New toy: Setting up Colchester Student lathe

[Jonathan]

Looks like a good sturdy machine. Those old colchesters are capable of hard work. Is the bed hard or soft? Some of the roundheads had soft beds.

There's a sign on the bed saying "Induction Hardened Bed"

Watch out for the gamet bearings. If you have to get new ones you may have to dig fairly deep!

Are they not a standard size then? They seem fine at the moment - if I disengauge the motor and spin the spindle by hand it feels very nice and smooth. Having said that the headstock did get a bit warm near the chuck end when I ran it at 1200rpm for a while. I'm not sure if that's normal.

Just look at the old DSGs and Halifax lathe in the mech eng toolroom at the uni!

I would if I was allowed in. I asked about if I could use the machines and they said only if I do the training (health and safety reasons), which I don't mind though I doubt it would be more than I'd done at school. Anyway, it never happened so the nearest I've got it watching standing on the balconies!

I am sure you will enjoy taking cuts with a machine with a bit of meat. The saddle also has T slots which are great for boring jobs.

Definately - at school they have two M300's and one M250 which I used a lot. I never thought I'd own a similar lathe. There was also a bigger lathe - over 50 years old I think and it was better than the Harrison, except I was about the only one to use it because it had imperial dials. Now sold to make space for laser cutter...waste in my opinion!

Anyway I'm going a bit off topic...

Just to test I faced 50mm MS & aluminium bar and chamfered the steel, here's the result:





Not the most interesting test but it got a nice shiny finish. Happy!

The coolant pump only uses a fraction of the power the spindle will use, so I personally wouldn't say it's going to be a major issue in terms of doing anything bad to the VFD, especially considering the coolant pump isn't likely to be running near it's rated power.
However, what if you want to use the VFD to change the speed of the spindle?

I reckon I'll try them together tomorrow. Why would I want to change the spindle speed with the VFD significantly? It's easy to change the gears and keep the motor at full speed which will surely get more torque. If I want a speed between the standard ones I won't have to reduce the frequency much.

At the moment I've only ran the motors at 50Hz, however they both say 50/60Hz. I'm going to test the actual rpm of the spindle tomorrow.