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Oil Groove Design

zipfactor

Cast Iron
Joined
Oct 10, 2013
Location
USA - OH
I'm working on an old Leblond lathe, specifically the compound rest, and there are not any oil grooves or oil fittings present.

Is it a good idea to add oil grooves to the compound rest?

Are there any reaources on general groove layout and oil fitting placement? It appears machine tool rebuilding leaves a bit to be desired in this area.

Thanks all.
 
I always add oil fittings and grooves to parts that don't have them. Many of the old machine builders expected the machinist to wipe or brush off the chips and dirt and then wipe on oil. Back then it was verboten to squirt off the ways with air. First you have to figure out the limits of travel so you don't cut the groove into the open air. Many machines have a ball detent oiler and t be honest I'm not a big fan I do like a grease fitting and use way oil. But The ball detents look better and are a lot easier to install. As far as a plan. Most times you just plan your own. Do some measurments, mark the slides and take some pictures and add them here. Rich
 
I've just picked a place in the casting where the thickness was OK, and drilled through, then scraped or machined a distributor groove in the underside of the moving part. The first one I did was the old Logan's carriage. Might have a pic or two around. The through holes I make smaller than the oiler recesses..... no smaller than 0.078 though, Vactra doesn't seem to like going through smaller holes.

The V-side I just drilled down to the top of the V, where there is some clearance. Scraped a little area to be a distributor, and counted on gravity to move oil down to the surfaces. Worked OK. On the flat side, the only place for the oiler was not in a good location, so I added a piece of copper tube to drip the oil on the way in the gap where the screw was, and scraped a lead-in on each side to funnel oil under with movement.

I put flip-top oilers on, because the ball oilers get covered in chips, the oilers were right near the crosslide of the carriage. I'll say that neither type is ideal, but the flip tops hold more oil. A one shot pump would be way more suitable.

To me, the compound is a "maybe", the crosslide is a "yes". The compound I tend to move way less, which may be a good reason to give it oilers, so that it is right there begging for oil and doesn't get neglected.
 
I'm just going to bring this back up because I have a relevant question. I was going to wait until I got to this point in my restoration, but I don't see any reason to let this thread fall to the bottom then bring it up again.

On my LeBlond cross-slide there are oil ports coming from the one-shot in the apron, but there are no oil-groove. The oil ports come out the side of the dove-tail on the saddle. Is there a specific manner in which the ports from the sides of the dovetail should be connected to the bottom flats of the cross-slide or saddle? I'm about half way through the Connely book and IIRC haven't hit oil grooves yet. Intuition tells me they should be on the bottom side of the slide, not the top of the saddle; that leaves a conundrum. I either need lube points added to the slide and forget about the ones in the saddle, or I need a "connector groove" all along the slide so the oil can pass from the port, into the groove, and then through the slide or around the bottom of the dovetail to get to the bottom flats. Am I missing something?

I can try to get some pictures up but it will be a bit; I have to finish the paint and remove the tape from the saddle & slide.
 
Many times I take a pencil or die grinder and grind a short oil grove where the oil hole is. Have to be careful to make sure the grove doesn't go past the outside edge of the slide. Many times I grind them on a diagional line.

I would duble check the travel of the slide as I mentioned before and not grind or mill the grooves so the go past travel and you don't expose the groove to open air. I also cut a few X's on the gib too. Rich
 
Rich, maybe this picture will help convey my conundrum; maybe I'm making something out of nothing but I don't see a way for the oil to get down into the bottom flats of the slide without some serious modifications.

I'm thinking that the 2nd option (drilling a port) is the best so that the groove doesn't extend into the corner relief. I do plan to scrape this cross-slide but that will likely be a year or 2 out, I haven't even bought your dvd yet (I fully intend to) and I have to learn, practice, make a straight edge, and then scrape it...
 

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From what little info I could find, this is what I had planned for my setup. I copied your image countryboy and modified it to show the zerk fittings (in red) on both sides of the slide. The light blue passages are cross drills that lead to the flat ways. The second image shows the oil grooves from the bottom of the top slide in the first image.

Not sure if this is the exact way, but it seems logical to me. Rich and others, please critique.

image.jpg

image.jpg
 
I'm not a big fan of those flipper oilers especially on the chuck side as a curling chip can wrap around it and get chips and coolant in it.. If to had a pulley drill you could drill from the TS side or operator side. Did you say it's a Leblond? Doesn't have a hole in the bottom of the vee's on both sides now? Take a picture of your machine and print it out, draw your groves and then take another picture of that picture or scan it. would be a whole lot better then those. Rich
 
If the apron oil pump is manually operated, you can put two sets of alignment marks between saddle and cross-slide: with the first set, the existing oil ports will be in alignment with the "right-angle" holes bringing the oil down to the flats. On the second mark, the existing oil ports will be aligned with the grooves cut in the inclined sides of the dovetails: Two squirts, one at each alignment mark and you don't need any external gits (on the top of the concerns of the chuck-side git, on the other side of the cross-slide, in the future it is possible that you'd want to mount the scale of a DRO).

Paolo
 
I've made oil grooves in slides before and using a 1/8 or 3/16 ball nose cutter maybe .020-.03" deep making Zig zag lines like your diagram.
When I've cut the in turcite have to be careful not to break thru to the glued surface or past the edge. Got in crap for that once or twice ;), so taking small repeat depth cuts is safer.
I've seen people use the edge of their scraper blade before to make light oil grooves in gibs & using a rule to get a straight line.
 
For the Leblond that I'm working on (mid-40's machine), there are no oil grooves or holes present in the dovetails of the swivel base or the top slide. I've snapped a few photos with a layout of the grooves sketched on the surface. The zerks would be on each side of the top slide, with cross drills connecting the zerks to the flat way. The grooves in the flat way would be something like a 1/8" ball end mill with something around .030" depth. As Rich had suggested, I'm planning to use grease zerks for oil in place of ball oilers or oil cups.

IMG_0628.jpgIMG_0629.jpgIMG_0630.jpgIMG_0632.jpg

Is this a good approach?
 
Looks good to me, I'd try to extend the grooves as much as possible without to much over hang over the mating slide. I'm no expert, would it make sense to see where the slide is used most and put them in that area ?? The ones on the cross slide of my lathe are the whole length and exposed in air when I travel it to max travel. Every so often I would wipe them down and manually oil them on top of the oil holes. You might want to drill the cross hole to the inner dovetail area too to get some oil.
 
Thanks for the input handscrape.

My plan was to extend the grooves as far as I can without exposing the groove to air per Rich's suggestion above, we'll see how far that allows the slide to travel.

It's sounds like the oil grooves on your lathe were factory present?

I agree with the hole extending to the dovetail surface, thanks for mentioning that.
 
Zip, yes from factory. You might even want to drill the holes that go to the oil grooves vertical from the top of the slide.
Most lathes I've seen have them going from the top down. You'll either have to drill the cross hole from the inner dove somehow or drill straight thru from the outside and plug the holes after. If they are easier to access, the more chances they will be used too.
 
Zipfactor, I do apologize about the thread-jack. This thread hadn't had action in a few days and figured it wouldn't hurt to combine my question into your thread. If you feel my question would be best in it's own thread I will do that.
 
Dont sweat it countryboy, I had gotten sidetracked and didnt get a chance to get back to the thread.

You may want to start a separate thread just to avoid confusion as both our machines are leblonds. But I see why you thought to ask a question here as the topic is almost identical, save that your machine is decades newer :).
 
Dont sweat it countryboy, I had gotten sidetracked and didnt get a chance to get back to the thread.

You may want to start a separate thread just to avoid confusion as both our machines are leblonds. But I see why you thought to ask a question here as the topic is almost identical, save that your machine is decades newer :).

Not that much newer... January 1955... mine is a Dual-Drive, and thankfully it does have oilers and oil grooves in the compound though.
 
CountryBoy19,
It could be a good contribution to this thread if you post a couple of pictures of your compound to see how the factory solved the problem.

Paolo
 
CountryBoy19,
It could be a good contribution to this thread if you post a couple of pictures of your compound to see how the factory solved the problem.

Paolo

That is a really good point Paolo. Since his machine isn't too far away in age, it's probably very similar.
 
CountryBoy19,
It could be a good contribution to this thread if you post a couple of pictures of your compound to see how the factory solved the problem.

Paolo
I intend to do so, but it's currently taped off for painting. I anticipate I will be done painting in a week or 2. Have to let this coat dry, wet sand again just to knock the bugs and dirt off the top, then at least 1 more coat (possibly 2 coats).

ETA, I will try to describe the oiler setup though. On the top side of the compound there are 3 ball-oilers, 1 for the screw and 1 for each side of the dove-tail. The grooves underneath are simple; a single straight, long groove running parallel to the compound travel. At each end of that groove there is a single cross-groove to "spread" the oil across the flat way. I'll get pictures once the tape comes off. You just have to promise not to laugh; the lathe was seriously abused in it's previous life, and while I do plan to learn scraping and re-scrape many of the way, they are currently in their "scored" state.
 








 
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