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+-- Thread: Lathe Belt Replacement (/showthread.php?tid=7372241)
Lathe Belt Replacement - crokett™ - 02-14-2023
it was a battle, but I got 'er done. My lathe is a Delta made sometime in the early 80s best I can tell. I dragged it out of a barn (literally) 12 or so years ago. It had been rusting away for who knows how long. It's a variable speed - there's a belt from the motor to 1/2 of a Reeves and a belt from the other half to the headstock. At the time the headstock belt was pretty much gone, and it broke while I was seeing if it ran. To change the belt you were supposed to be able to drive the headstock spindle part way out, but I couldn't get the pulley to slide on the spindle to do that. I put a link belt on it to see if it worked. It seemed to. That was supposed to be a 'temporary' solution. I had a guy interested in it if it worked and I didn't want it. Fast forward to last year and the belt started slipping, especially on larger diameter heavier blanks. It actually started this a while ago but really got bad in the last few months. I think it's a combination of stretching over the years and a link belt doesn't have the same amount of surface area touching the pulleys.
I decided to finally deal with it. I sourced what I thought was the belt and started trying to get the spindle out. This time I guess the PB blaster I sprayed in there all those years ago did something because I got the spindle moved far enough over to get the link belt off (yes I know I could have just taken it apart) and put the new belt on. I had 2 problems. 1 was it was the wrong belt, it was way too long. It turned out to be the belt for the other version of the lathe that uses a stepped pulley and no Reeves. 2 was I couldn't get the pulley to slide back to where it needed to be. Anyway, after some more research and a business trip last week, this weekend I used heat and PB blaster to take everything completely apart. The spindle has flats for set screws for the pulley, and the pulley spun at some point in the past and put marks in the spindle that galled it. I cleaned up the spindle where the pulley goes and honed the bore on the pulley. I sourced some new belts that fit and replaced the bearings while I had it all apart. During assembly I used PB blaster as a lube of sorts and hopefully a rust preventative. I haven't tested it with a real load, I will do that this weekend and see if there is any improvement. It -seems- to spin faster now unloaded than it did. At some point I should probably figure out a way to calibrate it so the speed matches the dial. I have no idea if it actually does.
I recorded video of the process so you may see it on youtube. I will see if I can edit the footage into a workable video.
RE: Lathe Belt Replacement - arthropod98 - 02-15-2023
nice . . . hope all the work pays off!
i've got this little tach, and it's pretty accurate:
Amazon.com: 2 in 1 Non-contact Digital Tachometer Gauge Auto Ranging 0.5~99,999 RPM Range Meter Speed Tester : Industrial & Scientific
RE: Lathe Belt Replacement - crokett™ - 02-15-2023
(02-15-2023, 07:38 AM)arthropod98 Wrote: nice . . . hope all the work pays off!
i've got this little tach, and it's pretty accurate:
Amazon.com: 2 in 1 Non-contact Digital Tachometer Gauge Auto Ranging 0.5~99,999 RPM Range Meter Speed Tester : Industrial & Scientific
Thanks. I hope so too. It had gotten to the point where anything above about 3" diameter I had to take really light cuts or things would start to slip. Also I had to keep the speed up higher than I would like or else things would slip.
RE: Lathe Belt Replacement - greenacres2 - 02-15-2023
Congrats so far, and more so when it does what you want.
An alternative tach, suggested to me by Brent English at Robust (instead of letting me pay to upgrade a used Sweet 16 i'd bought). Been using it on 3 lathes since May, 2021 and still working great (matches my Rikon's digital read-out also--so if it's wrong, it's wrong in synch with another machine!!):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004Q8L894/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&th=1
RE: Lathe Belt Replacement - EightFingers - 02-16-2023
I can’t imagine a link belt on a Reeves drive
RE: Lathe Belt Replacement - crokett™ - 02-16-2023
(02-16-2023, 01:59 PM)EightFingers Wrote: I can’t imagine a link belt on a Reeves drive
Well when I called the company that made it to see if it would work they said "that's a good question, try it and let us know how it does". It worked well enough for several years at least.
RE: Lathe Belt Replacement - crokett™ - 02-17-2023
(02-16-2023, 01:59 PM)EightFingers Wrote: I can’t imagine a link belt on a Reeves drive
I'm not sure I will get time to really test it this weekend. I am on call and another project has come up but I was out there last night doing some cleaning and messed around a bit. Even without a project mounted on the lathe I can tell that the speed control is much better than it was with the link belt. I have a much wider range of speeds so it looks promising.