M.B. Naegle
Diamond
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2011
- Location
- Conroe, TX USA
I've posted once or twice about our Soviet Czech ZPS R5 turret lathe (mid 60's vintage). We acquired it with the merger of another shop and it's been in storage for the last 10 years due to lack of shop floor space. I had been going through it as time permitted, cleaning it up and making minor repairs. Now that we have a new shop, we had floor space available with the necessary amperage to connect it. A little while ago, I got it powered up and something didn't sound right and the 10HP motor would seize up when put in gear. Tonight I got around to opening the bottom half of the headstock and found good news and terrible news.
Good news is that I see very little wear in the gears and shafts. For a 50 year old production machine that's been beat to heck, it looks pretty good.
The terrible news: Somewhere between moving the machine around the warehouse and here, the clutch/speed engageing lever must have been hit really hard as the levers branching off of it have been broken off, and the more I'm digging into it, it's looking like it will be a heavy duty repair job to get them out and welded back together (removing the massive motor, and half of the gearing in the headstock). It's that sick feeling where you can tell that the days are numbered.
So..... I was really hoping to get this machine up to speed as we have some heavy material removal jobs from time to time that would have been right up it's alley (heavy build and lots of HP in comparison to the work envelope). But we've been able to push them off on the other lathes and I've got lots of projects, so I'm seriously considering letting this one go.
Now, where this thread comes into play.
Are there any other guys out there with a lathe like this that would be interested in any parts? It seems like a fairly rare beast here in the states, but all the more reason to ask. It probably won't be going to the scrapper any time soon, at least until our next CNC lathe comes on the horizon. but If there's any interest, I can start dismantling it. I'm game to selling it as a complete machine, but I see lots of more common turret lathes on the market.
I'm sorry to see it go. I guess if machines had female pheromones, this one gave off a lot of the European thing.
But my new/old Hendey's got birthing hips for ways...
so guess I can't complain.
Good news is that I see very little wear in the gears and shafts. For a 50 year old production machine that's been beat to heck, it looks pretty good.
The terrible news: Somewhere between moving the machine around the warehouse and here, the clutch/speed engageing lever must have been hit really hard as the levers branching off of it have been broken off, and the more I'm digging into it, it's looking like it will be a heavy duty repair job to get them out and welded back together (removing the massive motor, and half of the gearing in the headstock). It's that sick feeling where you can tell that the days are numbered.
So..... I was really hoping to get this machine up to speed as we have some heavy material removal jobs from time to time that would have been right up it's alley (heavy build and lots of HP in comparison to the work envelope). But we've been able to push them off on the other lathes and I've got lots of projects, so I'm seriously considering letting this one go.
Now, where this thread comes into play.
Are there any other guys out there with a lathe like this that would be interested in any parts? It seems like a fairly rare beast here in the states, but all the more reason to ask. It probably won't be going to the scrapper any time soon, at least until our next CNC lathe comes on the horizon. but If there's any interest, I can start dismantling it. I'm game to selling it as a complete machine, but I see lots of more common turret lathes on the market.
I'm sorry to see it go. I guess if machines had female pheromones, this one gave off a lot of the European thing.
But my new/old Hendey's got birthing hips for ways...
so guess I can't complain.