Renovating a Hardinge HLV-H

[BillTodd]

I acquired this filthy Hardinge from a firm for which my brother has been doing some work. Apparently, they acquired it in a company buy-out and had it shipped to their high precision dept. The manager took one look and consigned it to the scrap heap (their HLV's are pristine and polished :)).





That's my younger brother on the fork-lift and my next eldest brother's car and trailer. With my Eldest brother giving me a hand to get the thing off the trailer it was quite a family affair. Handy things, brothers :)

[BillTodd]

Once in the garage, the first job was to get rid of the horrible off-white hand paint job...

Fortunately the lathe must have had a minor 'tart up' prior to the hand painting; The darker grey blow-over spray job has not stuck to the original Hardinge enamel very well , so I was able to simply scrape off the two layers in one simply operation.

I'm not sure what to do about painting it yet; I'd to spray it but my compressor's too small and the lathe is far too heavy to move to a spray shop - I'm thinking about rollering it on ???

[BillTodd]

I heard back from Axis_gb , Sony's Uk distributor for the lathe's magnescale DRO. They have a replacement switch overlay in stock for <£10 and will supply a manual for free :) Truly superb service :)



It's a testament to the robustness of the magnescale scales that they were still working (over the 2" or so that I could move them) while stuffed almost full of congealed coolant. There's no way a glass scale would have survived. I took them apart and scraped most of the stuff out, then cleaned them with safewash pcb cleaner (doesn't eat plastic, unlike some solvents) now they're working OK. (



More good news...

I had been disappointed to find that there were no change wheels or banjo behind the machine's gearbox cover (all the pictures I had seen of the HLV's had gears). Mick (the man on the forklift) spoke to one of the machinists at the firm I got the lathe from and he says they don't need change gears at all to cut English threads, the built in gear box works without them. :)

[BillTodd]

When I removed the power feed motor I thought i saw some water run out of the apron gearbox. I had to crack the box open to check...

Inside the apron gears and clutches (for cross and longitudinal feeds) are slimey but in good order. No obvious sign of water ingress.


I found out from Hardinge UK today that the machine was made in mid 1961! The hours meter on the control box says 20,000 hrs so it's not done a lot of work in the last 47 years.

One strange thing: the tailstock is metric (the lathe is otherwise english) so it must hve ben swapped out at some time in the past. The picture shows the tailstock leadscrew ; notice the double row bearing and adjustable backlash compensation.


What's the best polish for steel? A couple of minutes with a wire brush is all that's needed to clean up the rusty bits, but the steel is so hard even wet n dry won't make it shine.

[Robin Hewitt]

Looks in relatively good nick, just been a bit unloved. Do you really need to polish the steel? Abrasives and lathes don't really mix all that well, OTOH a coat of paint could work wonders.

Question is, did they junk it for a reason? The fact that it's still around could mean there's not a lot wrong with it
I am also a fan of Safewash, smells like bubble mixture, expensive but not so bad if you buy the 25 litre size. I use it in an ultrasonic tank, dissolves awkward organics and leaves everything shining like a new pin.

Robin

[Lee Roberts]

Wicked project Bill, I will be keeping an eye on this one.

Just taking back to the grey makes it look so much better, remember as you do this you’re doing it for us both and possibly some others!

I think it’s just a case of not being to the "managers" taste by the sounds of it Robin, fingers x for bill that it’s not got any major faults.

I would love to have a project like this, the space would be nice to ;-): beer:

[aafradio]

What's the best polish for steel? A couple of minutes with a wire brush is all that's needed to clean up the rusty bits, but the steel is so hard even wet n dry won't make it shine.

Go careful with that wire brush - it looks like you may have too large a wire diameter and it's gouging the surface. I used Scotchbrite on mine with WD-40. Took a lot of elbow grease, but the result was excellent. I never had to use any polish on it after that. My bare surfaces looked a lot like yours when I got it, except for the paint. Several views of it as it looks now are at http://aafradio.org/garajmahal/

- Mike

[BillTodd]

Go careful with that wire brush - it looks like you may have too large a wire diameter and it's gouging the surface. I used Scotchbrite on mine with WD-40.

Thanks for your concern but, those 'gouges' are where I waved a diamond hone over the top to see if anything would touch it at all (they are really very fine scratches - they've caught the camera flash))

Scotchbrite and WD sounds like the right combination :)

http://aafradio.org/garajmahal/hardinge.htm - Wow, If I could get it to look like yours, I'd be as pleased as Punch :)

You seem like a man who would know... Have you trying chemical blueing on any parts?

[BillTodd]

Got as far as removing the leadscrew half nuts and carriage today...

I dismantled the apron and found the first real sign of wear; The carriage drive gear inner bearing has been eating it's way into the gear shaft. I'm not should what I can do, other than replace the gear and bearings. I'll email ZMT later to see if they have a good S/H one.

The overlay for the Sony DRO arrived with manual as promised. Many thanks to Richard at Axis GB (Sony's UK distributor for magnescale) :)

I though I'd finished scraping muck off of this machine, but when I removed the feed motor control box, I found another pound of two of the **** stuffed under the end of the bed.

Worse than a teenager's bedroom!

[aafradio]

Thanks for your concern but, those 'gouges' are where I waved a diamond hone over the top to see if anything would touch it at all (they are really very fine scratches - they've caught the camera flash))

Whew! Glad to hear that. They should polish out with the Scotchbrite, then.

Have you trying chemical blueing on any parts?

Yup, but on my Bridgeport, not on the Hardinge. Got it from a gunsmith supplier - Brownell's here in the US. They had a number of different types, including both cold and hot solutions, in small bottles. The cold solution works well if you don't rub it incessantly. Like yours, mine had the quick threading lever on the compound broken off, so I made a new one from 1/4" stainless rod. That didn't need blueing, though. Your carriage drive gear looks like mine did. I toyed with the idea of having the shaft flame sprayed and then grinding it to size, but I finally just bit the bullet and bought a new one and a new Oilite bushing from Hardinge. I don't recall how much it was...around $80USD sounds familiar.

In the feed motor control box, make sure someone has replaced the original selenium rectifiers with solid state diodes.

You're making great progress, BTW!

There are a few articles at http://aafradio.org/garajmahal/tool_restoration.html that might interest you as you get closer to completion.

- Mike