Feeler FTL 618

[pfincham]

Thanks for the advice on the oil Bill, I was going to use the gearbox oil for my Myford. I've now ordered an Hardinge maintenence manual, so maybe I'll not screw up in future.

I have now stripped down and cleaned the carriage wheel assembly and it shows some wear as you suggested. It looks like some cutting fluid ingress has caused some rot on the drive gear (see thumbnail).

Also, the dual dial models have an idler gear which causes the dials to move at different speeds when selecting imperial or metric (see thumbnail). The pin and idler are very worn on the carriage feed but are near mint on the top slide as you would expect. I don.t know if this is the same in the HLV. Anyway, any idea where I can get spares for these things, as whilst I'm at it I may as well change the pin and idler in all of the feeds. If I can I'll also change the carriage drive gear.

Just to add more work I have extended my shop and will be preparing the floor so that I can move this thing into place, so maybe the pace will slow for a day or two.

[BillTodd]

The carriage handle gear has taken a bit of a pounding (water/coolant ingress into the apron?) but it's relatively unimportant to the finish you'll get, so don't worry too much. It the gear that that gear drives (IYSWIM), the carriage drive gear, that suffers bearing failure in the Hardinge.

It might be an idea to crack open the apron just to check there's nothing untoward inside. It's not difficult to strip down.

I don.t know if this is the same in the HLV. Anyway, any idea where I can get spares for these things,

Mine's imperial only it doesn't that the dual scales. You might try ringing ZMT (don't bother emailing they "don't have email in the workshop") but HLV-EMs are like hen's teeth, so you may have to make do and mend. I.e. make a new pin and fit a bronze sleeve into the idler gear.