His thought was to purchase expensive precision German bearings for the task. This new owner is a skilled builder of racing engines, so he is knowledgeable about mechanical things, if not necessarily machine tool spindles and angular contact bearings. It took the new owner at least several months and at least two new sets of bearings to get it fixed. The original owner appears to have partially disassembled the spindle to have a look at it, and let more contamination into the mating surfaces. The existing bearings had failed due to contamination, most likely because the original owner used compressed air to blow chips out and some got into the bearings. In addition, he also wanted to increase the operational rpm of the spindle a fair amount. I'm not sure how much use he got out of it before this happened. The machine was run until the spindle stopped working altogether. This fellow is rebuilding what looks to be a pretty sophisticated spindle as part of a Tree 250 knee mill rebuild. How Many Sets of Spindle Bearings Does It Take to Rebuild a Spindle? I will also collect information on resources useful for those with older machines, not just the horror stories. After all, old machines are normally sold for a reason. Before you buy Ye Olde Iron or any used machine tool for that matter, make sure you would be comfortable dealing with these sorts of issues because they are extremely likely to occur. As you read the stories, try to learn from them, and imagine yourself in the position of the individuals involved. My goal here is very much NOT to suggest there is anything wrong with the steps these guys have taken. It is important to note that the individuals that are doing this work, while they may not always have had the best of experiences, are having experiences that could happen to anyone. I'll also post a couple of pictures to let you know what is possible when an Olde Iron restoration goes well: I keep this blog because I want to remind myself and others of what my be involved with one of these projects, and I may one day need to refer back and get help from these guys on my own restoration proj ect. Many were tickled to work through the issues and often are even more excited to get to the end result of a "like new" refurbished machine. This is not to say that they are unhappy by any stretch of the imagination. So what is "Ye Olde Iron Little Shop fo Horrors?" It's a sort of blog of anecdotes from folks that went the old iron route and encountered problems. I've expressed my views on this elsewhere, and have bought Asian for the most part, though restoring a nice old machine like a Hardinge or Monarch lathe is on my list to do at some point. This is usually an invitation to start the age-old free-for-all argument about whether it would be better to buy a new Asian machine or Ye Olde American Iron. Many times one will read on the message boards someone asking what kind of machine they should buy.
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