your "carriage lock not functioning" could be the plug that should go between the lock cam and the rear of the carriage gib is missing or has been put in on the wrong side of the cam, or it's simply worn out.
- "can pull straight out" - the lock cam is just pushed into the hole in the top of the carriage, there's nothing to hold it in, just the way it was built.
The collet closer cover - some early models were made of a plastic called phenolic, many tended to split, later models used anodised aluminium.
The carriage getting tighter as it travelled towards the tailstock was the most common indicator of bed plate wear. Carriage "shake" was originally in the order of up to 0.0002" at either side of the carriage. It wouldn't take a lot of wear to occur before the need to readjust the carriage gib was necessary and you might have to juggle between excess shake and freedom of travel. Incidentally, no PTFE ("teflon") was fitted to slides in the UK until about 1977/78 - I know, I worked as a Hardinge fitter in the UK.
 
If the carriage lock doesn't bind, it's probable that the tapered gib needs adjusting. If it can't be adjusted within the range of the screws (probable, from the age and the reported tightness at the ends), it's quite possible to make a replacement by sticking (literally, Loctite!) a bit of cast iron stock onto the existing gib and using it as a template to surface grind or mill the taper on a new one.

Wear on the bed can be verified be measuriong the thickness of the bed about 3-5" away from the headstock end. The bed should be 3/4" (check at the tailstock end). you'll find that there is as much wear side-to-side as there is on the thickness.. This is curable by any engineering shop that has a long enough surface grinder. get both the long and the shorter parts of the bed (the 2" bit that supports the left hand end of the headstock) ground. Then shim them back to the original height to avoid issues with the carriage pinion engaging with its rack.

All the gears on the HLV were 22DP stub form. If you need to cut new gears for the carriage, you can use full form 22DP gears if you can make/buy them, just make sure that like gears mesh like.

The two clutch lever housings are identical, so you can use the carriage feed one as an example for the cross-slide one. The lever is just a simple cam that bears on a ball thrust bearing (hopefully still present in the carriage feed assemble, so you can see what to replace).

You may find that some/all the gears in the apron gearbox need replacing if the previous owners used water based coolant after removing the motor. This can be done. I had to replace the entire innards of my (1952) UK HLV apron gearbox.

As to the motor. If you can find a replacement, good. If not, then any suitable sized DC motor and control (or even 1/8hp 1800 rpm AC motor woth a VFD), will do the job with a worm drive gearbox and a final drive gear that meshes with the gear in the apron gearbox.

To rebuild this machine to a usable state is going to take a lot of work and you will need the use of a lathe, milling machine (or shaper) and the help of someone with a surface grinder. if you manage it, you will end up with a machine that does everything you need from 1/32" to 10" and any threads that you need to cut. This is based on my experience of rebuilding my HLV.
 
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Thanks for the replies, all this information is really helpful. I'm sure like every project I seem to take on this will be way more work than I expected but I'm excited to dig into this on Friday and see what I'm really working with. I've already got all my alerts setup on ebay/craigslist so hopefully I'll be ready when parts come available. I guess I should start my Hardinge savings fund too.

I think my first step will be to pull the carriage apron cover off and see what the status of the gearing is. It sounds like there wasn't a maintenance manual for these narrow bed lathes, is that correct? I found the HLV-H maintenance manual and it looks like that should at least get me in the right direction.

Are the three and four jaw chucks for the HLV-H lathes compatible with these narrow bed HLV's?
 
...Are the three and four jaw chucks for the HLV-H lathes compatible with these narrow bed HLV's?
The taper nose for the no. 5 spindles was designed around 1907 and has never changed, so age or model does not matter, just size. You see, the small (1/2" capacity) No. 3 size was designed around 1903, followed by the Nos. 4, 5, 6 and 7. When Hardinge started putting type codes on their collets, the Cataract No. 5 collet became the 5C. And so on. So there are chucks that fit the taper nose spindles on Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 lathes, but only a No. 5 size chuck fits the lathes with No. 5 spindles. The No. 5 size is the only chuck or adapter that has been made by the chuck companies for decades, so you are not likely to see one of the other sizes for sale anywhere. Just be aware that they do exist.

And be aware that Hardinge made No. 5 spindles with 1-3/16-10 threads, so chucks and other spindle tooling are available with either taper or threaded attachment. The threaded chucks and such are less in demand, so you will probably pay more for the taper mount chucks.

Larry
 
You are in luck with this m/c, it looks pretty reasonable, and it is fitted with a toolpost from the much improved later HLV-H model.

It's a moot point, but I wonder if this machine having the later style of tool post slide was an evolutionary change from Hardinge rather than one that was added later? It is the only one I've seen like this.
 
The question of maintenance manuals for these machine has come up recently and no one seems to have ever seen one. I've been looking for at least 20 years...

Larry, as is always the case, provided and excellent answer regarding chuck compatibility. The short answer is yes, so long as you're looking at one with a tapered mount. I'll echo Larry's caution to make sure you're not looking at one with a threaded mount while shopping. Sometimes it's hard to tell if the photos are fuzzy.

Happy digging and good luck with the project! You'll find a wealth of information and help here from others who have gone down the same path.

Damn..., I have more competition for parts now! ;)

Mark
 
It's a moot point, but I wonder if this machine having the later style of tool post slide was an evolutionary change from Hardinge rather than one that was added later? It is the only one I've seen like this.

Hardinge had a big business in repair parts. For many years, they would sell their latest model assemblies with modifications to fit older model machines. For instance, the 1946 model DV59 slide rest was sold in a version with the bottom slide made to fit any 9" swing split bed lathe like a 1941 TR59 or even a circa 1909 Cataract 59. Then they did the same thing with the 1960 model DV59 slide rests. See post #16 here for an example of a circa 1945 TR59 with a 1960 slide rest:
What's a hardinge dv 59 used for?

Hardinge called these items "mail order" parts because they were never sold on new machines, but were only sold by mail order to retrofit older model machines. There are other examples.

But the HLV/TFB or HLV-H/TFB-H compound slide is a different situation. It seems that the 1950 5" bed models can accept without modification a 1960 7" bed model compound slide and vice versa. For an example of the early compound slide on a later model lathe, see the pictures in the first post here, and copied below:
Multiple machines and tooling, Hardinge HLV-H, Kurt vises, 3 axis CNC

Larry

HLVH with old compound 1.jpg HLVH with old compound 2.jpg
 
Many of the missing parts are common to the Hardinge chuckers model HC. Many people rebuild those machines to CNC leaving the parts you need leftover. Babin Machine in Brockton, MA comes to mind as a possible source for the parts you need. Do not confuse Babin Machine in Brockton, MA with the other Babin somewhere in Connecticut
 
Well I found the serial number and it's HLV 150 so this appears to be a pretty early model that has had some upgrades over the years. I haven't been able to find much info on serial numbers for these older HLV's though.

After pulling the zip ties and tape off the collet closer the shell guard has been beat to hell. The stop ring also seems to just be crudely swaged on the end of the shaft by mushrooming the end of the shaft. I don't see any replacement parts readily available for this type of collet closer there are a couple full assemblies on ebay though.

Pulling the coolant pump and cover off it looks like a lot of others I've seen running water based coolant. It looks worse than it actually is though and should clean up ok. I don't really plan on using flood coolant anyway.

The carriage gib was missing the secondary lock screw and seems to run out of adjustment, I still need to pull things apart more clean everything up to see how the carriage lock interacts with the gib and if it is missing any components. I just cant seem to piece it together from the schematics.

For measurement of the bed thickness do I need to pull the carriage rack off. It doesn't seem that I can get an accurate measurement without doing that.

I pulled the carriage apron cover and the gearing looks serviceable.

The gearbox thread/feed knob seems to be stuck and wont rotate.Also the change lever for the tumbler wont slide left to right so i think I'm going to need to pull the gearbox off to see whats going on.

After a lengthy amount of research I'm going to go with a single phase transformer and VFD to control the 440v motor. I have manual speed control, I'm not planning on using flood coolant, and need to find a new carriage motor anyway so I really only need to rewire the switches to be inputs on the VFD. I've been going through images of control boxes and haven't come across anything that looks like mine, I think it'll be much easier to start from scratch and will be much easier to re-sell a single phase 220 machine than 3 phase 440.

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I pulled the rest of the carriage off and was able to measure the bed plate thickness in 1" increments along the whole bed. I measured about .003 of gradual decrease form the front to the middle off the bed then all the sudden it jumped .008" smaller. I found a step that appears to machined into the bed on the underside.

The front of the bed measured from .735-.738 and the rear of the bed after the step was .731-.733. If this is supposed to measure .750" nominally then it has already been re-ground at least once and what appears to be past the .015" limit. I don't have a 5" micrometer but using calipers the bed width was consistent within .001" at 4.858".

When I pulled the rest of the carriage apart the gib had a long piece of shim stock behind it to account for the wear in the bed. The carriage lock was also missing the piece that goes between the eccentric shaft and the gib.

I was at least able to free up the gear change tumbler lever through the back gear housing cover. Still not sure how to best free up the feed/thread knob.



This is the step on underside of the bed plate, has anyone seen something like this before? Is this machine salvageable or should I cut my losses. I wish I could get it up running to see how well it cuts but I'm hesitant to invest a few hundred more dollars into a VFD and transformer if the bed is a non-starter.

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Close Up
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Given that the bed should have been 0.75" thick originally, I've got a suspicion that if you take the lathe apart and remove the bed plate, you'll find that the 'step' is actally the edge of a shim from after the bed has been re-ground.

The electrical box looks different from mine, but it has certainly been rewired. The original, as assembled by MTE in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, would have been far neater, with all the wires laid out with text-book neatness. I'd say that the original drum switch has been replaced for the more modern assembly after it failed. I had to make new contacts for my original one, since they were eaten away from arcing...

The Apron gears look to be in excelent condition, so that makes a restore far less fraught.

As a datum, my one is HLV 0247, which I believe was 1952.


As to wheather it's worth taking on as a rebuild project, or better to cut your losses, that depends a lot on the value of your time, your machinning resources and yor sheer bloody mindedness. Overall, I'd' say that your's is in better condition than mine was when I got it. But I did spend four years rebuilding mine, part-time. Having done it, the only way I'd part with it is if someone offered me an HLV-H EM in exchange.
 
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Looking at those pics it does look like the bedplate has a shim under it.

Mine UK HLV was probably missing a few bit more than yours and had a few bits that were present had been altered, which I wasn't aware of till I tried putting it together and found things wouldn't fir or work.
It took me a number of years to find a set of HLV clutch lever housings, HLV parts aren't easy to find in New Zealand and I've sourced parts from the USA and the UK.

The bed seems to be the biggest issue with yours, all the others problems can be overcome. You have one feed housing so could make a new one to replace the missing one. The feed motor housing maybe quite difficult to find also, I think I've only ever seen 3 or 4 for sale on Ebay over the last 20 years.

As has been stated your electrical cabinet looks like someone had rewired/played with it as it certainly isn't as neat as mine, I can send you a photo of what it should look like and how neat the wiring actually was from the factory.
Your collet closer seems to have an alloy collar while mine is phenolic, and yours does have the HLV-H topslide fitted.
My UK HLV lathe is from around 1957 as the wiring diagram indicates, as it has "layout revised ?? 10 57" and is drawn differently to the wiring diagram you show.

If the bed is worn by 0.020" that is quite a bit of thickness to make up, and you will most likely find the bottom of the carriage and the tailstock are also worn.

Some grind the bedplate and put a shim between the bedplate and the bed casting. I have always thought that the better way to keep the geometry is to add this amount between the top of the bedplate and the bottom of the carriage, this way the carriage gib may still have enough adjustment.

Some with more experience may comment on this, but I had the bedplate ground, I then machined the bottom of the saddle and glued turcite to the bottom of the saddle. When I refitted the headstock I shimmed between the headstock and the bedplate to maintain geometry, and machined and scraped the bottom of the saddle to end up at the same geometry.
I ended up able to use the original gib for the carriage and the only thing I have left to do is raise the tailstock to get back to the correct geometry.

My rebuild has been over an extended timeframe, and I still have things to do to complete the project.

The luckiest thing that I had happen was I happened to look the local auction site and found a fixed steady for auction, it was listed for a different lathe but with only minutes to go I placed a bid as it looked like one for a HLV, as it turns out it was for a HLV so I ended up with a HLV steady for less then NZ$50.00 including shipping.

I've paid a lot more than that just for a carriage dial and hub.


The way you address the issues will most likely be determined by the equipment you have available and your ability.
 
Hi guys I have for sale a carriage motor for an HLV, its just the main motor case with everything inside but no drive worm gear or the housing to fit it to the carriage. It all works as far as I know. I decided to change the motor out for a new DC unit which is controlled via a VFD off 240v hence the spare unit. I used the existing worm and housing along with a newly machined adapter plate to fit the new motor. If anyone is interested in it let me know.

Marc
 
Any chance any of you would be willing to lend me the collet closer arm (cast iron piece) for the pre 1960 HLV? We have an HLV in good condition only missing that part and I have not found it looking for the past few years. I would like to borrow one so I can sand cast a duplicate. I would gladly pay for the postage, the hassle and return shipping of course. Thanks.
 
Any chance any of you would be willing to lend me the collet closer arm (cast iron piece) for the pre 1960 HLV? We have an HLV in good condition only missing that part and I have not found it looking for the past few years. I would like to borrow one so I can sand cast a duplicate. I would gladly pay for the postage, the hassle and return shipping of course. Thanks.
Are you talking about the curved link or the part that threads into the lever? I wonder if a beefy one printed out of carbon fiber would hold up long term? I bet it might? It would be a big chunk of plastic.
 








 
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