Re: Some properly old school heavy metal
 

Good afternoon all.


It's a Colchester Triumph 2000. Made around 1973.

It has a 7.5 inch centre height, but can swing up to 23 inches diameter with the gap piece out. it has 16 speeds from 25-2000 rpm. It'll cut somewhere over 100 various threads, straight from the gearbox, & has more feed rates than an infant nursery.:D

The downside is that with a 5.5kw motor it isn't exactly cheap to run, & the tooling for it isn't cheap.

I sort of 'nicked' it off the idiot who owned it, & gave him £900 for it. including lots of tooling, & several holders for the quick change tool post. Mind you, the £300 for the Hiab lorry that delivered it kinda hurt!:D


Cheers.

Re: Some properly old school heavy metal
 

Now that was one hell of a bargain!

Bit tricky to get something that large and heavy moved too, I know I had enough grief with my little ~400ish Kg Harrison.

Druid

Re: Some properly old school heavy metal
 

May I refer you to the OP... first, dismantle. Then apply skilful bribery and mild threats of violence :)

Re: Some properly old school heavy metal
 

There are is a note on lathes.co.uk
Certainly more grief than I'd like to go through in re-aligning the headstock if I was to remove that.

As for the rest of mine it had sat for some years and everything was gummed up solid.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4074/...666b00475b.jpg
Harrison L5 lathe by fastdruid, on Flickr

Mind you there was still a good few Kg of bits inside the cabinet, I estimate I got rid of ~100Kg before moving it by emptying that first! ;-)

Druid

Re: Some properly old school heavy metal
 

oooohhhh! Thats a nice front fairing bracket! Where'd ya gettit?

:)

C

Re: Some properly old school heavy metal
 

JHS Racing

Druid

Re: Some properly old school heavy metal
 

Ta!

:)

Re: Some properly old school heavy metal
 

I spent well over a day servicing, & cleaning mine when I got it. One of the most important things is to have a Lathe sitting dead level. I have an engineers level (damned expensive spirit level), & mine has 8 adjustable feet. As my workshop floor is more warehouse than machine shop, I cut some plates from 10mm steel, to go under the feet, & spent a couple of hours levelling it, & then did it again after the Lathe had been run for several hours, & again since.
It didn't half make a difference to the accuracy, One wouldn't think that any machine that size could twist, but they can & do.

On my Colchester the headstock can be adjusted laterally as it pivots on a dowel. This is a DTI & test bar excercise, & again takes a while, but was well worth doing. It now turns over long distances at high speed & feed with barely negligble differences in the diameter of the workpiece.


Cheers.

Re: Some properly old school heavy metal
 

Mine had sat for some while so took a fair amount of cleaning/fettling but for the money I paid was a bargain.

I have some M24 bolts[1], nuts and washers to stick into the levelling holes in mine, I just need some thick metal to stick under them and then some way to lift it (apart from re-assembling the engine crane!) I need a bigger crowbar. :-)

Also see Rollie's Dad's method for alignment.

http://www.john-wasser.com/NEMES/RDMLatheAlignment.html

Druid

[1] Imperial lathe but I could get M24 cheaper than 1 inch, I didn't figure the extra 1.4mm would make much of a difference. :-)

Re: Some properly old school heavy metal
 

Did you need to do the DTI and test bar bit for checking for twist in the bed after setting it with the level?