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Lathe saddle, flake or not?

gbent

Diamond
Joined
Mar 14, 2005
Location
Kansas
I removed this saddle from a lathe because it wasn't oiling completely. While I have it off I am wondering whether I should flake the areas on the ends that are shown to be near solid contact?

IMG_20200908_195529546.jpgIMG_20200908_195538006.jpgIMG_20200908_195554381.jpg
 
Looks like you have some contact in the middle also.

Even if you are not going to scrape the thing, it may be worth scraping some more relief into the middle. It seems to have (correctly) been scraped to be out of contact in the middle, so that it will not turn "rocking horse" on you. You want that to continue to be the case, even though it has obviously been worn a bit.

Flaking in some oil retention is not a horrible idea by any means. May as well if you can do it without trouble.
 
I'll risk being contrarian. It looks like the original oil feed was thoughtfully designed but I see the apparent contact towards the ends. And it looks like there are oil feed holes right out at the end, so I wonder if it's a metering problem, The center is favored and the ends starve. If so, that might be correctable.
 
Yes, that is one thing possibly favoring NOT relieving the center.... if doing so also relieves the oil flow out the sides there and does not force it up to the ends. But the relief is generally very small, only a couple extra tenths.

If that did happen, it might be that the distribution adjusting nozzle (if any) for the ways might be giving low flow,, which could let everything flow out the middle.

Seems as if oil should get everywhere if the wipers are good, though. That depends on the length of the usual carriage move, a lot of short work might not distribute oil well unless it is forced there by the pump. And, with short work, the pump might not even get a full stroke, seems like they usually work off the carriage feed.

Hard to say, I'd still relieve the middle just a bit, and check the oil flow.
 
The holes at the ends of the oil grooves originally oiled the felt way wipers. The rebuild installed plugs to force the oil out the ways. It gets 9 new Bijur fjc 00 for the ways, and a 0 for the screw.
 
The center shouldn't need much of any relieving, current contact looks decent; just add some flaking out at the ends to get the oil retained and distributed a little better when things start moving. Flaking won't change geometry of the surface if you do it right, just create little low points to hold oil.
 








 
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