Workshop machinery

[tufty]

So, a few years back, I managed to find myself a lathe. Schaublin 102 precision toolmaker's lathe, sold as "not working" and with a lever actuated cross slide. Was actually working fine, but required a 220V three phase supply, was also supplied with a whole bunch of other stuff, milling machine dividing head and tailstock, another dividing head, a metric crapload of lathe and mill tooling, collets, so on and so forth. This was a bit of a steal, as it came in for the grand sum of 100€. I then picked up another similar machine (ARE rather than Schaublin) with 2 dial equipped cross slides, W20 headstock, F23 headstock, standard tailstock, rapid action W20 tailstock with W20 turret, more assorted bits and pieces, all for 300€. Having sold on quite a lot of bits that came with the 2 which were never going to be used, or were doubled, the two machines owe me nothing. And the bits I've made with them mean I'm at a healthy profit.

Here's the Schaublin in the workshop, modulo having an ARE cross slide on it it still looks a lot like this :



The ARE arrived like this :



And got tarted up rather than being instantly put to work :



But I've had an urge for a milling machine. Similar sized, not some goddamn behemoth, mainly because there's no room in my workshop and getting there means going over the septic tank - a 2 tonne lump of cast iron is going to have problems with that latter little "feature". So I've been watching the small ads. All too big, or too expensive, or too far away, or "too late, already sold". Until a couple of weeks ago. "small milling machines". 2 very unflattering photos of 2 largely dismantled machines, apparently missing major parts. "make offer". "possibility of delivery". Phone up. Yes, still for sale. Nothing particularly critical missing from the machine that interested me (handwheels and lead screws, and the vertical head). Hrm. Okay. "What sort of money are you looking for? What's your idea of a sensible offer?" "Dunno, what can you spend?" "As it stands, it's not worth much more than scrap value. 150 euros?" "Fine. I can deliver on Friday of that's OK with you". "Sorry, what?" "I can deliver on Friday. No extra charge." "Urm - Okay, done".

Cast iron is at 24 centimes a kilo at the moment. Machine weighs in at 450 kilos. Scrap price would have been slightly over 100€, collected. This bloke drove 3 hours to deliver, between fuel costs and motorway tolls, he's made nothing. o_O

So Friday afternoon arrived, and the mill man cometh. OK, it looks very grotty, but hey, the table is there and looks OK, for starters there's no scarring. Hand over the cash, unload the machine. Little box of parts with it, in it are the gibs. The scraping marks are still very much in evidence. On the gibs. And, it turns out, on the slideways. This machine has barely been used. Spindle turns like a swiss clock. Under 2 microns of play. Motor looks good, sounds good turned by hand (haven't powered it up yet), mechanical speed variator works, although needs de-rusting. Even the belts are good. Cleaned up the table, assembled on the transversal, it's silky smooth pushed by hand. It's not been rescraped, the gibs are at factory settings. And I have the stuff around to make up the screws, handwheels, and even vertical head. Score!

Crouzet FC100, looking sad :



Gib and transversal, looking new :

[metiz]

Great finds tufty! I bought a lathe in 2014 for 350 euros and it's a total piece of shit haha

[tufty]

Even a shitty lathe is better than no lathe at all.

[metiz]

Well it does take up a lot of space, so that's good

[tufty]

Go on, let's see it.

[metiz]

There's visible play, I have pretty much no tools for it and the tool holder is diy. I think there's a crack in the casting at the termination point of the lead screw.

[tufty]

Ow. That does need some TLC.

DIY toolholders are no problem as long as they're rigid and you can shim your tooling to the right height. A bit more of a faff than quick change stuff, but still perfectly serviceable. If you have slop, you probably want to play with the gibs a bit (might lose you some travel if they're really worn), and possibly look at the headstock bearings if it's been abused (they aren't too expensive or even too difficult to change on a lathe of that type). There's mods that can be made to improve the carriage and cross slide gibs, too, before contemplating a full overhaul.

Tooling - get some cheapo carbide insert stuff from banggood or aliexpress. As phat as you can get into your toolholders.

[tufty]

Mill is now up and running properly, finished making my vertical head this week.

[Mike Everman]

Cool, let's see it! I've got a Smithy and a Levin 8mm watchmaker's lathe. Love them both.

[tufty]

OK, brace yourself. It's as ugly as sin, and has a number of flaws.

Mounting plate was hacked from a piece of old compressor I had lying about, it's welded to a piece of scrounged cast iron water conduit, 145mm diameter. Welded inside those are the hub parts of 2 Fiat Panda brake disks turned to accept a length of 100mm diameter steel pipe. Welding steel to cast iron is a proper motherfunker to do, heat it all up, weld with stainless rods, batter the hell out of your welds and let the whole thing cool down very very slowly (buried in ashes over night). The visible tack welds are ugly. So are the invisible actual welds. I only have a stick welder, and I'm not very good with it.

Still, managed to get that bit pretty much straight. The head itself is made from the aforementioned 100mm steel pipe, with another piece "teed" onto it. Managed to get those welds straight too. Go me! Inside the sticky-out bit, which pivots in the big cast iron tube, an aluminium bearing housing, with a 6207 bearing in it, which supports the driving bevel gear. That's mounted to a driving shaft on a morse 4 taper. This is a bloody awful design, as it ultimately means that if you want to remove the head, you have to totally tear it all down. The spindle itself is made from a scrounged drag lift pulley axle, with a 30207 bearing at the top and a 30209 at the bottom. Driven bevel gear is at the bottom, which means I run the main spindle the same way for horizontal and vertical milling. Another bad choice for various reasons, and there's a reverse button on the VFD :) Spindle bored for SA30 tooling, with a 12mm drawbar. The rest is all a bit heterogenous, the spindle bearing supports are taken from some old gears I had lying about, seal mounts from some scrap aluminium, you get the idea. The bevel gears I cut myself on the mill using the horizontal spindle, 60 and 61 teeth respectively module 1.5.

Upsides - a vertical head is better than no vertical head, SA30 tooling is to my eyes better than the W20 spindle on the original head which I don't have. My accuracy was pretty good, out of the box I have a 0.04mm "nod" front to back across 150mm of the table.

Downsides - It's loud as hell. Straight cut gears, noisy. Tramming is not easy and the clamping of that tramming is "underwhelming". It's too light, and vibrates a bit. The bearings are cheap. It's got flex and slop. And it's too long, it eats up about 50% of my Z travel. But hey, it works.

This is what it looks like. The copper plate is a nice touch, I feel.



I figure it's a decent first shot, and was planning a rebuild to fix the vibration, flex and headroom issues at least. And then this fell into my lap - a set of used castings for an original head. No guts, just the castings, and for an older machine thna mine with different mounting hole pattern, but should fix a good number of the problems by themselves. So that's in progress - indeed the photo above is milling the new mounting plate for these castings...