I finally have a lathe

So a friend of mine was going to scrap this monster lathe with tooling and i couldn't let that happen. I asked how much he wanted for it and his reply was if you can get it out of my garage you can have it for free. I tried to offer him some money but he said no way so what i think i'm going to do is get him something nice for xmas. The next order of business was to figure out how to get this monster from his house to mine. I made a call to my buddy who has a propane tank crane attached to his truck and asked if he could help and he said no problem. I wish i would have taken some pictures of the crane lifting it but i forgot too. Everything went very smoothly considering the lathe weighs in at 650lbs. Now it sits in my garage waiting for another friend to come do the electrical work. Here is some info on the lathe it is a 10x36 rockwell lathe 220v single phase variable speed with power feed which is broken. It was made in Massachusetts or Connecticut in the early 70's. Here is a link to a page where someone rebuilt the same unit as mine. Anyway if anybody has any tips or links to share or something i should check out feel free to post or pm me. Also if anyone has a power feed unit for this i would be happy to purchase it from them mine has a few broken gears. Thanks for looking:beer:

Well first of all. You want to get a coat of oil all over EVERYTHING almost except the belts and pulleys. It's already starting to rust. Also you should check the spindle bearings for wear and make sure they are, and stay, oiled properly. If the bearings are gone and the chuck wobbles.. well. Good luck doing anything with any real tolerances.

Beyond that as far as the power feed. Replacing the damaged gears in it will be much more economical than replacing the whole drive.. But you really only need the feed when cutting threads. Actual turning parts down is done feeding by hand anyway.

Your best bet is to start googling everything you can about lathes in general, as well as try to find a forum or newsgroup that specializes in your particular brand, and ask them what to check/look for to fix any wear.

Also, if you plan on grinding your own cutters.. which I recommend since it saves money in the long run plus you can make any angle or radius cutter you want, you'll need a good bench grinder as well.

If you plan on turning harder materials like steel and stainless steel, you'll really need to fabricate a water flow cooling system too.

Thanks for the friendly advise. Yeah this whole machine needs a lot of oil everywhere and needs to be taken apart to get all the metal fillings out of everything. At least it looks like it's made better than those harbor freight one's that i almost bought hehe. I had a friend come by that knows a little more than i do about these things and he seems to feel that the spindle bearings are fine for now but hes no expert either. Looks like i will be doing a lot of reading on this subject. Thanks again for the input.

The ones at my work don't have any kind of water cooling system and we turn down stainless shafts all day. I understand the benefits of a cooling system for the cutting edge but is this something that is normally seen on normal shop lathes?

It really depends on your lathe, the tooling used, your feed speeds and cutting depth, etc..

Most lathes hobbyists have access too aren't 5HP+ beasts that don't care what your doing with them and using exotic tooling..

Most are dealing with low HP lathes and using normal HSS cutters that may or may not be ground optimally for the material they're cutting. cooling/lubrication just makes things a bit easier and faster.