Adventures of a New-to me lathe

[TBJK]

So I have been poking around for a few months for a lathe. After months of watching I finally found a Monarch 10EE, Well it was in Salina, Kansas.

We went kinda back & forth on a date, which we were supposed to pick it up yesterday. The guy I bought it from ended up having to work yesterday so we just started driving up yesterday afternoon. I ended up with about plan E.5. The original thought was to call a wrecker to load it on my trailer, since the pick up got delayed until today, I figured I’d not bother them on Easter. Plan B/C was to rent either tilt bed or hydraulic tilt bed. I called around, allocated one & went to pick it up Friday. Well wouldn’t you know it, they ended up giving my reserved trailer to someone by someone not watching the paperwork. Plan D was to use my trailer & load it with my engine lift, in getting ready to load test, I found the cylinder was bad. So me & my son welded on the back of the trailer some angle iron to use the ramps/plate to pull it up. That pretty much worked for us, we did have a few modifications of how we’re pulled it up.

On the way up, North of Davis, we had a guy hit our trailer with his wheel on his car caddy trailer going 80. Thankfully the only damage he did was take out my rear light & subsequent fuse. He paid me for a new light & it only cost us an hour & a half in time.

We did stop on the way up at Pop’s in Arcadia. I was interesting, I think its once & blue moon type thing.

We did about 885 miles round trip, towing a trailer. Went through about 70 gallons of diesel, with the return trip having 20-25 mph head wind. Most of the trip we averaged probably 80. The only troubles we had was the guy hitting us & I lost a thin piece of wood between the lathe/trailer. That was due to what was my opinion was a built in Jump outside Tonkawa on 35.

So about the lathe.
Its a Monarch 10EE with 12.5” swing & 20” between centers, it was made in Oct 1939. It came with a DRO, independent 4 jaw, 3 jaw, 5C through spindle collet chuck, BXA tool post & many holders. It is a beautiful machine, not just as functional but it looks good. It is heavy too, about 3500 lbs.

Here is a picture of us loading it & it wrapped up for the journey. We took the front covers off to keep them from falling off in transit. There will me more pictures to come.

[rlisbona]

Im assuming there will be a shop tour once you get it running. If you need help or supervision setting it up let us know. I don’t know much about Monarch lathes other than we should all bow down when in your prescence

[kbraby]

I don’t think you often find metal lathes with that much swing and such a short bed. But as long as you don’t need more, that is usually a more home shop friendly format.

[TBJK]

This 10EE is hydraulic variable speed drive. They only made this style with the hydraulics for 2 years before going to a Motor Generator setup. They made the 10EE with a 30” between centers but they are more rare. Essentially this model of machine was made from 1939 until the 90’s, they just changed little bit here and there over time.

[BobKarnaugh]

Now there’s a monarch that you won’t see flitting about in the milkweed!
I have never seen such a machine. Sheer genius getting a machine that takes the same tool standards as the the Shark. Now that I think of the missing Shark four jaw chuck, I just noticed the chuck on it…

In all seriousness, hopefully it did come with a good amount of tooling and isn’t too much of a project itself. Very substantial machine and no doubt will afford many happy turns. If ever you find yourself needing to turn a piece longer than the 20" bed, you can always bring it to the DMS.

Now that was a fine little adventure.
Bob

[TBJK]

Here is a picture of the TPI & Feed speeds.

Here is a picture of the spindle speed indicator

I’m going to clean it (the machine) up quite a bit. I’m working on removing the drive assembly now so I can re-wire it for 208-230. It’s mostly pretty easy to remove, the most difficult part is removing the hoses going to the hydraulic filter.

[malcolmputer]

I love that RPM gauge.

[TBJK]

I pulled my drive system out from the lathe the other day to inspect the wiring & get measurements if I need to remake some parts. The motor is original, it has a date stamp of 2-7-1939. I’ve been messing around with powering it up over the past few days. Originally I was going to power it via 240 single phase through my drive that I have. Unfortunately there is a low DC bus alarm that appears to be firmware encoded. I do know one of the EE that worked on the drive (ABB ACH550), I didn’t feel like calling him about it so I did the next best thing. I bought a 240-480 transformer to give the 480 volt drive the voltage it wanted (DC wise). I set the drive up for 230 output since thats what the motor is wired for. I need to clean the lathe up a lot more than it currently is, including checking the oils & oiler in the cross slide. The cross slide has a stop for threading, basically you set it for the 0 on the cross slide & you can back it out 3 turns, then back to 0 to proceed with threading.
I wired it in today & took some quick passes, using my collet chuck.

[IanLee]

It’s gorgeous. Everyone from here to this old Tony should be dripping drool at your find.

[James_Wall]

Beautiful lathe! I have been working on a lathe that I picked up a few years ago on a work swap with a friend years ago and finally decided I had better get working on it or get rid of it. It is way bigger than I needed but the price was right. It is a Clausing 14x48. Let know what you guys think. It is running but needs a lot of work and of course better tooling

[TBJK]

The journey continues. Ive re-sheaved a couple times to get the RPM I wanted. I started with the original motor pulley & took it to a 3” pulley. I completely forgot/dawned on me that a 3” is too small for a BX or B belt. I ended up with about 1000 rpm of parasitic loss/slip. So this machine works by the motor drives a hydraulic pump. That hydraulic pump has a swash plate that allows the variable flow to the hydraulic motor. The hydraulic motor has a 5.5” pulley with the spindle having a 7.25” pulley. The Hydraulic pump-motor can only go up to a 1-1 ratio. So ideally you want about 3500 rpm on the hydraulic motor output to count for any other potential losses to get a 2500 Spindle rpm range. So my next set of pulleys was a 4.3” & 9.5”, that didn’t work out so well as the original motor was pulling too much current that I did not see it lasting long. I did not want to be that asshole who burned out an 82 year old motor. Instead of waiting around for some other options to fall in my lap, I went ahead & bought (GASP) a 5hp single phase Baldor motor rated at 3450rpm. This would allow me to go about 1-1 on the pulley ratios. However the frames are different for the motors. So I bought some 1/2” plate & then fabricated the mount for it. I cut it with my plasma cutter at home. I mounted it all up & tested the output with the drive unit out of the lathe. We did change the hydraulic fluid & filter which was an adventure as well. Helluva time trying to find Mobil heavy medium on a Saturday, a couple weeks ago. I ended up with good ol ISO 68 hydraulic oil from TSC. Past couple of days I’ve been cleaning the insides up to put the dive system back in. I also fabricated a replacement starter using a contactor, transformer & terminal block to make it all neat. I finished this evening getting her back together for the duration.
Full out spindle capability of just over 2500 RPM, I pegged the gauge/machine tach.

One other thing I found out is the hydraulic pump/motor had been changed. Certainly not to the standards I would have done, but I did not feel like re-working all of that stuff now. Also its worth mentioning the Hydraulic pump/motor assembly is very similar to what’s in Zero turn mowers & Skid steers.

Now for some more pictures.

Broaching the keyway after machining the ID to 1.188”

With the motor removed before the cleaning.

After cleaning up the pump/motor assembly, this was just a basic wipe down.

Motor mounted with the peckerhead flipped upside down. This is to allow to get to the overload easier. I will be machining a plug for the hole.

The old starter, getting correct sized heaters for it seemed problematic. So I made a backplate to mount all the parts on. This allowed to fabricate the assembly to just drop it in & wire the power/motor/control SS. I made the plate using some aluminum scrap I had laying around. I cut it to size, then drilled-then power tapped all the 10-32 holes.

I think it turned out ok, the transformer has a breaker. I wanted the controls to be 24 volt & not the original 240.

Here it is all wired.

Before cleaning the internal drive compartment.

After some cleaning, I would have loved to spend a bunch more time cleaning the internals but I wanted to get it running. I compromised with cleaning it enough so I dont get filthy reaching back in there.

Here is the new motor next to the old motor.

The drive unit now loaded into the machine.

[rlisbona]

Beautiful work. What’s it like yo slide the motor/pump assembly in or out, that looks heavy.

[John_Marlow]

You (continue to) amaze me!

[TBJK]

It’s actually not too bad. The learning curve to get it out was interesting. The assembly site on those 3 pads. It was difficult to see what they were the first time. We improvised by prying it on one side& placing an Allen wrench in the back. The drive unit probably weighs 300 lbs, I could lift one side.

[coloneldan]

Amazing work Tim. You’re always doing things which are both educational and inspirational.
I love American Restoration and taking older USA made things and bringing them back to life in particular.
Nice work!