Maintenance problems - A Lathe cross feed failure.

Well, a critical piece of equipment for me is my South Bend lathe. It was built in 1945 and delivered to a company in Boston. It had a relatively hard life and I found it in the backyard of a house in Falls Church, VA in about 1989. It was under a tarp and came with a small amount of tooling. I took the lathe home and then rebuilt much of it, adding some new used parts. In those days, I worked with a used equipment fellow up in New Jersey to get parts. Well, the lathe gave me good service until about 3 months ago when the cross feed drive clutch froze. Fortunately, I found a new used drive, in good shape, for a great price on eBay.  So, the next step was disassembly, which began with removing the saddle, tailstock and collet holder that mounted to the back of the lathe. So, here we see the lathe minus the saddle and apron, useless until I fix the drive. 

For an old machine, It still looks good. The ways have some nicks but it still maintains good accuracy when I use it with my 3C collets. 

Here is the apron in the process of being disassembled. The cause of my problem was a failure of the reservoir gasket which led to a loss of lubrication on the clutch and then a seizure of the shaft. It is amazing how many tools accumulate as you do some work on something!

Here is the saddle which is pretty clean after 10 years since the last cleaning. I had put in a new cross feed screw and nut coupled with a larger dial.

This is the tail stock which is set up for a quick closer and drill. It is a heritage of its harder working days. 

So, the lack of lubrication also led to accelerated wear of the worm drive gear. The old gear on the right shows that, in comparison the replacement gear, A significant loss of metal in the teeth of the old gear has occurred.  

I have almost gotten all the components off the chassis of the saddle now. I have also cleaned up the interior of it. You can see that someone in the past had added a new sleeve for the shaft that used the far right hole.

 Fortunately, the damage was confined the clutch assembly, and the worm gear,

Parts are accumulating but being cleaned as I go. 

This is the final array. The culprit of my problems was the large metal shield in the foreground that formed the back of the reservoir. The gasket failed. I hope I do not have any screws or other parts left over when I am finished with reassembly!

The bottom of the chassis casting, which looks like a big cavity, was where the half-moon metal shield mounted. If you look carefully, you can see the gasket outline. 

So, here we see everything cleaned up, new parts add, lubricated with a surface coat of oil, and back in place. All that is missing are the handwheel that mounts to the far right and the reservoir back.

Handwheel now in place

A cleaned up front view. 

A final back view with the reservoir in place as the back shield is mounted. Next step is to mount this on the lathe by threading it on lead screw, attach it to the saddle and see if it works!