An assumption on lathe leveling...

I just got my big Springfield bed back from Schaffer grinding, and getting ready to start assembly.

I figured I'd give it a good try at leveling, then bolt all the goodies on, and give 'er another go, or a fine-tune or whatever.

My question is, can I assume these two faces are more or less coplanar?



The freshly-ground flats were ground different amounts (.0085" at the front, .005 at the back)
and while they ground a flat at the top of each prismatic way (they used to be rounded) the two vees are different sizes and the flats basically can't be coplanar.

However, while I'm not exactly a lathe-leveling expert, I'm given to understand the actual level is not as important as being level to itself.

That is, those two surfaces could be out of plane with each other by 20 thou, but that doesn't matter, as long as they're off by that same amount all the way along the bed.

Am I right about that?

I'll be raising and repairing the carriage with the cast-in-place method using Moglice, so I'll want to have things as true as I can get 'em.

Also, on the actual leveling: each base pedestal has four adjusters. How do I coordinate those? Run both front or back corners in the case of a twist, and crank all four equally in the case of a tilt? Or is there some trick to tweaking multiple adjusters in a case like this?

Doc.

First of all you need to figure Shaffer does it right 99.9 % of the time. Then file and ston the legs tops. Bolt them om. Then use the flats that the ground as reference areas and not the original clearance surfaces that may not be the same as the newly ground ways.

Keith Rucker uses 1 2 3 blocks we made up a jig like your going to do. You can use a gig like his/

YouTube

This is a couple of mice threads on how to Moglice a lathe saddle.

10EE moglice saddle setup blocks


Moglice & Machining 10EE Carriage


Relieving The Center of The Lathe Saddle

I would ignore Monarchist writing as he was a fake name. He drove away good members like Vette Bob. Who did a good job on his EE

I'm not a massive " Moglice " fan. I've had mixed results, some good, some not so good. On prismatic ways I preferred the sheet material like " Shamban " , " Turcite " etc. Just my opinion, other people might think differently.

Regards Tyrone ,

I prefer Rulon 142 / same as Turcite B, but have had mixed feeling about Moglice too. I was in Taiwan when the machine builders tested it and only 1 in 200 builders used it in production. The 199 builders said it was not forgiving as in the sheet materials. Meaning if you don't put it om perfect you have to chip it off and do it again. The sheet materials can be scraped and you can adjust it if you scrape to much off in one direction.

Richard King said:

I prefer Rulon 142 / same as Turcite B, but have had mixed feeling about Moglice too. I was in Taiwan when the machine builders tested it and only 1 in 200 builders used it in production. The 199 builders said it was not forgiving as in the sheet materials. Meaning if you don't put it om perfect you have to chip it off and do it again. The sheet materials can be scraped and you can adjust it if you scrape to much off in one direction.

Click to expand...

That's my view also.

Regards Tyrone.