Thread: New (to me) Macson lathe

I thought considering the discussion is some of the 'what lathe should I buy' type threads it might be helpful for me to go over my most recent experience buying second hand machine tools, Im a fairly young guy on a really tight budget and a lot of my decisions are unfortunately driven by that. (Also this is my first post, apologies if I break convention or should have this in projects)

This is my third lathe to date, an old 12" Nuttall was first, then a Myford, so going into this I knew what I was looking for to some extent, having a clapped out old lathe I knew what one felt like. After a good deal of stalking gumtree et al this Macson came up for $900, just inside what I could spend. When I got there the previous, and only owner gave me the tour, It had been used in the Maintenance room at Sydney Cooke fasteners until the mid 70's then bought out of receivership by the turner.

The bad: It had done a lot of facing work, the cross slide had a full turn (0.125") of slop, it had a strange (to me) spindle mount and the cross-feed longitudinal feed selector would not engage/disengage properly, It had been single phase converted.

The good: Under all the filth, there was still a lot of factory paint in all the places it normally wears off, it had an honest history and all the other axis felt tight, being a flat bed with a lot of surface area it was still really straight. Also for an older unit (1966) it had a good speed range (32 - 1060 RPM)

So I grabbed it off him, bought as much of his extra tooling as he would part with and booked a crane truck ($200), tooling cost $600.

Here it is being picked up. I was a bit nervous about the lifting bars I had made not being wide enough but they did the job.
lift.jpgcrane.jpg

I have had it in my small shop for maybe 3 weeks, unfortunately my day job is programming so I only get some weeknights and weekends free. So far I have 'fixed' the cross slide slack by putting the thrust bearings in correctly and flipping the bronze nut around, down to about (0.010") of backlash. I have also replaced the cross/longitudinal feed layshaft in the apron, It wouldn't move freely because it had a nasty twist in it along the axis of the key, making me think it got bound up on the half nuts and the overload clutch didn't release, this needs further investigation.

20160723_161304.jpg
The munging on the key is from me taking the twist out with a die grinder to get the fixed gears off the shaft and the shaft out, the lathe remade its own selector just with hand feeds, its s600 HSS, overkill but all i had to hand.

After a clean:
20160723_182257.jpg

My to-do list is fairly long, its original 5hp 3-phase motor needs new bearings and a good clean because it had been under the garden shed since 1972, all the gibs are going to need turcite shims and its electrics need a once over.

Thanks for reading and if anyone wants more, unlikely though that is let me know and ill keep up with it.

Regards - Ralph

Welcome to the forum Ralph.
That's a great find, there are bargains to be found, just a matter of waiting. As a matter of interest, what tooling did you get with it, please. Came up nice and clean, liked the way you replaced the shaft, on the lathe itself, great.
Kryn

Its a bit fuzzy now but I know i got:
mt3 twist drills in patchy sizes but probably 9/16 to 1.5" by 32nds and a handful of metric drills.
A good pipe (bell) center
Rohm keyless chuck,
quite a selection of early 90's insert tooling that takes sumitomo wgg41r inserts.
iscar parting blade holder,
strange older parting blade holder that takes inclined brased carbide blades,
Reamers from 1/8 to 1.3/4
Some couterbores
Mitutoyo vernier height gauge
Mitutoyo 8" dial caliper
Thread pitch, radus gauges
Some seco internal threading insert holders but no inserts.
Some worn out live centers
Misc hss.

hey ..keep that crane truck owner a friend , that's a bargain rate .

Seeing a lathe up high in the air is frightening ........

Did they make flat bed lathes in 1966 ? You may find a McPhersons catalogue from that era ..have a look .

I think you did very well for yourself ............. that is a proper lathe, not a toy

Yeah I know, the rate was really good, it was Bill Kelly Machinery Transport, I would definitely recommend them, they also moved my bridgeport and some other bits and pieces for me.
Its strange I know but its got 1966 on its build plate on the inside door so I guess Macson were really not following the trend in prismatic beds. ive seen an 18" from 1970 and that had V ways so they did switch soon after.

I need to get into the overload clutch on the feed shaft apart but the pin spanner holes are absolutely mangled and there isnt much room to get a strap wrench on, any suggestions?

The mangled pin holes .......... not sure what you can do about that . You may have to do some butchering in order to get things apart , and then make a new part to replace the mangled part.

The spindle appears to be CAMLOCK ? That's a bonus . The Later Nuttalls were Camlock, I have a earlier Nuttall , it was a cheap buy .

HMMMMM there where about 20 of them lined up when I did my apprenticeship at the Ordnance Factory Maribyrnong absolutely my favourite Lathe of all time a really great bit of kit there was no need for prismatic beds when these where designed high speed to be dammed made for a time when HSS was king before even brazed carbides came on the scene M40 high speed steels where it and oil emulsion coolants

You did really well mate you will have that machine for life

Originally Posted by morrisman

h

Did they make flat bed lathes in 1966 ? You may find a McPhersons catalogue from that era ..have a look .

It is older then 1966. The 1965 McPhersons catalogue clearly shows a V bed 16" lathe with camlock spindle.

That is a flat bed with an unknown spindle type.

Originally Posted by .RC.

It is older then 1966. The 1965 McPhersons catalogue clearly shows a V bed 16" lathe with camlock spindle.

That is a flat bed with an unknown spindle type.

Interesting, would you mind scanning that catalog page, Im interested if I can see any other differences. The motor has a build date of 1962 on it (that is the last 4 digits of the serial) So maybe I just have an anachronism or something Sydney Cooke got cheaply.

As far as I can tell the spindle nose is DIN 55027 & ISO 702/III (WITH BAYONET FIXING) on this PDF: http://www.lathes.co.uk/spindlenose/spindlenoses.pdf it looks a bit different, but the dimensions and fixing method match up, ill post some detail of it on Thursday when i go down.

g/day caskwarrior, good lathe m/8, yours looks a bit better than mine tho.
here is a pic of the chuck mounting and locking ring on mine.

shed

I have a very similar lathe from a Uni up here.
I knew the bloke who used it for 30 plus years.
I have the book on it if you want a copy.
Nice to see a young bloke like yourself appreciating this classic Oz gear.
H.

WOW all of that for $200, great deal.
Kryn

Nah it wasnt that much of a steal I think the total including transport was about $1700

Originally Posted by caskwarrior

Interesting, would you mind scanning that catalog page, Im interested if I can see any other differences. The motor has a build date of 1962 on it (that is the last 4 digits of the serial) So maybe I just have an anachronism or something Sydney Cooke got cheaply.

I would say it is a coincidence the last four numbers are 1962. Only electric motors I have ever seen with build dates are modern Taiwanese/Chinese ones.

I have the 1966 metalworking catalogue in electronic format but this forum will not let me upload it, and where I got it from off the internet no longer hosts it.

At the end of the day it matters not when it was built, so long as it does what you want it to do.