Monarch AA vs Polamco/Toolmex TUG 40 lathe

I use my taper attachment a fair bit. Last use was to make an L00 spindle adapter for my threaded nose Hardinge dividing head. Both general devices were made obsolete by cnc, but I don't have cnc. It took a few tries to learn to compensate for the backlash in the taper attachment, but I get good results now.

Pete Keillor

Reply to
Pete Keillor
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Good decision, especially since it has a taper attachment. I assume it has a three phase motor. So you could add a Variable Speed Drive and get high er speeds. I would not try for really high speeds as heavy things turning at high speed have a lot of stored energy.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

You 1944 Monarch was built in the days of high speed tools and from your description would turn a 16" piece of steel four and a half feet long. About 1.5 tons of material.

Firstly if you are turning a hunk of steel that size with high speed tools 500 RPM is likely enough, probably more than enough, speed.

Secondly turning a piece that heavy at 500 RPM might make some people want to stand back a ways, a long ways, from the machine :-)

I would think that if you wanted to work within the limits that the machine was designed for then you have a keeper. If you are turning tiny little pieces at high speeds than a different machine would be a better selection.

Reply to
John B.

It isn't even, perhaps, a lot slower then what some of the people here seem to be doing with their high speed, tiny cuts.

One of my last jobs during my apprenticeship was to rough out some wood planer heads from some 12 inch "line shafting" that was removed from an old woolen mill when they converted from overhead shafts.

This is from memory but the cutter head would have been about 2 feet wide, plain bearing on one side, say 6 inches and a bearing and two or three V pulley on the other. Say 3 and a half feet over all. The ends were, say 2 inch and the cutter head about 6 maybe 7 inches. So more or less, three inches of cut over the head and more over the end shafts.

We were taking about a 3/8", maybe 7/16", deep cut and the rotational and cutting speed was set to get a very light brown chip. A single pass took ~about 3 hours to remove 581 cu. in. or material, or 194 cu. inches/hour. Of course, as the work got smaller the rotational speed was increased but the depth of cut was always the same. Until we got to the bottom, of course :-)

As we had an automatic stop on the feed the old machine didn't take a full time manager, just a quick look every 15 minutes or so :-)

Reply to
John B.

I read a comparison between the Hardinge HLV and the South Bend 10L that concluded the South Bend was a better choice for general non-critical work because of its geater versatility and back-gearing that allows heavy cuts on large diameters. The author had used both at the National Bureau of Standards shop. The Hardinge was better for precision threading but not decisively so. He (and I) valued 5C collets and low speed torque more than the name on the machine.

I designed an optical instrument that required #0-80 (~1.5mm) Fillister head screws almost 1" long due to very limited space, they straddled a lens thread in stacked modules that had to align with a glued-together array of 10mm cube optics.

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I turned the prototype screws in one piece on my SB, but the shop that filled the order on a Hardinge attached separate heads to shanks.made of 1/16" rod.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I dislike drilling small deep axial oil passages in shafts at low speed. That's the only job I move to an AA/Sears lathe.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Ignoramus8699 prodded the keyboard with:

They are quite a nice lathe ! I would investigate putting an inverter/VFD in there to get higher speeds. I've seen similar machines running great at 140Hz, which should get you up into the

1200/1400 rpm range. Certainly the machine is quite capable of using the higher speeds.
Reply to
Baron

For larger work I don't think that top speed is an issue. If you added a small high speed lathe for small work you'd have the best of both.

Is there any reason the headstock couldn't be upgraded to higher speed? Upgrade some bearings, change drive pulleys? I'd love a lathe that big, but I don't have room for it quite yet. Hopefully in a few months if it ever stops raining here in N. TX I can get a shipping container in and be able to store such a machine until I get my new shop built hopefully later in the year.

Reply to
Pete C.

Hello, im just got a AFM TUG 40, can you help me to know, what kind of oil takes on the box gears qhere the spindlle strat turning?, thank you su much..

Reply to
angelfabian2014

replying to John B., Toolmaker51 wrote: Just remember, RPM selection is a function of part diameter, not available speed. What earlier machine tools lacked in RPM they had torque in spades, provided by large diameter motors, chucks and faceplates adding flywheel inertia. And willing to bet 90% of the lathes people operate (in capital and private use) _are not_ mounted on correct foundation bed/ leveled/ lagged/ and grouted to enable full performance. Next, tooling comes into question, such as max speed of chucks, of which EVERY chuck has limitations.

Reply to
Toolmaker51

replying to John B., Toolmaker51 wrote: Just remember, RPM selection is a function of part diameter, not available speed. What earlier machine tools lacked in RPM they had torque in spades, provided by large diameter motors, chucks and faceplates adding flywheel inertia. And willing to bet 90% of the lathes people operate (in capital and private use) _are not_ mounted on correct foundation bed/ leveled/ lagged/ and grouted to enable full performance. Next, tooling comes into question, such as max speed of chucks, of which EVERY chuck has limitations.

Reply to
Toolmaker51

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