New member - want to wind a cradle spring.

[Sailorman]

Well, I am actually about the same age as my Atlas 10" lathe. I was probably in my early teens when my Dad got this lathe being used to wind wire ?? He added a 3 and 4 jaw chuck and a modern tool post (still have the original). As he got older, it sat mostly unused in the basement until after his passing, I moved it from CT to NC and sat in my non-conditioned shop for several years. Now my brother is rebuilding the swinging cradle that probably each of us swung in , now for his new granddaughter. It has a 36" long wound spring to power the rocking but broken into many pieces. And he wants to use the lathe to wind some spring wire. We chucked a wood dowel and turned the chuck by hand to proved it was possible. see pics

I want to thank Markba633csi for his invaluable help in wiring up the original motor to a new drum switch - got it working tonight. I adjusted the belts to the slowest rpm. And I got the back gears working reasonably quietly as well. Since we are using 1/8" wire, I set the QC gearbox to 8 tpi.

So now a couple of questions:
1. In our sample, we fed the wire behind a cutting tool in the toolpost and that worked well. Now we plan to check a 36" piece of 1 1/4" pipe and wind the spring around it and use the threading gearing to move the feed down as we rotate the pipe. Any risk to breaking something? Or suggest a better way?

2. This is a QC54, SN 093941, looking at the database file I found in this forum, it seems the lathe was built roughly 1953?

3. I don't ever remember my Dad saying anything about lubrication the lathe and I will order some Mobil Vactra 2 and Velocite 10 to use but can I use some light machine oil or pneumatic tool oil for now? I read some discussion about felts in the oiler cups. What is the purpose of the felt? And best way to clean the long lead screw?

4. Unfortunately, between the time in the basement and now the humid NC summers, the ways have a little rust on them. What is the best way to clean this up?

5. Lastly, the lathe came with both a steady rest and a follower rest and a whole bin of threading gears. Doesn't the QC gearbox make the threading gears superfluous?

I have read quite a few threads aboout the Atlas lathes and very happy to have found this group and appreciate all the help. Ed

 

[mmcmdl]

I want to thank Markba633csi for his invaluable help in wiring up the original motor to a new drum switch

I know nothing about cradle springs NOR electrical stuff . Mark's the H-M guru of electricity , glad he could help you out as well as many of our members . Welcome aboard also , we love pics .

 

[markba633csi]

I'm only 1/2 of the Mark contingent- Mark J is the other half

I have to say I would be a little nervous putting a homemade hefty sized spring in the vicinity of a small child
All the usual cautions apply
My brother was just mentioning a near accident he had once with a garage door spring, that's what brought it to mind

The other thing is that winding thick wire at low tpi settings may indeed overstress the machine- be careful
This message brought to you by the spring safety institute

 

[mmcmdl]

My brother was just mentioning a near accident he had once with a garage door spring, that's what brought it to mind

I'm sure you read about my garage door antics not long ago . They NOTHING to mess around with.

 

[markba633csi]

BTW you do need extra gears to cut metric threads- even with a QCGB

Scotchbrite pads and a little light oil will freshen up the ways- don't use steel wool or emery cloth

 

[GeneT45]

1. I like to use a "pinch plate" - a piece of scrap with a screw in it to a toolholder or other piece of scrap held in a tool holder. It's easier (for me) to adjust tension, but if what you've got is working - go for it. The rest of the setup sounds pretty conventional. If the spring wire is too heavy for the lathe to wind in back gear you can always wind it manually in the same setup.

3. Some lube is always better than no lube. I'd use whatever is on hand until your Vactra shows up. The felts in oil cups act as meters wicking the oil from the reservoir part of the cup to the drip hole (my terminology). You will also see pipe cleaners or cotton string used in some. A sponge and solvent will get a lot of crud off a leadscrew, Thick cotton string helps get into the corners (while running the lead screw). And some of it is just going to be tedious brush and rag work.

4. Scotch brite for the ways as @markba633csi said. I like a little WD-40 with it - seems to work a little better than oil in my experience.

5. Sounds like you have a pretty complete setup. The "extra" gears could be either change gears from before a QCGB was added, or special gears used for certain threads or ranges of threads used in conjunction with the QCGB. You'll have to explore your threading chart and see what's called for.

Good luck!

GsT

 

[B2]

Hi @Sailorman
Winding 1/8" sprung steel on your old lathe sounds kind of stressful. Especially to the tool holder system. I have yet to wind a spring, but have often thought it would be handy to do so. My newer lathe has a VFD conversion that allows me to run the motor at very slow frequency. Between this and the gearing I can get the spindle to turn very slowly and this makes it easier for me to wind things. I do wind coils as I have worked a lot in magnetism and electromagnetism. So I planned for this when I did the VFD conversion. However, I am usually winding copper so it is a lot softer than your spring wire.

Those extra gears allow you to change the gearing ratio to achieve other TPI values you may never have thought of. Depending upon what you have you maybe able to achieve TPI values you have never thought about. Hence, you can probably obtain TPI values which would allow you to use less common wire diameters for your springs. Your gear box will only generate 8TPI if the external gears are set up in the proper positions with the proper gears. I suspect that it is, but you may want to check. If you do not have a manual the most straight forward way to do this is to scratch a thread on a long rod and count the threads per (many) inches.

Commonly, there is a double gear or a pair of gears that go in the center position (the Banjo arrangement) that allows your machine to cut metric threads. A very common set of these have 127/120 teeth. Note 127 = 0.5* 254. There are 25.4mm/inch and so this gear can make exact translations. In some cases one can also put other gears here to further change the over all gearing ratios and so the TPI values.

I developed an Excel workbook which can compute all of the TIP values that are possible for you to obtain your set of external gears and can be customized for your lathe gear box. Perhaps this is of value to you. You basically take one of the sheets in the workbook which is similar to your lathe (there are several lathe sheets for different model lathes in the workbook) and modify it to match your lathe's gear box. Then you use pull down menus to select the gears you might use and it yield the TPI value in both Imperial and metric units. It has several other features. There are also macros written which will generate a large table of all of the possible arrangements of gears and so all the possible TPI values. You can find the workbook at the link below. If you need a bit of help in setting up your lathe let me know. There is a Readme file as one of the Excel workbook sheets that gives some info on how it all works.

Comments regarding experiences, additions, improvements made etc. about this project/Workbook would be appreciated.

Nov. 6 2023 Excel workbook file name: TPI_ManyLathesRev1 NB06_0054.xlsm

PS. I also have an old SB-10 Heavy which is probably a bit younger than your Atlas.
I did a quick search on your model oc54 and found this URL to have some interesting info. https://www.lathes.co.uk/atlas-10-inch-1947-catalog/ For example is says the gear box was introduced in 1947. It also shows picture of the gear box settings indicating that it has 9 fundamental ratios times 5 factors of 2x. The site says it will download a copy of the manual to you, but I did not click on this to see if it was free or not.

 

[Flyinfool]

You will need to do some experimenting.
First will be to determine the the free diameter that you are after. When you wind this spring there will be spring back where the spring will grow once winding tension is released. You will need to experiment to find what size core will give you the correct finished diameter. You can see how much spring back in the pic that you posted. As you release tension on the spring after winding it will loose a lot of turns It may take several tries to end up with the spring you need.
How long is this spring? It is going to take a very long piece of wire to wind it.
Once the spring is wound on the lathe it will have a LOT of tension. Do NOT allow the end of the wire to get near the lathe if it pulls thru the winder that spring will spin with great force that can damage both the machine and the operator. A 1/8 wire size can remove body parts. Please be very careful and conscious of the what ifs.

 

[GeneT45]

Posted by another member in a recent spring-winding thread; this will calculate the size mandrel you need if the size is important.

Helical Spring Mandrel Design Calculator

GsT

 

[Sailorman]

Thanks so much for the replies and good information. Pics of a Lullabye Automatic Cradle (not ours) and the broken spring under the floor. Looks to be about 100 years old. Unwound it is about 2.5" dia and uses 80 feet of wire. We wound the very sample on a 1.25 wood dowel and turned the dowel by hand. Difficult for the first turn but not so bad once a couple turns were completed. There is some spring back, we tried a couple different diameters. We stopped before reaching the end of the wire ( 24" samples) and will do so again. We were anticipating more response than we got but will be ready. Again, we are forming the spring, not really winding it in tension.

Thanks for the info about metric thread gears, I hadn't thought of that. I just checked and each of the few I looked at say Boston Gear with a number.

And I have an extra but older looking "faceplate" ( apron?) that is quite different. What is this?