Newbie Question – Leblonde Regal 13”

[Scott JagoParticipant @scottjago]

Good all,

I have just signed up and introduced myself on the new members section yesterday, and already have a question. I was going to post this on my introduction thread but though it would be better suited here.

I have an old lathe I have inherited, to the eye it’s in good condition and for as long as i can remember its being in my fathers garage. I moved the lathe last week to home but in the process of moving it i was thinking of the jobs I want to do on it. It will be mostly smaller jobs, i very much want to have a go at building a stationary steam engine and what is worrying me is the speed of the lathe. It only has a top speed of 500 rpm which seems very slow for the smaller work. I don’t want to tool up then decide that I need to change out for a lathe with a bit more speed later on. I guess my question is, do any of you do smaller work with this limited speed, and how do you find it? Is it frustrating for achiving good finishes? Is it something that I will just learn to deal with, or something that will find annoying. Thanks for any input. Scott

[Scott JagoParticipant @scottjago]

[Scott JagoParticipant @scottjago]

Maybe the beginners questions section may have been better, sorry did not see that. S

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

500 rpm is fine, most older lathes do that sort of speed

Be careful and take your time, that's a powerful unit you've got

[egaParticipant @ega]

According to lathes.co.uk:

"During the 1940s a number of improvements were made to functionality and durability by including the use of heavier stands with cast-iron box plinths beneath headstock and tailstock and offering as extras, various features including higher speed ranges to take advantage of carbide-tipped tools…" [my emphasis]

so there may be a practical way of increasing your top speed without damaging what sounds like a fine machine.

[Thor 🇳🇴Participant @thor]

Hi Scott,

As Ady says, 500rpm will be OK, use sharp HSS tools and a suitable feed. I have made a few stationary steam engines and have enjoyed making them.

Thor

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I bet that lathe can shift some metal

Neil

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

My lathe has VFD drive. Being BONE IDLE, I rarely move the belt from the middle (of three) position, which gives me 500 rpm maximum.

Inch diameter at 382 rpm gives 100 feet/minute cutting speed, so unless you are planning to use carbide tips on 2mm material, you should not have too much of a problem.

Howard

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Going slow is no problem. Just takes longer. It's going too fast that burns toolbits and creates bad finishes etc.

One dodge you may be able to use for small work is to buy a small 3-jaw lathe chuck, say 100mm diameter, and hold it in the jaws of the LeBlond's monster chuck. Makes it easier to grip small diameter stock etc. You leave teh small chuck in place and set it so you have chuck key access to its keyholes. Along these lines, but no need for fancy reverse or soft jaws in most cases:

And depending on headstock bearing specs etc you could probably change drive pulleys etc to speed it up without doing damage. I wouldn't go over maybe 1,000rpm max though. Just in case. It is possible to "burst" a chuck if it is overspeeded to silly degrees.

 

Edited By Hopper on 26/10/2018 07:04:34

[Scott JagoParticipant @scottjago]

Thanks for all the reply’s. It’s massively helped.

My preference was always to keep the lathe, just doubts kicking in. The lathe itself has a certain degree of centimental value with it been my fathers and now with the advice given on this forum it has cemented my thought to keep it, even though it is an old machine. The lathe has quite a interesting taper turning attachment on it for auto feeding on tapers, some how the compound slide is disconnected and runs of the attachment at the back of the lathe. I don’t think my father ever used it, but looking forward to giving that a go. I will post a picture of the lathe tonight, put a face to the name, so to say.

[Brian WoodParticipant @brianwood45127]

Scott,

When taper turning, especially in the way you describe where the cross slide tooling movement is controlled purely by the taper turning attachment [ the normally used method] you must make sure that the cross slide lead screw is disconnected so that the slide is free to be moved from the coupling at the rear to the attachment. I don't know how that is achieved on your Le Blonde lathe, but I imagine there will be a built in feature to allow for that.

Your imagination alone will tell you why this is so important, and if is not done, the regular feed screw will lock the slide solid since it is not driving the slide as usual and big expensive damage will take place

Try the experiment with 'air cutting' just to observe the motions so that you get a feel for what to expect

Regards

Brian.

[Scott JagoParticipant @scottjago]

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