Myford QC Gearbox Project.

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Pete W.:
Hi there, RadRod67,

Well, this is my understanding of the situation. I may well have some details wrong but here goes:

The original Myford (I refer to them as 'Beeston Myford' but some others refer to them as 'Nottingham Myford') closed down and the rights to the name and some of the residual stock were bought by RDG who moved the business to a place called Mytholmroyd, not far from Halifax, Yorkshire (West Riding). You can find their web-site via Google and they also list on eBay.

According to the new proprietors' literature, they aren't currently manufacturing complete lathes but they are (or were) selling complete machines that were included in the stock they bought at the same time as they bought the rights to the Myford name and trademarks. Most of their current business seems to be the sale of spares. I bought the black Bakelite knob and the two hinge screws from them as spares.

They recently listed these ML7 Gear Cover castings which I assume were a batch of residual items that came among all the other stuff they received from the Beeston Myford's liquidation sale. So the castings weren't sold as any sort of kit - it was more a case of 'here they are, raw castings, un-painted and no holes drilled or tapped and no fittings or furniture, sold as described'. In other words, they were accurately described, warts and all, so I knew what was on offer. I reckoned I could perform the required operations to get a working gear cover so I bought one. I might well have spent less money and time if I had bought a 'ready-to-go' gear cover on eBay but I preferred to do it this way.

I don't know how Beeston Myford originally manufactured the Gear Cover and Back-plate, it's difficult to see which feature of the gear cover you could use as a reference to locate the hinge screw holes. Maybe they jig-drilled the hinge screw holes in the cover, paired the cover to a back-plate and then spotted through to drill the 'dimples' in the back-plate.

I wrote in my earlier post that I would be grateful for any advice or tips regarding the painting of the casting. I've spent some time this afternoon looking at some of Dan Gelbart's videos on Youtube and I found his video on surface preparation very interesting.

Pete W.:
Hi there, all,

Despite sundry distractions, a bit more progress to report:

This post deals with the drilling of the holes for the gear cover hinge-screws - I showed them being marked-out in my last batch of photos. Since then, with the help of my lovely but shy assistant, I've centre-punched the hole positions and drilled an initial dimple in each lug with a centre drill in a hand-drill. (I needed my lovely but shy assistant's help because the gear cover is such an awkward shaped thing.) I want the holes to be fairly precisely in line with each other so I didn't trust myself to drill them by hand, I decided to use the lathe.

The first step was to check the alignment of the tail-stock with respect to the head-stock, like this:

I'm embarrassed about the rust on the 'mandrel protector' (a small chuck back-plate), it's a legacy from the leaky roof. The steel wool has gone missing and I was eager to get on with the main part of the job!

I bought myself a new angle plate and bolted it to the cross-slide like this (nuts only finger tight at this stage):

And then I drilled and counter-bored a thick slab of MDF and bolted it to the angle plate, like so:

The next stage was to trap the gear cover between head-stock and tail-stock centres and clamp it to the slab of MDF. This took a bit of fiddling and shuffling but eventually I was satisfied with the positioning and tightened up the G-clamp and the tee-slot bolts securing the angle plate to the cross-slide. Like this:

Here are a couple of shots of the centres in the gear cover lug dimples:

and

At that stage I ran out of time. I've ordered some long series centre drills so that having drilled a pilot hole through the lug nearest the head-stock, I can spot-drill the back of the other lug to start the drill for its hole. In order to avoid any twisting forces on the gear cover and its clamp, I plan to use the tail-stock to push the gear cover + saddle onto the drills held in a drill-chuck in the lathe mandrel. I'll change to a female centre when the drill approaches breakthrough.

Then all I've got to do is find the 5/16" BSF taps which seem to have been tap-napped by the shed gremlins! :ddb: :ddb: :ddb:

Pete W.:
Hi there, all,

Just a quick up-date today, no photos.

I started in at the drilling with a standard BS3 centre drill. As I wrote in yesterday's post, I used the tail-stock to push the gear cover and saddle. That worked OK but when I wanted to clear the chips, I wound back the saddle handwheel without first retracting the tail-stock.
Bad move, the casting moved under the G-clamp! :bang: :bang: :bang:
It tilted slightly upwards away from the head-stock so when I resumed drilling the centre drill was cutting from the lower flank of the hole. :scratch: :scratch: :scratch: Fortunately I hadn't drilled very deep at this stage.

By the time I'd recognised my error, I'd lost the initial dimple in the left-hand lug so I couldn't line up again from scratch - all I could do was slacken the clamp and re-align by eye against the scriber marks. (There doesn't seem to be a smiley with fingers crossed!)

Anyway, I substituted a 1/4" end mill for the centre drill to flatten the bottom of the hole and give the centre drill a new start into the re-aligned casting. I then put a 6.5 mm stub drill through that lug and followed that with a long series BS3 centre drill into the inner face of the right-hand lug. I substituted a female centre for the male tail-stock centre just before the centre drill emerged.

Finally, I put a letter 'G' drill (tapping size for 5/16" BSF) right through both lugs. A jobber length drill was just about long enough. If the saddle is wound too close to the head-stock, the casting nudges the counter-shaft clutch lever into neutral!

After a bit of a search, the shed gremlins did yield up a set of 5/16" BSF taps - LEFT-HAND!! :bang: :bang: :bang:

awemawson:
I've got normal RH 5/16 bsf if you want to borrow them Pete

Pete W.:

--- Quote from: awemawson on February 04, 2014, 12:42:44 PM ---I've got normal RH 5/16 bsf if you want to borrow them Pete

--- End quote ---

Hi there, Andrew,
Thank you for your kind offer :beer: :beer: :beer: but I'm waiting :coffee: :coffee: :coffee: for the Postman to bring me a couple of long series taps.
My toy budget is well O/D this month, it's a good thing we don't pay Council Tax in February or March! :lol: :lol: :lol:

:offtopic: The new MSC catalogue arrived this afternoon, wow, that's heavy!
Thing is, I've been getting FOUR copies of 'Advantage' each month, if MSC are using the 'Advantage' mailing list for the catalogue ..... :bang: :bang: :bang:

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