I have been having a problem with my Victor precision lathe.
Recently I was doing a threading operation on many parts. All of a sudden the lathe came to a grinding abrupt stop. The spindle would not turn with the thread knob engaged (NOT good!). I opened the thread gear box and a bunch of teeth fell out. I took it apart and found 4 gears and a splined shaft had been stripped of about 30% of their teeth. I purchased the replacement parts (Taiwan!), new bearings and six weeks and $800 later I am up and running. My best guess is that my carriage hit something and stopped the feed to the left, or that there was a damaged gear just waiting to go.
Anyway, on to an increasing problem.
My lathe uses a DC motor for the power feed on the X&Y axis. In the past few months I have noticed that the carriage does not like to power, or hand feed to the right after it has warmed up. The power feed to the left works fine at any feed setting. The feed to the left is free for the first 1/2 hour of work and then slowly gets harder and harder to turn by hand wheel, and the power feed stops, probably do to the increased resistance.
I removed the DC motor and checked for its feed performance in each direction under a load. It performed fine. I checked what gears I could see through the open hole where the DC drive cog meshes with the cogs in the carriage. There were no damaged teeth. With the DC motor out it did not ease the resistance of the carriage when moving it with the handwheel.
The Y powerfeed performs fine. I have a DRO installed for both axis so I removed each linear scale without any change in the X axis resistance. The rack and pinion gear for moving the carriage in the X axis is not damaged and is clean of debris. There is not outside resistance to the carriage (DRO cablesm lubrication hoses, taper attachment).
I have removed the wipers and checked for bed debris, cleanliness. It is all fine. The bedway well lubricated. None of the thread stops are in the way, the carriage lock is not engaged, and the threading half-nuts are not touching the lead screw. The power feed handles move freely throughout their ranges. The X Axis gib is not too tight but I cannot figure out how to adjust it.
I am running out of things to check. I purchased a new manual for this machine but it does not offer anything in the way of troubleshooting (Frankly it sucks. It doesn't even have gear set schematics for gear sets A,B,C & I. but that's another story). I called tech support through Victor's Los Angeles contractor "Machinery Solutions". Their East Indian tech guy ("John") cannot even turn on a lightswitch, and he transferrend me to a Taiwanese man ("Ken") who couldn't speak enough english to even get started!
I am thinking the slipper clutch for the X axis may be the culprit. The manual only addresses the clutches as, "...the clutches are set to handle any work performed on the lathe." The year of manufacture is 1992. The maual has a very vague diagram of the clutch setup or how they work.
Does anyone have any experience with the clutches in a Victor or Hardinge HVLH? Or any suggestions of what the problem might be? How do you adjust the jibs on this machine?
Any input would be appreciated.
Recently I was doing a threading operation on many parts. All of a sudden the lathe came to a grinding abrupt stop. The spindle would not turn with the thread knob engaged (NOT good!). I opened the thread gear box and a bunch of teeth fell out. I took it apart and found 4 gears and a splined shaft had been stripped of about 30% of their teeth. I purchased the replacement parts (Taiwan!), new bearings and six weeks and $800 later I am up and running. My best guess is that my carriage hit something and stopped the feed to the left, or that there was a damaged gear just waiting to go.
Anyway, on to an increasing problem.
My lathe uses a DC motor for the power feed on the X&Y axis. In the past few months I have noticed that the carriage does not like to power, or hand feed to the right after it has warmed up. The power feed to the left works fine at any feed setting. The feed to the left is free for the first 1/2 hour of work and then slowly gets harder and harder to turn by hand wheel, and the power feed stops, probably do to the increased resistance.
I removed the DC motor and checked for its feed performance in each direction under a load. It performed fine. I checked what gears I could see through the open hole where the DC drive cog meshes with the cogs in the carriage. There were no damaged teeth. With the DC motor out it did not ease the resistance of the carriage when moving it with the handwheel.
The Y powerfeed performs fine. I have a DRO installed for both axis so I removed each linear scale without any change in the X axis resistance. The rack and pinion gear for moving the carriage in the X axis is not damaged and is clean of debris. There is not outside resistance to the carriage (DRO cablesm lubrication hoses, taper attachment).
I have removed the wipers and checked for bed debris, cleanliness. It is all fine. The bedway well lubricated. None of the thread stops are in the way, the carriage lock is not engaged, and the threading half-nuts are not touching the lead screw. The power feed handles move freely throughout their ranges. The X Axis gib is not too tight but I cannot figure out how to adjust it.
I am running out of things to check. I purchased a new manual for this machine but it does not offer anything in the way of troubleshooting (Frankly it sucks. It doesn't even have gear set schematics for gear sets A,B,C & I. but that's another story). I called tech support through Victor's Los Angeles contractor "Machinery Solutions". Their East Indian tech guy ("John") cannot even turn on a lightswitch, and he transferrend me to a Taiwanese man ("Ken") who couldn't speak enough english to even get started!
I am thinking the slipper clutch for the X axis may be the culprit. The manual only addresses the clutches as, "...the clutches are set to handle any work performed on the lathe." The year of manufacture is 1992. The maual has a very vague diagram of the clutch setup or how they work.
Does anyone have any experience with the clutches in a Victor or Hardinge HVLH? Or any suggestions of what the problem might be? How do you adjust the jibs on this machine?
Any input would be appreciated.
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