ML7 Genuine Gears vs Replacement

[Jeremy UptonParticipant @jeremyupton12331]

Hi all, first post on here, albeit been lurking for a while.

I have have a Myford ML7R which when purchased did not come with a full set of standard gears. Having managed most of my threading up to this point with taps and dies. I have a couple of projects in the pipeline which will require me to threadcut the components. I have a few questions about sourcing the gears, as I purchased a used genuine vintage Myford set off an auction site only to find nearly half of them appear to have a lot of wear/loose mesh.

Anyhow, here are my questions.

1. Am I correct in assuming genuine ML7 Gears are cast steel not hardened?

2. RDG stock replacement gears, they look similar to "new" Myford ones without the paint, probably machined from bar not cast. Has anyone got experience of these?

3. Any advantage using genuine/vintage ML7 gears?

4. How accurate are the genuine/vintage gears cut, are they pretty much always spot on or do they vary? Wondering with this used set I bought is just the "norm" for old Myford gears.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can answer my questions.

[Jeremy UptonParticipant @jeremyupton12331]

[DC31kParticipant @dc31k]

Let's start with the 'lot(s) of wear/loose mesh'. A screwcutting gear train is simply a counter. As long as your gears have no teeth actually missing, the features you describe are not a problem. If you are expecting a change gear setup to mimic a Honda synchromesh gearbox, you will be disappointed.

The gear train is always loaded in the same direction when cutting and all the books tell you to go plenty past the start of the thread before engaging the halfnuts for a new cut so the backlash is taken out. You can adjust the mesh of the gears when setting up the banjo. A sheet of paper between the teeth can be used to set clearance (something a little more than standard 80gsm copier paper).

I think some of the smaller gears were steel, with the larger ones being cast iron.

RDG and Myford are in effect the same company so you will be paying for a name not getting anything of better quality.

I would make a list of the gears I need and then buy the cheapest ones you can find from whatever source. Lots of used Myford gears on eBay. Lots of other non-eBay used Myford sources. I believe Zyto ones also fit or can be made to fit. You may wish to place a wanted advert here or on homeworkshop.org.uk

[Roger WhiteleyParticipant @rogerwhiteley62172]

From recollection the 20T idlers up to about 35 were hobbed steel, bigger ones definitely cast iron – I used to space my gears with the corner of a sheet of newspaper, and used a tube of graphite loaded grease on the gear surfaces. Thank you DC31k for making me aware that RDG = Myford. As I've not been tinkering with Myfords for the past 16 years or so I only knew that Beeston had gone and that new machines sold as Myfords were originating from West Yorkshir.

Slightly O/T I've fallen foul recently when using a sheet of paper for setting 3D printer nozzle spacings – 100g paper is a LOT thicker than 80g lesson learnt!

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Please see my post of 08/04/2020 12:43:34 on this recent thread : **LINK**

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=155356&p=2

MichaelG.

[Jeremy UptonParticipant @jeremyupton12331]

Thanks for the responses so far. I understand the "mesh" is not overly important for thread cutting and am familiar with the principles etc. Some of the gears purchased will also be used for power feed. A few of the gears out of the set bought on ebay are so worn that they bottom out on the root of the gear and still give significant backlash, so can't really adjust the mesh/clearance. Instinct is not to use a worn gear with my existing "good" gears.

My thought process was that people seem to hanker after the original/vintage Myford gears and I wondered why or what the advantage was.

Also I was questioning the quality of the original Myford gears, whether there was any significant variation in quality and also the quality compared to replacement ones offered by RDG.

Thanks.

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Not going to attempt any of your questions. Other materials are available and have been used in lathe gear trains.

My lathe has tufnol tumbler gears. Aluminium gears will last a long time and are cheap (and easier?) to make and acetal is a common material for all sorts of gears. 3-D printed plastic gears in PLA seem to be adequate for use in some scenarios and there are now choices of stronger plastics.

These lathes are not often used for anything more than hobby duties these days, so I would expect a little noise from an open gear train is not the end of the world for most of us. Even mixing DPs, while technically incorrect, might be a solution for some if the real spec gears are not available at reasonable cost.🙂

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Jeremy Upton on 09/05/2020 22:18:29:

[…]

My thought process was that people seem to hanker after the original/vintage Myford gears and I wondered why or what the advantage was.

Also I was questioning the quality of the original Myford gears, whether there was any significant variation in quality and also the quality compared to replacement ones offered by RDG.

.

I have no idea about the relative quality …

I was just trying to make clear that RGD and Myford are not the same company

MichaelG.

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

The parts I have bought from new Myford have been equal in quality to old Myford, the new lathes are nicely made as well. RDG can be a bit of a chance in my experience but the prices usually reflect that. Although there is obviously a relationship they are run as two separate businesses and Myford do seem to aspire to sell a quality product. These are my personal views based on my experience.

Mike

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Long before RDG took on Myford I bought 2 Myford clone gears from them They went straight back. I did get a refund, no questions asked

[DC31kParticipant @dc31k]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 09/05/2020 22:37:27:

I was just trying to make clear that RGD and Myford are not the same company

What you say is 100% correct as the company under discussion is RDG not RGD.

But why is it necessary to out-petty your already petty post?

While your point is relevant in a strictly (barrack-room) lawyer sense, why should it trump the common-sense duck-rule (if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, let us call it a duck) that most of us apply in daily life?

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by DC31k on 10/05/2020 07:24:10:

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 09/05/2020 22:37:27:

I was just trying to make clear that RGD and Myford are not the same company

What you say is 100% correct as the company under discussion is RDG not RGD.

But why is it necessary to out-petty your already petty post?

While your point is relevant in a strictly (barrack-room) lawyer sense, why should it trump the common-sense duck-rule (if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, let us call it a duck) that most of us apply in daily life?

.

Sincere apologies for the typo … I realised [too late to edit] that I had probably made that error.

The remainder of your post however, demonstrates naivety

It is not a petty ‘barrack-room lawyer’ matter that these are separate Limited Companies.

MichaelG.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Oh puhleeze. Not this old chestnut again.

Edited By Hopper on 10/05/2020 08:17:09

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

VW own Bentley and Bugatti but a comparison of an Up and a Veyron would be unfair.

Mike

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Hopper on 10/05/2020 08:06:30:

Oh puhleeze. Not this old chestnut again.

Edited By Hopper on 10/05/2020 08:17:09

.

You didn’t even have the courtesy to respond when I did the Plain English bit for you, on the other thread.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Back to your Myford gears, you must have lucked out and got the world's most clapped out set if the teeth are bottoming before the flanks engage. I wonder if a quick skim over the OD in the lathe might not be a quick and dirty fix?

I have bought a large handful of used genuine Drummond and Myford gears off eBay and this site's classies over the years and they have all been as good as gold, as you would expect for hobby use parts, as opposed to used in a factory 2 shifts a day for 20 years. So might be worth your while to buy further secondhand Myford gears to replace those of yours that are completely unusable.

I did buy brand a new back gear cluster from Myford themselves, (the company with the same owners as RDG but runs its own race apparently) and quality was excellent. But it was not cheap.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Double post.

Edited By Hopper on 10/05/2020 08:52:52

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Or you could always fit an Electronic Lead Screw (ELS) and never worry again…

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Jeremy Upton on 09/05/2020 19:44:02:

…

I have have a Myford ML7R which … did not come with a full set of standard gears. … I purchased a used genuine vintage Myford set off an auction site only to find nearly half of them appear to have a lot of wear/loose mesh.

…

Any chance of photos please? The 'genuine vintage Myford' gears may be nothing of the kind, or badly worn.

Although there's much to be said in favour of Myford lathes, they're not immune to wear and tear or any of the other bad things that happen to old tools over several decades.

Worse, because Myford's reputation attracts buyers like starving wasps to jam, grotty machines are tarted up, or badly assembled from cannibalised wrecks, and good machines are separated from their tools and accessories to bump up profits. How good a refurbished machine is depends on who did it, and there are some right bozos out there!

The problem extends to spares. Myford parts are imitated and counterfeited, and – allegedly – modern parts from the current owner aren't as good as the originals. There's even stuff sold mentioning Myford in the description that has nothing to do with Myford! Plus an enthusiastic market for Myford spares sourced from breakers, car-boot sales, and deceased workshops; the state of these varies from junk to as-new, plus fakes.

When faced with an engineering problem, best to eliminate possibilities. At the moment, it could be the gears aren't Myford at all! But that's pessimistic: another simple possibility is the gears aren't being assembled on the banjo correctly, which is easy to fix when you know how.

Though Jeremy's four questions may become valid later, I suggest concentrating on:

'What's wrong with these gears in this set-up?' (Picture needed.)

Provided they can be made to mesh, change gears don't have to be high-tech. Their purpose is just to generate a ratio, and even crudely made and worn gears perform. Ugly noisy gears spoil pride of ownership though, and many people work best with tools they like, and are irritated by minor imperfections. No point in owning tools you hate! If that's the problem with these gears, the only thing to be done is try again. I don't know of a guaranteed way of buying a set of perfect original ML7 change gears other than by inspecting them first.

Dave

[Brian WoodParticipant @brianwood45127]

Jeremy,

You were asking about the quality of Myford gears.

Many years ago I was able to attend one of Myford's open days at Beeston [and very interesting it was too just to digress]

One of the jobs being demonstrated was gear cutting, using a standard gear cutter on a horizontal milling machine chewing it's way through a stack of cast iron discs on a mandrel that was indexed round by a dividing head for each pass. From memory, these gears would have been about 50T size with maybe 12 blanks being cut at a time..

How the operator was able to keep track of what he was doing while answering questions from those gathered round I don't know, had it been me in his position I would have found that difficult as I find such work and distraction do not go well together. The finished gears were destined to join regular sales stock

The point of the story is that there was no special ' Myford mystique' being shown here, this was a bog standard operation used daily. There might have been a hobbing machine elsewhere to speed up the task, we didn't see everything.

Regards Brian

[Jeremy UptonParticipant @jeremyupton12331]

Thanks everybody for their input, I think I may have gleaned my answer from all the responses and some interesting info from those who have seen them cut firsthand.

I don't think posting the photos will glean much information really, You need to see them in the flesh and compare to good gears. The ones purchased from ebay 99% sure are genuine, looked identical to my existing myford ones, same machining marks, casting same etc.

I was also thinking about skimming the O/D on the worst gear as a quick fix but on closer inspection the worst gears have lost/flattened profile on the teeth. I think the final decision will to buy one or two new gears from RDG to replace the worst gears. Also on a side note the bore of the gears are not particularly accurate anyway which limits the accuracy you can set the mesh.

Thanks again for all your input and responses.

[Clive Brown 1Participant @clivebrown1]

I'm intrigued by the idea of a set of change-wheels becoming completely worn out. Lathe must have done a helluva lot of work.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Brian Wood on 10/05/2020 10:39:19:

Jeremy,

You were asking about the quality of Myford gears.

Many years ago I was able to attend one of Myford's open days at Beeston [and very interesting it was too just to digress]

[…]

The point of the story is that there was no special ' Myford mystique' being shown here, this was a bog standard operation used daily. There might have been a hobbing machine elsewhere to speed up the task, we didn't see everything.

Regards Brian

.

I agree completely, Brian

That story may, in itself, reveal the ‘special’ feature of Myford at Beeston … They did things in ways that we can relate-to, and with a level of skill and dedication to which we can aspire.

I have never seen the new manufacturing facility, but it would be good to think that the spirit persists, even if the processes have been updated.

MichaelG.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by Clive Brown 1 on 10/05/2020 10:58:28:

I'm intrigued by the idea of a set of change-wheels becoming completely worn out. Lathe must have done a helluva lot of work.

Maybe he got the gears off one of Martin Cleeves' Myfords used for commercial screw manufacturing? Could be historic gears them. Wonder where the matching lathes are?

Like I said earlier, I have bought almost two full sets of change gears secondhand and never seen a worn out one. So I suspect the ones in question came from a machine that was exceptionally well used. Possibly in a commercial workshop or a production environment. Or a very very enthusiastic string of model engineers. The change gears on my Drummond have been going since 1937 with no noticeable wear of the ilk described. My ML7 since 1957 and ditto. The bed was worn out. The gears appear just fine, including the standard set of fine power feed gears that appeared to have been on the lathe all its life.

That's not to say there is anything magic about Myford gears. They were just common a garden cast iron gears, cut as we have been told, in a milling machine with a dividing head. Pretty standard stuff for small to mid-volume engineering works of the era. It's just that they don't transmit a lot of power, don't get a lot of use in hobby shops, and are in a pretty friendly low-rpm environment free of abrasive grit, heat etc So normally do not see much wear of the type described.

Yeah, I wonder what the rest of the lathe looked like?

Edited By Hopper on 10/05/2020 11:51:30

[Ronald MorrisonParticipant @ronaldmorrison29248]

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 10/05/2020 10:22:59:

Posted by Jeremy Upton on 09/05/2020 19:44:02:

…

I have have a Myford ML7R which … did not come with a full set of standard gears. … I purchased a used genuine vintage Myford set off an auction site only to find nearly half of them appear to have a lot of wear/loose mesh.

…

Any chance of photos please? The 'genuine vintage Myford' gears may be nothing of the kind, or badly worn.

Although there's much to be said in favour of Myford lathes, they're not immune to wear and tear or any of the other bad things that happen to old tools over several decades.

Worse, because Myford's reputation attracts buyers like starving wasps to jam, grotty machines are tarted up, or badly assembled from cannibalised wrecks, and good machines are separated from their tools and accessories to bump up profits. How good a refurbished machine is depends on who did it, and there are some right bozos out there!

The problem extends to spares. Myford parts are imitated and counterfeited, and – allegedly – modern parts from the current owner aren't as good as the originals. There's even stuff sold mentioning Myford in the description that has nothing to do with Myford! Plus an enthusiastic market for Myford spares sourced from breakers, car-boot sales, and deceased workshops; the state of these varies from junk to as-new, plus fakes.

When faced with an engineering problem, best to eliminate possibilities. At the moment, it could be the gears aren't Myford at all! But that's pessimistic: another simple possibility is the gears aren't being assembled on the banjo correctly, which is easy to fix when you know how.

Though Jeremy's four questions may become valid later, I suggest concentrating on:

'What's wrong with these gears in this set-up?' (Picture needed.)

Provided they can be made to mesh, change gears don't have to be high-tech. Their purpose is just to generate a ratio, and even crudely made and worn gears perform. Ugly noisy gears spoil pride of ownership though, and many people work best with tools they like, and are irritated by minor imperfections. No point in owning tools you hate! If that's the problem with these gears, the only thing to be done is try again. I don't know of a guaranteed way of buying a set of perfect original ML7 change gears other than by inspecting them first.

Dave

Some of us on the west side of the Atlantic are using 3D printed plastic gears for our change gears. They are cheap as dirt to print and with minimal CAD skills we can create gears with any number of teeth to fit any diameter of shaft. The plastic gears have different wear characteristics than metal gears which may be an advantage but in any case, once the gear is designed and the CAD file saved, one can remake any of the plastic gears for pennies.

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