Voest DA 210 1500 - Bent Spindle

Hello,

I have a mid 70's Voest DA 210 engine lathe. The machine is in pretty good shape. The ways have a bit of wear on them near the gap plate but for a decent hope shop machine.

Anyway, I was using a parting tool and jammed a piece of material between the chuck jaws and the bed0. The spindle is now bent, I switched to a different chuck to be sure. The spindle is a L0 mount.

Is there anything I can do, or is the lathe trash? I have been unable to find any source for parts and even if there was I'm not sure if it would be worth reparing.

Its been a long time since I have visited the forum but I wanted to thank everyone for the feedback!

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Eric Fitzgerald

Hi Eric and Ouch!

It's quite hard to bend a spindle, unless it's unusually thin-walled? On an L-0 it can be possible (and more likely?) to bend the locating key in the nose taper, though - and if it has a bit of a skew to it the chuck (*any* chuck) won't sit square on the taper, so...

First of all take the chuck off and put a DTI on the inner spindle taper socket and check concentricity (beg or borrow one if you have to), rotating the spindle by hand - if the spindle bearings are good and the spindle's straight it should be a couple of thou" at most, even on a tired old lathe - mark the high spot with a sharpie; also "shake" the spindle to detect play in the bearings - again, a few thou" at most.

If the taper socket runout looks OK, remove the spindle nose key (it should be held with a pair of socket-head bolts, may need some "gentle persuasion" to get it out of the keyway in the spindle) and check it over - should be square and flat-sided , if it isn't then that could be your problem.

Run the DTI on the spindle nose taper (outer) to check for concentricity, again you're looking to be a few thou" at most of total runout, check whether it lines up with your sharpie mark (possibly 180* away, depending on where you ran the DTI?) If there's major runout it's possible you have really bent the spindle I guess you could recut the tapers (internal and external), the spec' is available online (or in Machinery's?) but I'd suspect the bearing alignement would be affected and you could be looking at having the spindle reground - depends how badly bent, I guess? Does the spindle bind when rotated by hand?

If it is just the key, you may be able to buy one from a good tool / machine spares outfit (they're meant to be part of the L-0 standard), if you have to make one a piece of "key steel" will do nicely!

Just my tuppence worth,
Dave H.

I know this is ancient, but I'd really like to know how this panned out for the OP.