New Shop Machine: 28" Monarch Lathe

hello Keith rocky revenge machine org guys I'll admit it I have a sickness I have a really bad illness I just can't seem to quit acquiring big machines from my home machine shop so here it is my latest addition to the home shop and what you're looking at here this is a 28 inch sling monarch lathe made in 1963 I'm pretty proud pretty happy this is a really awesome machine yes it's a little ugly right now it's got a lot of peeling paint and admittedly this machine has a few issues I'm going to have to deal with now we'll talk about those as we go through but it runs at least I've been told it does and the evidence was pretty much there that it was running because there was an awful lot of chips on this again the power had been cut when I went to look at these so I couldn't I couldn't actually see it under power but I know guys who have seen this machine run and they tell me it it's a good good machine good type machine good machine it did really good work but again it does have a few issues and you know I thought I'd show it to you we'll go through it and talk about this machine and kind of give you an update on it so first the back story on this miss machine or how I came about it so if you watch the channel frequently you know that I've recently picked up several new machines for the shop we got the Leblond 12 inch heavy delay that I'm working on with storing right now we got the big surface grinder the 10 inch disks our 10 inch wheel surface grinder got a welding table a bunch of tooling and this lathe was actually part of that deal and I made that deal has probably been probably been five months ago now and guess when I actually went over looked at this equipment and decided to purchase it hauled you know several trips getting stuff hauled home and this is the last item that we moved and taken me really this loan just to get the shop ready where we could bring it in but this past Saturday myself and Mike Wiggins over on the the backyard machine shop channel who lives over in Statesboro Georgia not too terribly far from me we made a trip over to Auburn Alabama and I hauled this machine home from that same lot of the other machines that we got so I've actually had this purchase that's been mine for a while but just now getting it moved home and it's a beast the tag on this on this lathe says it weighs about eleven thousand seven hundred pounds or at least that's what it weigh knew it was probably a little bit lighter than that because there's been some changes to it and we'll talk about that again but still pretty heavy piece of machinery and I quite honestly have been really concerned about moving this thing for months I've been dreading it because there's just you know trying to move such a big piece of machinery is not an easy task and now that it's over with and I look back you know Mike and I were talking after it was all said and done and we both agreed this is probably the easiest machine removed that either one of us has ever done it's also probably the biggest machine that either one of us have really kind of done on our own I've been involved with some other bigger bigger machinery moves but you know on my own this one was probably biggest one but when we got over to Auburn they had this thing already loaded up on a giant forklift I literally pulled in back my truck in the shop they set this on my trailer it took longer to strap it down than it did the load which was really awesome getting it home we hauled it home once we got it back home I was able to borrow a big forklift a giant forklift and having some connections always helps but we had that again picked it right up off the trailer set it right in the front door to shop brought it in sideways and we had about two or three inches to spare but brought it right in I had borrowed some machinery movers a little the rollers that you're under heavy machines they were going to move it and Mike and I got to talking I turned out I had two pallet jacks sitting here and I said you know what this pallet jacks are rated for a little over five thousand pounds apiece so we don't try those so we set this thing down on the two pallet jacks and there were four of us all together when I got home myself Mike and a couple other fellows a.g and Tyler Thornton came over to help me in between the four of us we literally put it on the pallet jacks just push it in wheeled it right in here and set it down the floor the most challenging part of the whole move was getting the skids we had wooden skids up underneath this giving the skids out that was actually the worst part of the whole of the whole move that probably took us about I don't know an hour 45 minutes to an hour to get those out but we got them out and now it's sitting on a couple of still sitting up on some blocks on some two by fours I didn't set it down completely on the floor because I want to put some feed up underneath it's got set screws that you can adjust the height on it and I don't want all the weight on this such a tiny point up underneath this I'm going to build some feet that those set screws go down and with a little bit bigger footprint to kind of just spread the weight out on the floor and I think we'll be fine with that so let's do a walk around and introduce you to this machine and tell you what I know about it right now and I'm sure we'll be finding out a lot more as we dig into it so in the nice things was a previous owner troy Beatty who unfortunately passed away and all these machines were that I got came out of his a his shop but he had contacted monarch and they had sent him the user manuals a bunch of blueprints a bunch of information on this machine and as part of that they shipped along the original order form or whatever on here when it was order so I do know a little bit of history at least when it was originally purchased so this machine was ordered and so it was ordered in November 7th in 1962 it was a ship to the Pratt & Whitney aircraft division of United Aircraft Corporation it was sold to Stevens Machinery Company out of a West Hartford Connecticut so that was the dealer that it went to so I'm assuming that the Pratt & Whitney plant would have been somewhere in close proximity to West Hartford Connecticut don't know exactly where so according to this it was ordered in November 7th 1962 it was delivered in January of 63 that's where the nameplate says had promised 131 so they turned this around in less than three months from time order to time delivered so pretty cool it is a model 612 28 inch swing speeds it says 15 to 12 to 1500 is what it was shipped with some other interesting things about this is that it was originally shipped with a four-post turret tail stock rather than the regular tail stock that's one of the issues I have this machine actually did not have a tail stock on it when I got it and we're going to talk about that in just a minute it was also originally built with a tracing attachment and I'm trying to find a little bit more about the tracing attachment and we'll get into that in a minute the tracing of a big part of the tracing attachment is gone parts of it are still here and I would love to be able to get a tracing attachment going but this says air tracer so I think was an air-powered tracer anyway that's a little bit about machine where it went from Pratt & Whitney after it was delivered in 63 can't tell you anything about its journey from their own all I know is is that when I got it it was sitting in Auburn Alabama and a Troy shop and I don't know where it would have gone in between but that's what I know about the machine so here's the carriage on the lathe and actually had some posts and pictures on Facebook and people are already comment hey why does it have two compounds well it really only has one compound this is the compound of course this is a cross slide this whole mechanism here was part of the tracing attachment and this is what would automatically move in and out of tracing attachment if you're not familiar with it is you would have had a template on the machine that as it went down the carriage it would there would be something on that that would follow a template and it would basically trace that and it would move this whole part of the compound in and out to follow that profile that you're tracing so this will been a precursor to C and C in a lot of a lot of ways so I don't know really anything about how this operates it says in the manual it was an air tracer so I'm assuming it was somehow air powered again just don't really haven't investigated looked into this part of it at all I would absolutely love to be able to figure out how to get this running either as a tracer or even electronically controlled as a kind of a at least a one axis CNC on here if we can never get that going so some of you guys have you familiar with this and can provide me with some insight on it the rest of the of the carriage looks decent I don't see anything terribly wrong you know one thing I did notice is on the the hand wheel here this is where the original knob was and it's broken it's cracked this is aluminum we can take weld that up we can fix that that screw there's going to have to go that's not very comfortable to turn same thing here on the cross slide it's very tight feels really smooth but we got to fix the handle on there that's that's not any good dirt dauber nest in there it seems like it moves pretty good again I haven't seen under power it just it mainly just needs a lot of cleaning at some point in time they repainted this lathe and the paint that they use to repaint this lathe is just all peeling off and it really looks bad but if this was a bad paint job and it just did not hold up so that's easy enough to fix and it needs a good cleaning when I went and picked this layer we went first one over and looked at it this lathe was literally piled up all in here with chips and big massive chips and I was told to Troy the previous owner uses lay the lot probably just doing faceplate type stuff or not having to do something between centers obviously and I heard from the guys that I bought it from that he really bragged on how accurate this lathe was that it was a very accurate lathe so I'm keeping my fingers crossed in in that regards and feel like I'll be okay so this little contraption back here is this Trebon Travon engineering corporation there's a tag I can't read it very well I'm sure I can't even look at it real close but I'm pretty sure that this was actually part of the controller mechanism for the tracing attachment it said it was air an air tracer there is an airline coming in here so I'm assuming that the air I'm not sure how it worked but air power in some way and then there's some stuff coming out of here that goes up to the can't see it that's going over to the compound and somehow feeding in there so you know I have no clue what kind of condition this thing is in if it's salvageable if it's something that is a we can use looks like it has like a time clock in here have no idea how this work some of you guys may be educating me on this if you got any experience with it but again if there's any way even if I can't utilize this I would really love to be able to get something hooked up on this and get that tracer working even if it's really likely to do is actually get it cnc powered where we could put a computer file in there and have it follow that but if if not that definitely try to get it back to working as a tracer don't know if that's doable this is just looking at the back side of the carriage and you can see of course the compound again this is the the tracing attachment that goes in here or the tracer part this hose here is what comes from that little tray bond unit and I'm not sure exactly again how it all works I haven't even begun to investigate it some of you guys are probably saying why in the world would you buy a machine without a tail stock and that was quite honestly a major concern for me but one thing that they found when they were cleaning up in there as they found this pallet that had actually two tail stalks on it now neither one of these tail stocks fit this machine but I think Troy probably picked these up to adapt to this machine so this is probably going to be a project is we're going to take one of these two tail stocks probably the one closest to you the one who has this big cords reel in it here and we'll have to build a base that will slide on the ways on the machine and then this will mount on top of that base and we'll have an adjustment Center where it can move side-to-side for adjustments going to be a major project to try to build a tail stock for this thing but I think it's doable I think we can make it work and even though that wouldn't be the original tail stock it would be something that we can make work so when I saw they had these at least I had some hope that we could get a tail stock on this thing so down here on this in the machine where the tail stock would have been mounted again this was shipped originally with a turret tail stock and I don't know why it would have been taken off other than that maybe somebody just didn't say well you know turret lathe obsolete just get rid of it well it could have been used if it was still on here I wish it still had the tert tail stock on it that sure beat having to build a new one sad thing is I know I know without a shadow of a doubt that somewhere in the back lot behind the machine shop or in the in a scrap up yard somewhere in this country is sitting the twin sister to this lathe that has the exact right tailstock that will just fit right on here it's just a matter of finding that Joker and being able to purchase it at a decent price so anybody has any clues on that I'd be very interested if we could find the original monarch tail stock that would just fit right on here a long shot but again you know I'm sure there's one out there somewhere it's just a matter of finding it or it finding me or what have you so any help there would be greatly appreciated in addition to the big 4 jaw Chuck that was on here when I bought it and this is a 22 inch diameter four jaw Chuck that was on here it also came with a couple other chucks these all these Chuck's are d16 adapters that go into the headstock which is the exact same pattern that fits on the logic ship he laid 16 inch legs we have out of the museum so it's nice to know too that I can actually use chucks back and forth of if I need something out of the museum I can do that I've got that 22 J collet Chuck that I've have been using at the museum that belongs to me it will fit right on here got a bunch of 22 J Kaulitz and I've also got a couple of smaller chucks that I purchased myself that I use on the delay that museum so for doing smaller work that will fit right on here so that's nice that I have that flexibility to do that but in addition to this Chuck we also have the couple over here so these chucks also came with it this is a Cushman it looks like it's fairly new it doesn't look like it's been hardly used this one is 15 inches in diameter looks in great shape and there's also back behind this a it's also a Cushman also in very good shape it's a 15 inch diameter four jaw Chuck and those actually came on the saloon rolling table that I've got them on they were on there and they gave me the rolling table as well it's actually I think a hydraulic lift table but the hydraulics not working in it again something else we may work on at some point in time because of the weight of the chucks being able to change them I had this off while ago we took off to move it but this is a little jib crane that's actually built on to the lathe itself that you can put a little hoist in and you come in and pick these chucks up and take them on and off swing them around behind the lathe drop them down onto something to store them on or on the ground what have you but nice to be able to have that and that'll also be useful to have a little Train on the machine itself so I've got a big part that I need to mount in here we've got the ability to lift there I'll have to get a little a small winch or chain file or something to put on there to lift up and down I got a big chain file but I find it a little small one for that so there you go the big mark 28 inch metal lathe I'm excited I'm pumped anxious to try it out give it a shot it's going to probably be a little wild for you with this one though I'm working on restoring the Leblond right now and my goal is get that done we need a lathe working in the shop and when that's done there's probably a couple of other machines they're going to be ahead of this one in the queue to really get in here and work on this one's going to be quite a project particularly trying to deal with the tailstock situation so this one's probably going to sit here for a while for we get to it but at some point in time you know we're going to get here and we're going to clean this thing up give it a good test and figure out what needs to be done try to do something to do with that tail stock again I'd love to find a tail stock I can just stick on here but short of that will probably be adapting one of these two tail stocks that came with the machine and quite honestly they'll probably be end up what's happening unless we just get really lucky and find a tail style if it's right on here one other thing that I know that's a little bit different about the machine at least from being new according to my paperwork this was originally shipped with a 20 horsepower three-phase motor in it of course my phase converter I can go it's a 10 horsepower phase converter so 20 horsepower machine probably not going to work out but we notice that they have changed the motor in this this has got a fairly new nice-looking Baldor 10 horsepower motor in it so it is got a motor that's rated on small side for the machine itself good news is though is that I can probably run that off of my own phase converter I can probably make it work as it is it won't have as much power but still a tent or power lathe is probably more than adequate you know I may not be able to cut quarter inch chips off with this lathe but I can still probably cut eighth inch chips off with this leg with that kind of horsepower so again until we get it all fired up and really start checking it out probably - all the details but I feel good about it again knowing people who have actually seen this machine run and knowing that it was considered to be a very nice type machine and with the evidence that it was have been being used by the previous owner and used a lot the amount of chips and stuff that was in the pan and tells me that it was you know it's a user so and it could probably be turned on and ran just like it is we may even try that we'll have to get some power stuff worked out before we try to actually fire it up but we may go ahead and fire it up at some point in the future and just give it a test see how it looks but definitely a project machine but it's going to be a heck of a lathe when we get it all done so with that we'll wrap up this issue I thought you guys would enjoy seeing the new toys for the shop and yes I do have disease I'm proud of it I love this disease give me more iron no iron deficiency in my diet you

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 116,565

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Tooling, Chuck, Lathe, Monarch

Id: hA0SCw8s2cg

Length: 21min 41sec (1301 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 27 2016