Adventures in my new-to-me Enco Lathe

[mkelly]

Following up on my intro post here: https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/my-first-new-to-me-lathe.85003/

I'd been searching craigslist for a while for a decent lathe frame and this 1980 Enco 92030 popped up for $600 and jumped at the opportunity. Included a fair bit of parts, 3 jaw, 4 jaw, drill chuck, dead centers, live centers, etc. Not really any tooling but with the tool post will fit up to 5/8" so I grabbed some HSS tools to get started.

It was pretty grimy when I got it so I decided to clean up as much as I could easily access before bringing it in the house. Here's some pictures from the listing:





Getting it through my bulkhead was very precarious. I need to figure out some sort of hoist setup to make lowering heavy pieces into the basement more safely, but the engine lift did it's job.

And here it is on it's way to it's new home.



Table cleaned and assembled:


Finally bolted back in place. The speed control setup is still pretty grimy and the gearbox is full of belt wear chunks, but that's a problem for future me.





With it home it's time to start getting it running...

 

[mkelly]

Running into a few main issues. Some electrical bugs, motor mount/belt tension, and oil ports.

I noticed during cleaning almost all the oil ports are damaged or missing. Which I guess is good that they were well used, but frustrating they couldn't have pressed in a new one?

On the carriage they just put cap screws in the holes to prevent gunk. Would explain the gouge in the ways.


The motor was replaced at some point and so they had to do the weird sideways mount. There's currently no way to maintain tension so I'll need to either tension it mounted sideways, or figure out a way to lower the motor mount slightly to use the existing mechanism.

How it was when I got it, tensioned only by gravity




I can see why since you can't get it under properly due to the capacitor location. If I can fit it there I'd need a new belt anyways.


I struggled for a while to get the wiring running. The contactor wasn't latching on either side. I decided to draw out the schematic to understand what was going on with it better. While probing it the rev direction started latching, but the fwd is still not latching and just buzzes. I'm really worried I need to open up the reversing contactor and clean it (obviously unpowered and deenergized etc) I'm also thinking about putting on an E-stop power button instead of the switch they must have added at some point. Probably an LED power button as well.




Is the jog (MIN) button worth wiring? it doesn't seem to currently be wired properly, I think they replaced the power switch at some point and when they set it back up that didn't get connected properly. Would explain the two spare wires in the conduit which are currently capped.

 

[DAT510]

Mkelly, Welcome to H-M.

Your lathe looks likes it's part of the JET-1024/1236 family of lathes. They were branded under a number of names (Jet, Lam, Tida, Lantine and Grizzly) to name just a few.

Here's the link to the Grizzly Manual: https://cdn0.grizzly.com/manuals/g9249_m.pdf
In the Downloads section there are manuals from the other branded lathes (Under the Jet Section) https://www.hobby-machinist.com/resources/categories/jet-except-grinders.636/

On my Jet-1024, the motor is hinged base which uses the weight of the motor to tension the belt. Looking at the Grizzly manual it appears they use a modified version of the hinged base with the addition of a "Tensioning" bolt, though it looks like it would more likely be used to raise the base plate (reduce tension) than apply (pull down) tension.

Re: the jog button.... (this is the first version of these lathes that I've seen, that had a jog feature from the factory). I guess it depends on how what you use the lathe for. I believe Member Bamban added a jog to his Jet-1024 lathe, for the gun smithing work he does.

Mcmaster Carr sells replacement Ball Oilers https://www.mcmaster.com/ball-oilers/oil-fittings-for-unthreaded-holes/

Hope this helps.

 

[mkelly]

Thanks very much DAT510, I had found the manual/grizzly part number from macardoso's rebuild thread, which has been immensely helpful. Doesn't seem like there's much hope for finding this exact model's manual based on internet search, but being able to source from grizzly will be great.

Here's how grizzly shows the motor tension adjustment.

They have the hinge on the opposite side, but based on the hole in the motor mount my lathe should work the same

 

[NCjeeper]

12x36?

 

[Larry$]

I could read the size on the name plate, 12 X 36, a decent size. I would wire the jog button. I find it useful. Very easy to do so why not? Lots of cleaning, oil changes, adjustments ahead. The auxiliary contact on the contactor may be the problem of not latching. Hard to see in the photo but is the reversing side of the contactor wired through the aux contact? Nice that it has a contactor that can also be used for 3 phase if you ever need to. I wonder if that machine was 3 phase to start with and someone cobbled the cap start motor on.

 

[mkelly]

12x36?

I could read the size on the name plate, 12 X 36, a decent size. I would wire the jog button. I find it useful. Very easy to do so why not? Lots of cleaning, oil changes, adjustments ahead. The auxiliary contact on the contactor may be the problem of not latching. Hard to see in the photo but is the reversing side of the contactor wired through the aux contact? Nice that it has a contactor that can also be used for 3 phase if you ever need to. I wonder if that machine was 3 phase to start with and someone cobbled the cap start motor on.

Yup 12x36". I'll definitely look into the jogb button. Does the jog act as a power bypass like this this is wired up? Meaning it only "jogs" if the power is switched off and the direction lever is enabled

I've attached the PDF of the schematic I drew, but here the closeup for the control panel to hopefully show what I mean.




For the contactor, it's currently the purple side that's not latching. I tried a jumper wire directly onto the solenoid input,, but it just buzzes. Here's a video I took looking over the wiring (powered down in case anyone is worried). I don't have great access to the neutral wire, but since the orange side is second in line, and is working, I don't suspect a neutral issue. I'm thinking of just reseating all the wires as a sanity check since pull tests are coming up fruitless. Any other thoughts would be helpful. I'll go grab a video of the buzz

View attachment video_2020-06-30_11-17-30.mp4

 

[mkelly]

Been pretty busy on a home project lately, but the past couple days I've made some progress on the lathe.

I noted that the motor on the lathe was a 3/4HP but after looking around it seemed the original lathe probably came with a 2hp or maybe a 1.5hp. Since it didn't fit anyways, I wanted to get a motor that would fit in the correct orientation under the belt housing.


The grizzly replacement for the lathe claimed to only be 220V and while I intend on going to 220V feed, I liked the option for 110. Thus I decided to opt for their heavy duty enclosed motor. I did buy an OEM replacement for the belt, but apparently it was still too long. Oh well.




The next thing to solve was the contactor. I decided to take off the cover and discovered a film of grease on the contactor pads. Cleaned that off and now there's no issues with the contactors.



The 2HP motor has quite a punch and definitely won't run into any stall issues I don't foresee. But while trying to "slow things down" I discovered that my back gear is missing the 24T gear on it. I'm not sure why they removed it/didn't replace it, but because the 3/4hp was running at half speed they probably didn't need the low gears anyways.



I have a tachometer on the way to measure the output RPM. It feels too fast to me, but we'll see what it shows. I also ordered a replacement for the back gear, hoping it fits without issue.

 

[Larry$]

You will definitely want slow speeds. Threading and face plate turning of things way out of balance come to mind.
My lathe came with 3hp but I don't think I've ever used that much. I am prone to getting in a hurry and taking pretty serious cuts to rough some steel out. Interesting how so many old gear trains were just open and used a dab of grease. How are axial loads handled?

 

[mkelly]

You will definitely want slow speeds. Threading and face plate turning of things way out of balance come to mind.
My lathe came with 3hp but I don't think I've ever used that much. I am prone to getting in a hurry and taking pretty serious cuts to rough some steel out. Interesting how so many old gear trains were just open and used a dab of grease. How are axial loads handled?

Yeah I ordered a replacement back gear from grizzly that I'm hoping will drop right in. It should based on what I'm seeing in the documents. Oil is pretty minimal on the headstock, just the bearing ends and the powerfeed.

The headstock shaft has angular contact bearings on either end:


I made some cuts the other night and it was struggling on much depth, caused it to slow down. I'm worried I'll need to replace the belt on the gearing to get all the power, but without the back gear it's hard to say.

It also trips my 20A breaker so I need to swap over a 220v before really using it a lot.