Enco 12x36 Lathe Rebuild (Picture Heavy!)

[middle.road]

Nice pictures of getting the lathe home.

Your ENCO looks almost identical to my Grizzly. My Grizzly has a 2 step pulley on the motor so in theory I can get about the same speeds as yours. Changing the motor pulley belt at the motor is a pain, so I normally leave this in the "A" position and use the lower 3 speeds. One day I would love to upgrade to VFD and 3 phase motor. Just need the funds.

You may notice a small block above the ON/OFF lever on the carriage. A better view. My way to avoid the "brown-stain-in-the-underwear" when the lever goes through the detent and the motor goes from FORWARD to REVERSE. It is always scary.

I made this block of wood notched to fit on the bracket. A rare earth magnet and the thread dial to hold this in place. Now I cannot accidentally go into reverse. I remove this block only when threading.

Now that thar is an obvious solution. Wish I'd thought of it - about (5) years ago.
Just added this mod to my 'To-Do' list...
There have been times where mine does go into reverse, not quite sure how it does that though.

 

[macardoso]

Dave, I like your magnetic wood blocks for everything! I'll have to do something similar. I got to thinking that it would be pretty slick to install an absolute encoder inside the compound slide to read the angle back in high resolution.

Now that you mention it, I cleaned that tension spring and did not reinstall it tightly. I'll look at it tonight.

Is there any reason that the threading dial should not be left in contact with the leadscrew all the time?

 

[Dave Paine]

Is there any reason that the threading dial should not be left in contact with the leadscrew all the time?

There was a forum thread on this topic some months ago. A good subject to start the proverbial bar fight.

Some folks like to keep it engaged with the lead screw, some like to not have it engaged.

I am in the latter camp. I prefer not to have the wear on the thread dial when not in use. I know that my leadscrew is only rotating when I have the carriage in threading mode and the clutch engaged so the threading dial is only moving with the carriage.

 

[spitfire_er]

Would you be able to do me a favor and count your back gear teeth? Mine are broken on the small gear and I count 58/21. I was hoping to get a new gear from grizzly for a G9249, but they list 58/24. If I can get that fixed on my Enco 110-2034, I'm golden. I really don't want to try and do a braze and file job on those spiral gears.

If you are wondering about paint, I've done several machines that have held up extremely well and I was given the process by a professional machine rebuilder. You can also check out my youtube channel, I restored a South Bend Heavy 10 a couple years ago and the paint on that thing held up great. "Precision Machine Shed" on youtube.

 

[macardoso]

Spitfire_er, I will definitely do that after work today. Brazing wouldn't be fun at all (well the filing to shape part at least).

OK, that South Bend 10L is a seriously great restoration job. Beyond my skill level right now for sure. If you don't mind sharing, what does a scraping job like that cost (ballpark)?

We will have to chat about some gunsmithing once I get this up and running. I have some projects in mind.

 

[macardoso]

Chapter 6 Part 3:

So progress has been a tad bit slower, but I managed to finish up the mechanical assembly of the cross slide and tailstock.


The compound slide nut is an interesting design. By leaving a set screw loose, the nut is free to pivot and can self align to the leadscrew. After extending the compound slide to the rear, I tightened up this screw and it runs smoothly without binding.




Here is a shot of the mechanics behind the compound slide travel.



Begin Rant: Seriously who puts the two most used features of the compound slide (slide lock and rotation lock) ON TOP OF EACHOTHER? You have to pull out the slide lock to change the angle of the compound. That's going to need to be replaced with a set screw or something.
Correction, it became clear to me that I'm an idiot and the compound lock only blocks the rotation bolt when the compound slide is in one position and I can just slide it out of the way. Duh!




Final beauty shot of the finished compound slide.



Next I began work on the tailstock. This didn't take long as I did not fully disassemble it. The factory painted over several seams between the parts and I did not want to have to repaint. The slight rust stain on the nose of the tailstock and on the rear right bedway are the only two spots, and do not impair functionality. I'm pretty pleased with that.



The Enco version of this lathe does not have a graduated handwheel for the tailstock which limits it's usefulness in my mind. Grizzly's tailstock does come with the collar, but it might be a totally different design than mine. This part may need to be fabricated, but that wont be bad at all with a CNC 4th axis. All the locks were tightened up and the travel is very smooth. You can see my new keyless drill chuck from Shars in the picture.



I finally found where my two extra bolts went: the headstock cover hinges!





The rubber wipers were in great shape and I reattached them. The assembly is complete!



There are still a handful of things that need to be attached (The switch plate, a new rubber pad for the top of the headstock, tool post, etc.) but the mechanical assembly is complete for the most part.

The spindle is grossly out of alignment to the ways (wonder why that is ), so I'll need to tackle that soon!

In the next week or two keep an eye out for:

• Tooling and workholding
• Lifting the lathe onto the stand
• Spindle bearing run-in, belt adjustment, gear adjustment, etc.
• Electrical rebuild
• Bed leveling, spindle alignment, tailstock alignment
• Test cutting and more!

Until then, Cheers! - Mike

 

[spitfire_er]

Spitfire_er, I will definitely do that after work today. Brazing wouldn't be fun at all (well the filing to shape part at least).

OK, that South Bend 10L is a seriously great restoration job. Beyond my skill level right now for sure. If you don't mind sharing, what does a scraping job like that cost (ballpark)?
We will have to chat about some gunsmithing once I get this up and running. I have some projects in mind.

A re-grind and flake job like mine was close to $2k, but he did basically everything on the machine to bring everything back into spec.

I'm always open to questions, just let me know.

As for the gear, the grizzly manual states 58/24, but in their website for parts it states 58/21. I ordered a new one last night. Was about $120 with shipping. I figure that's worth it vs. my time trying to fix it with brazing and files.

 

[macardoso]

As for the gear, the grizzly manual states 58/24, but in their website for parts it states 58/21. I ordered a new one last night. Was about $120 with shipping. I figure that's worth it vs. my time trying to fix it with brazing and files

Awesome! I'll still count mine to make sure but it sounds like you have the correct one. That's totally worth it.

 

[Dave Paine]

The Enco version of this lathe does not have a graduated handwheel for the tailstock which limits it's usefulness in my mind. Grizzly's tailstock does come with the collar, but it might be a totally different design than mine. This part may need to be fabricated, but that wont be bad at all with a CNC 4th axis.

I read a post sometime last year where a person stated they had never used the dial on the end of their tailstock.

I use mine often when drilling on the lathe. I only use the scale on the front of the quill as a guide for how much to advance the quill before inserting drill chuck or live centre, which have different depths in the MT3 taper.

I use the dial to get close to my drill depth before checking with depth gauge, then may reset to 0 to make final pass before re-checking.



I will be interested in future pictures of a project to add a dial to your ENCO lathe. For reference, this is a picture of my tailstock quill handle removed.

The handle has a normal keyway slot. The shaft has a hole for a round key, looks like a small piece of rod.

 

[Silverbullet]

Looks to me you did real well buying this lathe, I'd say great deal. Enjoying your clean up and adventures into machine life. YUPP it gets in and you love it. I'm an old machinist and my pads full of machine pictures of all kinds . Even my instogram and pinterest a few of guns the only true love of mine after family.
I think I'd make some stop to prevent instant reverse , strong spring in one direction may work. Good machinery enamel paint will work well. Also even tho you found the gear wouldn't be good learning experience to repair the old gear , I like pushing myself to try the tuff,,pita,, jobs just to do it. And since your new HI AND WELCOME TO THE SITE. Where no question is wrong.