Southbend Lathe Power Crossfeed Conversion and other Ideas

[Ian 2,417]

Hi all, I mentioned in my Hanging up my spurs thread that a certain something I had really enjoyed making had pointed me in a new direction (with the added bonus it can be done in a much smaller space (soon to be built)) to go.

The said build as you will of guessed is a power crossfeed conversion on my lathe..

I didn't take any photo's along the way as it wasn't really a planned build, it just sort of happened slowly over time..

But here's a short video I made out it..

 

 

 

Some of you will remember the coolent system was basically a Ford P100 washer bottle with built in pump.

 

 

 

 

Powered by this model railway controller.

 

 

 

Well, the Ford pump eventually died and as luck would have it I had a twin pump washer bottle from a Volvo kicking about the place.

Only one pump is running at the mo but it is now powered by a twin controller unit which will come in handy for powering the other pump..
Why two lots of coolent you ask?
There are times mostly when drilling through a long length of bar, that the bar starts to get very hot.. So if I can cool the bar as well as the drill action end of things I might as well..

The Volvo washer bottle even has a "low level" warning thingy built in, so I might as well use it and wire in a warning light

A few pics

The new coolent bottle/pump.

 

 

 

Not the best of photo's, the twin controller is next to the 80mph sign.
You can see the old control unit which is now used for sideways action

 

 

 

I have been thinking about making a milling plate thingy so I could also use my lathe as a mill, the face plate is only plonked in place to get my brain chewing ideas over..
If you take the lump of ally out the chuck and put in a milling bit you will get the idea of what I'm on about..
The lathe will give me "in & out" an "side to side", but how to do "up & down" and rotate would be nice...

 

 

 

HHmmm..... Some thinking to be done..



But before any of that happens I need to think about repowering the lathe...

For many many years the little Southbend was powered by this 3/4hp electric motor which I still have tucked away in a box.

 

 

 

Then 2 - 3 years ago during a lathe bench rebuild it was repowered using this monster (in size) motor taken from a compost mixing/potting machine..
Short of power it's not!

2.2 kw = 2.9911hp so near a damit 3hp!

 

 

 

 

 

So why am I thinking of repowering my lathe again? 3HP must be enough!!

Well, there's two reasons...
As all my tools and bit's will be moving to a much smaller space, the current motor on the lathe sticks out the back of the bench a fair way, so the lathe has to be quite a way out from a wall, which would waste space in a small place!
Also the 3HP motor must use a fair amount of electricity, so something that uses less would be better..

Which is where this lump of metal and motor come in to things.

 

 

 

Quite out of the blue I was offer a dyna-mix treadmill the other day, and having seen a few people on the Retro Rides Car Forum  use the motors to power something I said yes.

As you can see above the important end was soon chopped of and the rest scrapped.. Apart from the controls of course

 

 

 

The motor is 1 1/4HP but as the original motor was only 3/4HP it should have enough uummpphh!

 

 

 

So what's your thoughts on this repower chaps? Will the motor be up to the job?
What will be nice if it works is speed control at the touch of a button..

I just need to think of a use for the incline motor. 

[Stormin 4,458]

 Good to see your brains still working OK.

 

I should think the motor should work ok. It's got two choices. It should or it won't.