Reconditioning a Relmac lathe

[irving2008]

Well its been a while but last weekend I finally managed a further 2 attempts at pouring this bearing (getting a dab hand at setting it all up now)...

Anyway, got what I was fairly sure was a good one - I used a digital temperature probe from Maplins (£19.99, also doubles as a cheap multimeter to keep in the garage to save my very expensive one getting damaged) to measure the temperature inside the spindle and heated everything til that was 220degC. But it takes an hour or more to cool down to be able to be touched and I didnt have time to get the spindle out then. But I was working at home today so took an hour or so out this evening to get the spindle out (blowtorch needed to exapnd things a little to free it off) and start the clean up.

I am mightily impressed with the result....





This is after I cut and tidied up the slot (which makes it easy to get the spindle in and out now) and about 1/2 way filing down the excess on the bearing ends. The bearing is so close that 1/4 of a turn on the pinch bolt goes from 'mildly stiff to turn' to 'locked spindle' and the play is <.0005" on the DTI...

Next job is to clean up the ends and then do a spot of scraping on the bearing surface (although I am hesitant to do too much of that, in fact I am tempted not to do any right now since its so tight and the journal is freshly ground)

Looks like I'll have a working lathe in a few weeks....