Lathe

09/03/08

Known in our house as “The Item”, this is my Myford ML7.  They were very popular machines made from 1946—1979.  Serial# K17965 was made in 1951.  It’s a 3.5” x 20” model with backgears and screwcutting.  It can turn a maximum of 7” over the bed with a bed length of  20”.  This model has a cut out at the front of the bed so it can turn 10” x 1.5” in the gap.   It has a range of speeds up to a max of 640 rpm although you can increase this with a different motor pulley.

It has always been working, but for the precision work I now need to do I am giving it a proper service.  I have mounted it properly to the floor and shimmed up the feet so Its properly level otherwise it would cut taper.  The beds, main bearings and gears seem ok but there is 5 thou of end float on the spindle that needs adjusting, plus it needs new drive belts, guards, changegears and a couple of other minor things.  The worst thing however is the cross slide which has loads of play on it and I have been in touch with the factory to get some advice on how to fix it.  It can be adjusted which I will try later, but I suspect it will need some new parts in there as well.  Although its small, all in all I think its ok and I just hope I can patch it up so it can perform accurate work.  Spare parts are on the way from the original factory that made it.

 

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