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Colchester lathe oddity

bluchip

Stainless
Joined
Jun 11, 2005
Location
OH
No it's in the right place.
I have two lathes that have a left hand handwheel and both have a chip guard over the wheel.

handwheel%20guard.jpg



You spend more time getting burnt than you do wondering about threading.
 
A lot of gap bed lathes are like that. In my opinion, it is a horrible feature. Not only is the handwheel on the wrong side, but so are the feed and half nut levers.


rockfish
 
This is a total load of bollocks.

What does it matter where the handwheel is or the feed and 1/2 nut levers?

Are they all in the same place on ALL lathes ?
If you have a long bed lathe then its about 10 foot further down than a short bed.
What do you say we all do, chop the bed down ?

So then you move from the lathe to the mill and guess what the levers are all in different places.
Wow must get Bridgeports to put the handles where the lathes are.

None of these machines are the same, none, all share common traits but the layouts are different.
It's up to you to be able to use them safely and responsibly.

If you can't put it back in it's box and don't play with it.

How many have turned a job down because the handles on the machine you are expected to work aren't in the same place as the last job ?

Get real it's a bloody handle after all.

.
 
There are mirror image carriages....as shown in drawings by the manuals, following as previously posted, the guidance that handwheel-left was a straight bed and handwheel-right is a gappie.

Someone posted once they had a straight bed Colchester with a handwheel-right, though...
 
John,

Please.....tell us how you really feel !!!

Personally, I'm right handed.....so trying to pull off a half nut lever or feed lever with the left hand is just awkward. Period. Secondly, these handles are generally closer to the cut, so when you are really throwing some hot chip, you are more likely to get burned with the handles on the left than the right. These are all just simple facts.

I notice you live in England......where the steering wheel is on the "wrong" side of the car. Try driving an American car and tell me how awkward it is to drive for you.


rockfish
 
Rockfish,
I spend more time hand working with the carriage handle than autofeeding so a left hand wheel puts you more in the firing line.
If you are on auto with a L/H lever it's only for a moment whilst you engage it.

Again a simple fact.

It wasn't until a conversation such as this came up on one of the groups that I realised there is a difference.
I have 4 lathe, two are R/H and two are L/H and I never realised until someone pointed the differences out.
All four have different dials. One is half reading, ie you feed 10 thou to remove 20, one is direct reading, feed 10 to remove 10, one is half reading in metric and one is direct reading in metric.
None have the feed levers in the same place and none have the same pattern of feed lever, some have one lever some have two.

I swap between machines with no problem, as I said I hadn't even noticed the handwheel position until someone pointed it out.

In England the steering wheel is on the "right" side of the car in both senses of the word :D
In America it's right when its left :D

It would be OK driving an American car here if you had a distance between the other guy in front.
It's only the fact you can't see round that makes it hard.

I have driven in the States and found no problem.
I often take the channel tunnel thru to France and Germany with a right hand drive van without a lot of hassle.
It's something you get used to.

One of the hardest things I had to get used to was driving an ex-US Army Diamond T left hand drive breakdown truck here.
The biggest problem I found was getting called out to smashes in bad weather.
Visibility would be down to 15 and feet the the bonnet on the Diamond T was 20 feet [ or so it seemed ]
Managed to bounce off a few objects in that one at odd times :D
 
The only odd thing I see is that the lathe still has its center bush. Also noticed the lifting lug attachment point has what looks like a blank screw in it. Why?

Cheers, Stan.
 
John,
I agree, but it was in England where I found how really awkward my left hand is. While shifting gears is automatic for me here at home, (never buy myself automatic's), each shift with my left hand was a process requiring thought and I never got good at it, especially 2 to 3. The one thing about driving on the "other" side that seemed foreign, was passing the cross traffic BEFORE turning right, (the blighters leaving precious little room between themselves and the curb on their left) where awkward was compounded, double clutch, snick it from 3-2 and turn right. It's that damned, pull down from 3, PUSH AWAY and down to 2 thing.
Loved the Motorways and their roundabouts, once I learned that during rush hours, any lane other than the left was a ticket for going in a circle for eternity or until some kind soul took pity, slowed and waved you over, which ever came first.
Put the car on the ferry to Ostende Belgium, drove it to Vienna and multiplied awkward. My wife riding shotgun on the left, head out the window, yelling "GO", when there came room to pass a lorrie on a two lane.
I have two engine lathes, a 1952 German Robling 12" (approx.), right carriage wheel and a '40's? Leblond 17", left carriage wheel. Differences, yes but no noticable awkwardness moving from one to the other.

Cheers, Bob
 
Yes the "right" handed apron controls are the feature that caught my eye. Seeing this one reminded me of another one I had seen. It too was a Colchester and was not a gapper as Doug's is. Obviously they did a few in this manner...gappers or not. The real reason escapes me.

Reminds me of those real nice and massive Abrasive hand surface grinders just before Landis. Had the cable driven ball way table traverse on the right and Z axis on the left. As in threading with a lathe, rhythm is rather important to promptly traversing while surface grinding. That Abrasive, and I loved it, could occasionally make you stop, get your mind right and start again after whacking the table stops!
 
I'm pretty sure the Colchesters and Harrisons for the English market had the wheels on the right. The variant for the American market had wheels on the left except for the gap-bed machines. If you go back and look at round head 13" Colchesters, the English market machines, both plain and gap bed had right hand mounted wheels. The American market plain bed machines had left hand wheels. The American gap bed machines appear to be identical to the English market machines, having a carriage with T-slots machined in the carriage top and right-hand wheels. I suspect this was due to lower volume demand for the gap bed machines in the USA.

Myfords Super 7's have right hand mounted handwheels too.
 
I have a 13" version of this machine. The pinion gear to drive the carraige is located on the same side as the longitudinal handwheel. If you look closely the gap does not have a rack attached to it. If you were to mount an apron with a left handwheel on this machine, it can be done, The pinion on the left side of the apron would run out of rack to drive the carriage close to the headstock. Straight bed machines have racks that go all the way to the headstock. This is also the reason why you can put either left or right apron on a straight bed and it will work. Gap beds can only use a right handwheel apron.

My personal experience has been the right handwheel position is better sheltered from hot chips than on the left.
 
They all look like that. That is not an oil level sight glass. It is an oil flow sight glass. The machine has an oil sump below the headstock and an oil pump that circulates oil when the machine is turned on. You can see the oil, actually just tiny bubbles, flowing throuh the sight glass to indicate the headstock gears, bearings, and clutches are getting their allowance of lubrication. When the main motor is turned off, the pump turns off, and oil drains back into the sump and the sight is clear again.

If it was an oil level sight glass one would expect it to be located well below the centerline of the spindle, not close to the top of the gearbox like it is.
 
That's right gradstdnt_99 ...the level is down there next to the clutch engagement rod right where it says Mark 2.


http://images.machineryvalues.com/pict/138811h.jpg


Back to the gapper thing...it just catches me off gaurd a tad as many other gap beds do not require an opposite hand carraige. They maintain their travel and still have traverse wheel on left.
 
I am left handed and have never had a problem using machines reguardless of where the levers and cranks are. If you are a machinist there is no such thing as being left hand or right hand. If you can't adjust to where the levers and cranks are you are in trouble. It's eye hand cordination that is important and if you don't have it or lose it you are in trouble. I agree that if you only operate one machine all the time then switching to another requires some getting used to it. But the prime thing there is "habit", nothing more.
 








 
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