Ruhla WMW FUW 315X800

Hi,

I just bought 1.7 metric tons of East German mill circa 1965 for probably less than scrap value. I thought this would be the place to post about it. It seems mechanically sound apart from a few small details, the electrics are in need of rewiring after someone tried to convert it to single phase and succeeded only in making it unusable. They have also lost the cover for the rear of the machine and the z-axis screw. Other than that it is just filthy!

My plan is to restore it and use it, replacing my current Bridgeport clone. The sale of that will also pay for a DRO as it is imperial and I am metric.

Interested if anyone else has one of these in particular if you have an English manual. Even a German manual would be good. Also looking for spares if anyone knows of a donor machine in a scrap yard somewhere. I'm based in Oxford in the UK if my profile does not say that already.

The only info I have found so far is on lathes.co.uk and I managed to get some Thiel manuals which I know are similar.

Cheers,

Graham

Graham-

I think you did well buying that for less than scrap price. I don't have a manual unfortunately, but I do have a Thiel and you are correct about the similarity. That is not surprising considering that they were the same company pre-war; the Iron Curtain creating the split.

Assuming it isn't worn out or seriously broken you will end up with a far better mill than a Bridgeport.

The vertical head looks very like a plain Thiel vertical head (not the one with the boring gearbox and hand feed). The two Y slides are very very similar to the Thiel equivalent . The angled handle for the Y feed is quite different, but this may be superficial.

The big departure is the two motors. The top one will be the feed motor, and it looks like there is a transfer shaft down the LHS of the mill. That is quite unlike a Thiel 158 or 159 and may be a better design. You still have the two distinct gearboxes for feed and spindle, but arranged differently.

It should be fairly easy to sort out the electrics on your mill, depending on what motor you have for the feed.

It might be worth measuring the tee slots etc to see if there is any commonality on tables, heads etc with Thiel. Let me know if you think I could help.

Thanks Bill, I may take you up on that at a later date.

Cheers,

Graham

I know this is a really old thread, but adding a post to see if any bells go off.

I've bought a Ruhla FUW 250 / 710.
It should be delivered tomorrow, with German manual.

If I can't find an English one, I will endeavor to translate it.
Has anyone found or created an English one?

I never had a manual and no longer have the machine.

Scan it to PDF with OCR, there are some online services that will translate and create a translated PDF. Not perfect but I did it for a Japanese manual and it worked OK.

Good luck!

Graham

Thanks, Graham;
That's my basic plan. I have a German neighbor who is a retired machinist, hopefully he can help fill in the holes.
He doesn't know technical terms in English.
I've rarely met a second language English speaker who does, it's a difficult space.

I'm expecting some good fun confusion!