Feeler FTL 618

[pfincham]

It's coming on nicely :)



Do you have the covers and levers in place? If not you'll be feeling the cross-slide gears spinning as you move the carriage. [one nice Hardinge feature is the ability to cut a perfect 30' taper by engaging both cross-feed and carriage feed at the same time]

I can only just feel the clutch drag on the cross slide if I wind the handle fast. Otherwise, the clutches are free.

The clutches should be adjusted to "...engage and disengage when the ball lever is between 10' and 20' above horizontal."

The clutch covers and levers are not yet in place. I need to strip them for repainting and cleaning. So I guess they are both fully engaged while I am winding the carriage hand wheel. I nearly panicked when I first wound the handle before I guessed at the clutch. I better get on with the covers and adjustment so I can be happy all is well.
One of the clutch spindles looks like it might have seized at one time, but I've decided to leave that and see if it causes a problem. If I'm not carefull I'll rebuild every part and I'm not sure that it's necessary on a machine with a low duty cycle.
Thanks for that Bill

[pfincham]

Well, I've now stripped the clutch covers and levers, cleaned and re-assebled them. I've come to fit them to the clutches and guess what! I've assmebled the clutches incorrectly. This don't seem a problem except that the saddle gear cover plate has been assembled using gasket sealer and refuses to come off. If you look at the thumb nails you can see that the spring mount is upside down creating a 4mm gap between the bearing and the spring mount. Watch out for this if you strip the clutches. One of the thumb nails is buggered but I can't work out how to remove it. David Bailey wasn't around today.

After a lot of banging and pulling as described in the manual I gave up and looked for another method. There are two plugs to the right of the cover plate, which allows access to the half nut adjusters. Removing these allows 16mm bolts to be located and used to push the cover plate away from the saddle. This creates a gap large enough to slide in a thin knife which can be pushed around the edge releasing the cover plate. See the thumb nail. This actually worked easier than the method described in the manual and I would recommend it to anyone removing the cover on their Hardinge or Feeler.

I thought I might get this done before hols but no such luck. Inverter turned up today so lots to do when I get back. Tune in about two weeks from now. Over but not out!!