Thread: Elliott Lathe bed clean

Hi Bruce,
That's a nice looking machine. If I remember correctly you were asking for info about it last year? It has the same "improved inverted v" bed that the LeBlond has, the steepness of the rear of the v is supposed to stop the saddle from wanting to climb up and forwards. How true that is in real life who knows, there are plenty of big lathes with standard v beds....

Hope you get use of the thumb back soon, mine looked like that once, but that was because I shot a nail into it......

Cheers,
Ewan

Bruce I reckon you would have to be careful around power points with that thumb

That is a top lathe that you have there, thanks for the pictures.

Nice lathe and sorry to hear about you injury.
At the moment I have my apron and saddle in a million bits, do you have some better pictures of the oiler set up?

Dave

Hi Dave,
There is a plunger pump in the bottom of the apron driven by the feed drive shaft, it connects to the junctin box at the top which then disperses to the gears via the ally tube that has holes in it, also goes to the sight window so that you can see lube is circulating.

I have wondered if I wear nylon socks and drag me feet heaps on the carpet I could get a spark to jump out of my thumb tazer..
Cheers
Bruce

Beware the thumb tazer......

Looking at that pic of the apron, there seems to be 2 too many gears for me to make sense of. Why the 2 clusters of 3?

Cheers

The third gear on the right is what drives the top slide, the other 2 are linked to the levers which engage sliding and surfacing feeds. Both clusters have spring loaded clutches on them at the face closest to the bed. There is also a shear pin in the front of the apron, there is an accessory, which I don't have, that is an adjustable trip unit that fits in place of the shear pin this allows bed stops to be fitted, would be handy.


Cheers
Bruce

Looks to be in good order, or better then good...

The 4000rpm top speed would be interesting to use..... Not very common to see that high a speed on a manual lathe... The chucks would want to be steel me thinks...

Originally Posted by argeng

The third gear on the right is what drives the top slide,

Bruce, are you saying your compound has power feed? If so I'd love to know how it works.

Hi RC,
The chucks are Elliott branded, the 3 jaw is steel and from what I have read balanced. At 4K it certainly hums along, not frightening but definitely demands respect, no nasty noises.
Cheers
Bruce

Hi Bryan,
I may have been wrong in my explanation, there are only feeds in the normal sense I.e. turning and facing.
I do think some of the Monarchs can have both feeds engaged at the same time letting you do tapers.
Cheers
Bruce

Thanks for the extra info Bruce, always interesting seeing other lathe set ups.

Dave

Originally Posted by Bryan

Bruce, are you saying your compound has power feed? If so I'd love to know how it works.

I've thought about that one Bryan, sleepless nights etc.....Here goes without pics...

For those with mills like mine and Michaels (i know there are more but they are the 2 i am certain have swiveling tables), it is pretty easy to see how the way the X feed is transferred up through the center of the table rotation axis. This is the only way i can think to drive the compound, pretend the x on the mill is the compound on the lathe.

The cross slide screw needs to be off center on the slide (just like the y axis screw is off center on said mills) so another feed shaft can run centered on the compounds rotational axis. A keyed bevel gear then drives a stub shaft that runs up through the center of the rotational axis. Keyed so it can slide along the shaft as you move the cross slide. The stub shaft then ends in another bevel gear that drives a 4th bevel gear that is keyed onto the compound's screw, much like the power downfeed setup on a shaper. Voila you have a powerfed compound.....you would need a bit of space to fit it all in and of course you would need re-design the apron and saddle of the lathe to get it to work.....but

You could run the first bevel gear on a keyway cut into the cross slide screw. You would however have to make the cross slide nuts disengage-able (split like the leadscrew half nuts maybe?), and have a dog clutch or somesuch so the compound feed could be disengaged. All do able but a lot of work.....

Cheers
Ew

Sorry Bruce bit off topic there.....

Originally Posted by Ueee

I've thought about that one Bryan, sleepless nights etc.....Here goes without pics...

For those with mills like mine and Michaels (i know there are more but they are the 2 i am certain have swiveling tables), it is pretty easy to see how the way the X feed is transferred up through the center of the table rotation axis. This is the only way i can think to drive the compound, pretend the x on the mill is the compound on the lathe.

The cross slide screw needs to be off center on the slide (just like the y axis screw is off center on said mills) so another feed shaft can run centered on the compounds rotational axis. A keyed bevel gear then drives a stub shaft that runs up through the center of the rotational axis. Keyed so it can slide along the shaft as you move the cross slide. The stub shaft then ends in another bevel gear that drives a 4th bevel gear that is keyed onto the compound's screw, much like the power downfeed setup on a shaper. Voila you have a powerfed compound.....you would need a bit of space to fit it all in and of course you would need re-design the apron and saddle of the lathe to get it to work.....but

You could run the first bevel gear on a keyway cut into the cross slide screw. You would however have to make the cross slide nuts disengage-able (split like the leadscrew half nuts maybe?), and have a dog clutch or somesuch so the compound feed could be disengaged. All do able but a lot of work.....

Or you could just get a lathe with a taper turning attachment which is why you very rarely see power feed compound slides...... in fact I, personally, have never seen one and I've looked at a lot of lathes. Well, never seen a mechanical one using bevel gears etc, quite a few people have made a powered compound using stepper motors and the like.

FWIW I have a machine that uses the parallel shafts and 2 sets of bevel gears to drive its equivalent to a compound slide - your description of function is pretty good.

PDW

Do a search for Stanko (import) some of there larger lathes had power feed to the compound.