Interesting looking Ward lathe

[TomG]

(08-27-2012, 04:10 PM)Rickabilly Wrote: I have two of these in storage back in Australia, Mine are Ward 3a models, they were cutting edge during WW2.

They have a massive range of collets with square, Hex, and of course round sizes, all of the tooling is still available, each of the six turret faces has it's own depth stop, that is geared to turret position, in addition the carriage has six feed stops built in as well on a rotating arrangement and the cross slide has spring clips that allow setting of various depths, both the turret and carriage have multiple feed rates that can be changed without stopping the spindle and the cross slide has hard adjustable stops hidden under a hinged cover, they are simply beautiful machines to use, threading is usually by die boxes of the herbert design and internal threads can be cut with collapsible taps too, small diameters are turned using "boxes" which have a guide bush, and an adjustable cutting tool the bushes act like a little moving steady the boxes are mounted in the turret as well,

The most satisfying part of the machine is the indexing action, the big handwheel on the turret is rotated top towards the headstock to engage the tooling, once it stops you rotate this handwheel away from the headstock, when it gets to the pre set point the gearing kicks in and swings the turret complete with the rotating stop block and all the tools to the next turret position, Lovely to watch.

Regards
Rick

I always wanted a turret lathe and spotted a Morey #2 on on Craig's List last night for $300. Unfortunately I don't have the room for it plus it would cost a fortune to tool it up. I think today it would make more sense to go with a 2 axis CNC instead of a manual turret lathe. They are pretty cool though. I could stand there and cycle the turret all day (I'm easily entertained)

Tom