resurrecting a Myford ML1

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

Sorry about the double picture , don't see how to delete one, perhaps administration could do it, thankyou.

Intermediate shaft mounted and despite unfinished pulleys is working OK by hand. Unfortunately there is a large difference between my minds eye and what I can fabricate, but I am out of practise and my workshop is poorly tooled. The advise on leather belts was bang on, thankyou Geoff Persians, I cut an 18mm strip from one of my old leather belts, put Dubin on it and clamped under tension for 2 days to pull the twists and unevenness out. Used my newly constructed disc sander to make a 25mm taper on both ends of belt then I fitted the belt , put pva and clamped it, also I put light tension on the belt so it dried exactly straight and true.

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[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

Driving flange, I took a 60mm washer and bored it to24mm, then bored a m22 nut to 20mm and machine a 24mm lip on the end , it was a good interference fit and I pressed the 2 parts together, checked it was true and then spot welded in place, the locking screws are m5 cheese head but I will replace them with hex head grub screws.

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

Here it is just about up and running and making swarf, so many things to do im not sure what to do first. i am lacking traction between the belts and pulleys. the plastic pulley on the motor was a quick fix and performs like one i must make a wooden one. the jib straps on the cross slide are too tight and the cross slide driving thread and nut is close to jumping a thread. the saddle traverse wheel is soon to fall out of the saddle it is so loose. the saddle traverse feed gears are loose and rattling and not running concentrically , and the tailstock chuck is not mounted concentrically on the plunge shaft. dont take this as complaints , just a long work to do list. I am now the proud owner of a WORKING Myford ML1 .

thank you everyone without your hints and tips this would not have been possible. Louis

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

Louis,

Nice work – it's very satisfying bringing a tired old lathe back to life. When I had a Zyto with flat belts I used a proprietary spray on belt dressing. Made an enormous difference to the "grip".

HTH,

Rod

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

I will look into this belt dressing, thankyou

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

Here is the tool post after cleaning in the ultra sonic, all a bit basic but it does work, to my surprise I have a set of 3/8 Whitworth taps and dies which is the size of the cross slide feed screw, main thread of the tool post is a piece of 1/2 whit studding.

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

The saddle is very worn , the channel for the cross slide doesn't look to be true. I forgot pictures but I had the front panel off the saddle, made new shafts for the split nut clutch , jib strap screws were loose so I put old fashioned hemp on them greased with moly and it works very well now. Took traverse gear and wheel off, drilled and reamed plate to 8mm as the hole for the shaft was almost a slot ! All I had was Ali tube, so I pushed it in and locked it either end by spreading it with a tapered drift,,,,,,,,well head of a chipboard screw, this locked the tube in place, the hole was 6mm and with anew adjustable reamer i took the hole to about 6.25, a worn 1/4" shaft, it won't last to long but works lovely now and soon I will get a bit of phosphor bronze.

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

oops picture was meant to be before the text

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

homemade, was probably more acurate when first made, dont like the feed screw arrangement as the thread winds out as you pull the tool away from the job, alot. cleaned it all in the ultrasonic and parrafin, adjusted up free play between screw and cross slide, coated all mating surfaces with moly grease, and to my surprise i was able to adjust the jib screws to give fairly free movement without any play.

read somewhere, think it was myford manual, to twist the long belt from the motor to main reduction, i did this and as i dont have the start windings connected on the motor , a quick flick on the reduction pulley and it ran backwards with a great improvement in traction, on middle speed i was able to take a 0.5mm cut on 20mm diameter mild steel.

cut quality was very poor and an evil chattering came from the headstock, i put more oil in the bearings even though it wasnt dry, slackened off belt so the spindle ran freely, i held the chuck and was able to move it up and down !!!! i hope i did this bit correctly, spun shaft and adjusted bearingbolt until a slight resistance or friction was felt and then back it off just a tiny fraction til there was none, repeated on other bearing, front one took almost a turn !!!! then i adjusted endfloat in a similar fashion, shaft ran free but no perceiveable movement, suddenly the finish on the cut was much better and sounded smooth when running, swarf came off shiney and bloody hot, i was only wearing flip flops, well it was 40 c in my shed this afternoon.

think i will next attack the screwcutting gears, they do make an awful noise.

[Jon CameronParticipant @joncameron26580]

Very interesting, I've just got an ML4 up and running, it's not perfect by any means, but came with a lot of tooling and was fairly cheap. Just over £300. I have lots to do to it but I've already got myself a project on the go in the form of making an occilating steam engine.

Regards to the gears, you may find that just making sure they are set up correctly spaced makes a massive difference. Mine made a horrible grinding noise. So I went through each one starting from the Lead screw, cleaned, and then rebolted back in place with oil on the shafts, and spaced off each other. Now even under load they don't hardly make a noise.

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

after a long pause i am back on he renovation, a tail stock.

in the toolbox which came with the lathe was what i believe to be possibly a part made and abandoned project for a cross slide, just rough metal with the dovetails welded on and jib strap screws put in at various angles, it had also twisted in the welding and brasing, after much fileing and time on the disc sander i now have some thing usable, although not pretty, with the mild steel jibstraps fitted and adjusted it runs up and down the bed with very little slack, my bed has a very severe wear in the centre could be upto 0.2 or 0.3 mm, but seeing the tailstock runs at the end of the bed this should not be a problem. so that is just the foot, the other part will be the headstock from a wickes bench drill cut in half, the bracket to hold this to the foot is a 12mm thick tow bar angle bracket. sorry for the lack of pictures they will follow in a day or so.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Welcome back Louis! Can you give us a picture?

Neil

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

they were both very coarse and rough, the black metal shows this. if i had been been making iti would have trued flattened and squared the metal prior to starting assembly, where this was made out of rough bar stock.

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

this shows whitch bit of the casting i used,,, although you had probably guessed

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

foot and bracket, you can see the holes for the tow ball bolts. the assembly bolts are m6 but the hole in the bracket are 8mm to allow alignment, the same is true of the bols holding the casting to the bracket.

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

here it is assembled and aligned,,,,,well hopefully

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

also in the previous shot you can see the repair to the lead screw bearing. the corner of the casting was broken off. a repair hd been effected but the leadscrew was too high causing the bed to bind . i the leadscrew was too short, so i made an extension to allow for the ball race and the knob, the long nut is the coupling piece. whilst the knob looks rubbish the grip is good even with greasey fingers. the lathe is mounted on 25mm spacers ,s o when you drop something inside the bed it falls out of the bottom. must profile the end plate on the bed so the tailstock can be slid off the end.

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

[Louis ShowellParticipant @louisshowell53682]

here it is working,,, not finished, but it drilled a hole in the centre of the bolt ,the shaft is free to spin at present so has to be locked to drill, but if i turn a centre point then unlocked it is a live centre. more when i have time

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