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Rockwell 11x37 worth trying to repair?

spitfire_er

Aluminum
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Location
Minnesota
Picked this up the other day. Was pretty cheap. Bought it mainly for tool post and a buck chuck which turned out to be ok.

Machine was in a pretty hot fire. Warped the cabinet, melted aluminum, and pretty much froze everything up. Got about 1/2 of it freed up.

Wondering of I should just sell a few useable parts and scrap it or try and get it going again. Bed looks straight, but I don't have a large straight edge. Ways appear to be in good shape yet minus a thick coat of gunk.
 

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Right off the bat, all the bearings are toast, as well as any heat treated parts like gears. The main structural parts I would be concerned with are the spindle and bed. The bed may be twisted.

There are a number of tricks for evaluating the bed in this section.

If time isn't a big issue, then play with it and see what you have. I would only do this if your intent for the lathe for your own use. You will loose money if you try to fix it up and resell, not to speak of whether you would be able to find someone to buy a burnt out machine.

Tom
 
I know the bearings are toast. Just finished cleaning up the buck chuck. Jaws are still hard. Works great. Might just call it good and move on.
 
Rockwell made a really good lathe (we've got one), but that one would be a lot of work. You pretty much have to thoroughly evaluate every single part and will likely replace half of it. They're nice machines but not exactly "rare" either, so parting it out would likely be the most helpful to you and the other Rockwell guys out there (so long as you're honest about the history of the parts).
 
Assuming that you're going to keep the machine for yourself, I think that the major determinant is if you can source replacement bearings of the right precision at an acceptable price and the condition of the surface of gears and leadscrews.

Starting with a slap on the back of your hands, definitely leaving the apron hanging that way, bending the leadscrew ain't a very good idea.

You need to judge yourself what you really want out of this: if you want a multi-year experience of almost building a lathe from scratch, if it is true that the machine doesn't have much wear, this could be a good starting material, with the added advantage that you won't have to strip much paint. ;-)

Paolo
 
Tyrone, maybe the bed is 'nicely' stress relieved from the fire. Also possibly 'nicely' hardened/chilled from the firefighter's hoses...

I feel sorry for the previous owner of the lathe. Probably lost a lot more than just this lathe.

Lucky7
 
Was thinking wood lathe or barrel polisher, but that's a hefty barrel polisher and not a large swing for a wood lathe.

Not too worried about the lead screw. The gear box along with just about everything else is locked up tight. Was in a shop that burnt to the ground. I'm sure the entire machine got nicely Re-"flame hardened".

It's going for a couple parts then to the scrap bin.
 
You can cut up the bed and use it for straight edges etc. Jan Sverre in Norway did this with a rather large old German lathe. You just need a big angle grinder and a space you don't mind getting filthy dirty.
Luke
 
It's a little hard to tell from the pictures, but something else to consider is if the lathe was actually IN the fire, or just suffered from a hot smokey environment and being flooded by the firefighters. I've worked on a couple textile machines that went through burned out shops. The outsides of those machines had the paint and oil burned off, while there was still paint and charred oil inside, and the whole machine was rusty (the bulk of the "damage"). In these cases there wasn't any damage to cast iron or steel parts, but the springs, rubber/plastic, and some aluminum parts were toast.

When we oil-blacken parts, we can safely cook cast iron and steel up to 850 degrees with no distortion even on thin parts.

If you get into it and find a fair amount of paint and grime remaining, that bodes well. The rust is still going to make this thing a big project to even get apart and evaluated, however.
 
About cutting up a lathe bed to make a straight edge- why? Heck of a lot of work. Mass in the wrong place. In the case of a lathe that's been thru a fire, unknown internal stresses. Machining and scraping a straight edge from a casting takes long enough. Why make life harder?

If you wamt a straight edge, there's plenty of used ones on tbe market. If you wamt the fun of making your own, Richard King, Denis Foster, Gary Cude, and others sell castings.

L7
 








 
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