Myford ml7 set up

[Karl TearParticipant @karltear46470]

Hi everyone. I’m new here so I’ll quickly introduce myself. I’m karl. 21. Ex Perkins apprentice (maintenance and Machining) now run a car garage. I make model steam engines. Stuart models mostly. Last year I moved out from my parents so used my dads Harrison ,warco lathes and Bridgeport mill. Since moving I have been looking for a cheap lathe to get back into model engineering and stumbled on an advert 200 pound for a 1953 Myford ml7 completely on pieces. I took a punt on it and got it.iv put everything together and found everything other than the main gear guard missing and both headstock Shim’s middung desperate to get up and running I made my own shims from a shim pack at work. I blued the bearing shells and run them on the spindle and the contact is really good surprisingly however the shims have ended up being 0.017 at the back bearing and 0.015 at the front.

Surely this means my spindle isn’t parallel to the bed ?

Is their a way to measure this?

I look forward to everyone’s suggestions

I’ll try get pics on tomorrow

[Karl TearParticipant @karltear46470]

Myford set up from pieces

[Brian WoodParticipant @brianwood45127]

Hello Karl,

​The difference you state may just be a perfectly normal variation on the lower part of the bearing housings, I can't imagine they were halved with greater precision.

​If you have a test bar you trust with a 2 Morse taper fitting, fit it in the spindle socket and take accurate measurement down from that to the bed. That will tell you if the spindle droops or climbs relative to the bed, and by how much.

​The test has to assume the bed isn't severely hollowed from use of course, in which case you may have to work off a good quality straight edge instead, with that bridging over the worn section of the bed.

Regards
Brian

[Author]

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