Warco 220

[kg788995Participant @kg788995]

• Hi I’m new to lathes and I’ve just bought a warco 220 without any change gears I’m having trouble trying to locate a set even warco themselves weren’t very helpful and just said they don’t stock parts for this machine I’m getting desperate now if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi 788995, the Warco 220 is a fairly old machine, and is derived from the C210T, probably the only way to find any would be on the likes of ebay, or second hand machine dealers, or you may be able to find some other makes that will fit.

Regards Nick.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

If like many of the import lathes it has a fixed gear on the spindle you should be able to measure the OD of that and count the number of teeth. From that it is fairly easy to work out the size of gear which is most likely MOD rather than DP. You can then buy some cheap imported gears or even 3D print some, might need the bore and width altering but easy now you have a lathe.

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

Would any information be obtained from this manual

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

I presume that you have a copy of the manual?  If not you can download a pdf version from here.  (Be aware  – it’s a 25Mb file.)

It contains, amongst other information, a table of change gear combinations to obtain various metric and Imperial screw threads. This is a screen grab from the manual:

That should get you started.  By judicious picking of oft-used threads, you can cherry pick which gears you need to acquire.

John

(Dalboy searched faster than me!)

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Looks like the gear I mentioned on the spindle is 32T so if you can measure the OD of that we can work out the gear size and type.

Working through a couple of those gear trains looks like it came with a 4mm pitch lead screw.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Good excuse to fit an electronic leadscrew?

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

Jason,

The manual confirms your suspicions re: the lead screw. It is indeed 4mm pitch.

I’m with you, John, about the ELS, too.

John

 

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

+1 for an electronic leadscrew. Lot easier to use. I bought this one:

Presentation

Robert.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Having measured the OD of the 32T gear, it should be easy to calculate the Module of the gears meshing with it. OD = (34 / Module)  Thus a 1.5 Module gear would be (34 x 1.5 ) = 51 mm OD

The 220 will not be unique, it will have been sold by a variety of companies, under different names, so spare gears night still be available elsewhere. (Chester, Axminster, perhaps, or Grizzly in USA may be able to help with details, even if they can’t supply)

In any case, case knowing the Module of the gears required, further measurements of the studs, should allow you to make a drawing of the gears, (bore, thickness) which will help you to find possible sources., such as other machines.

It might even be possible to find gears of the correct Module, that can be modified, (bored out, or bushed) to use on your machine.

Probably an expensive way to obtain gears would be to buy from someone like Reliance Gears or Davall Gears; but don’t expect them to be cheap!

HTH

Howard

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Actually the 220 was made by Mashtroy in Romania I think and only Warco stocked it for a bit in the UK.  I had one (following a glowing review in ME) and was disappointed.  It must be cheaper and simpler to avoid the problem and fit an ELS.

Things to watch out for tat I remember – the headstock bearings as supplied were either poor quality or not fitted correctly.  The lathe would never part off properly until I insisted on new ones which Warco supplied – the old ones were clearly galled.

The clutch to engage the leadscrew for fine feed/screwcutting is a bit weird.

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Another vote for ELS. Probably cheaper than sourcing a full set of gears as well as much more convenient to use.

However looking at the write up on Tonys site :-  https://www.lathes.co.uk/mashstroy/  the machine would seem an excellent candidate for CNC conversion. Basically two ball screws and two motors for a simple conversion, other bells and whistles being optional.

I wonder how the economics of getting one of the less costly CNC set-ups and initially running it as a simple ELS / programmable feed device compare with a simple ELS set-up. If not vastly different starting with a cut down CNC gives you the option of going to full CNC later if you so desire. There are some advantages to the “hobbled” CNC route. Particularly if using a CAD/CAM capable program, such as Fusion, for design.

Clive

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

My Cnc converted Super 7 only has a ball screw on the X axis (crossfeed), still the standard leadscrew.  This workd fine as long as you remember to always cut Z towards the headstock.  One day I might fit a ballscrew.  OTOH a ballscrew is essential on the X axis.  The normal lathe screws have backlash and in my experience it is too large for at least the Mach3 compensation to handle.

There is a version of GRBL which can run a lathe which provides quite a low cost upgrade.  Frankly I can’t see any reason to go for an ELS unless just to save money on change gears.

[MacolmParticipant @macolm]

A question about electronic lead screws. How is tool synchronisation with spindle achieved for multiple thread cutting passes? Presumably the whole thing can be reversed in the same way as with the majority of lathes when cutting “foreign” thread pitches, but is there any smart method of quick wind back and pickup similar to some lathes with a spindle clutch with single dog?

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I think some of the software can use a “rapid” return rate, though as you can thread at several 100rpm the tool will come back to the start quite quickly if just left engaged depending on the pitch being cut.

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

Malcolm,

Have a look at the videos pointed to in Robert Atkinson’s link, above. There are demonstrations of the semi-automatic threading system of the basic els and the fully automatic threading achievable with the latest version. The software keeps track of the carriage position through the spindle encoder output and I have found it works very well, using the basic version.

John

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, Howard Lewis is right, the change gears are Module 1.5. The other thing about them is they have three dogs on one side, which interlock them to another one when in a gear chain, the dogs can be seen on the right hand wheel in the photo below.

Regards Nick.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

The relatively cheap imported gears that I suggested generally come either wider than change gears or with a boss so it  not be hard to form the dogs on them. Simpler would be to bore them out larger and cut a keyway and make a sleeve wide enough for to gears with a key. Much like the current Warco etc lathes use.

 

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi JasonB, yes there are a few ways of adapting other gears, but these have a bore length of 19mm when two are ganged together, with a gap of 4mm between each pair, and the wheels are 7mm thick with a raised portion of about 0.44mm, but I’m sure they could be accommodated to fit. However, if these ELS systems are flying off the shelves, there should be plenty of original change gears available somewhere, I guess.

Regards Nick.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

I don’t think the 220 itself flew off the shelves exactly! Only available through Warco and for a limited period.

[MacolmParticipant @macolm]

Thanks for pointing to the explanation in the video, I finally managed to summons enough patience to find the relevant couple of minutes. It does seem like a good solution for lathe threading, the key being you need to keep separate dynamic counts of spindle and lead screw positions.

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