Restoration of my Schaublin 102VM Lathe

[Florian Eberhard]

Well; I would like to write something to the restauration of my lathe.

I bought it from an agricultural machinery shop. That guy just bought another (bigger) lathe which was more suitable for the size of parts he would machine.
Well I didn't really know about the effort I had to make to complete the restoration and if someone told me, I shurely wouldn't have believed him.
Anyway; the beginning actually was the arrival at my home. The lathe was in a terrible condition and dirty as much as it could be.

That is a schaublin 102 VM lathe and they are not so common; so I was happy that the unusual color kept off any other buyers.
Well; I started disassembling it. Looks like the previous owner did lubricate with grease. (which is really bad for guideways)
When I was cleaning the lathe, more and more color just peeled off. And I also started to hate the color so I decided to grind away all the color and give it a new paint job. But first, I had to remove the color until I got down to an adhering layer of color.
I was using a 3M cleaning disc on an angle grinder. That works really well because of the relativly big cavities, the color does not stick on it so fast. As you can see, a huge load of dust was produced.
Some of the smaller parts were nearly impossible to be done with the cleaning disc and doing it by hand would need a very long time. So I decided to remove the color with sandblasting
On the last picture, you can see the chip pan (bottom side) and in the background the lathe bed.

(to be continued)

[Florian Eberhard]

Then I had to clean all the parts from the grinding and blasting dust. That also needed two days and then I could start with covering all the faces which had to remain blank. Also a lot of work; there are so many functional surfaces...

The paintjob itself was done by someone else because i had never done it before. It turned out very good - as I expected.
Well, the motivation was very good and I could start to assemble it. (After almost a year since it had been taken apart)

But then I had to realize there was a setback. The bed was worn pretty much just where the chuck is. So much, that I couldn't adjust the bed carriage to go smooth over the whole length of the bed. Well, somewhere in the back of my mind, I did except it actually.
Well, I started looking for an enterprise which grinds bedways.  I did find one and after clarifying the details, I found out that they also regrind schaublin lathe beds for Schaublin themselfes. Well, I was very happy to hear that because this was of course a guarantee of quality!  Also, they had been grinding some beds of exactly that type of machine I own.

Well, when you start with the bed, you will have to restore the whole geometry and I did so.
To do this, I learned scraping and luckily, I knew a forum where another member has been doing quite some scraping and also had some videos on youtube where he explains the how to. (If you search for "Muellernick" no Youtube, you will find them, also in english)
But before I started scraping on my lahte, I practiced some time on a piece of cast Iron just to get a feeling about how I had to do it. I also felt, that I could handle it quite good and encouraged by this, I started with the work on my Lathe.
I started with the bed carriage and (how i know now, I was using the whetstone too much) the surface does have a lot of contact.
Then I switched over to the transverse slide. First the bottom side
After some passes, scraping gets easier with each pass. I also managed to find the right geometry of the blade...:

To be continued

[Florian Eberhard]

Now, the next step was to make a prism:

I first machined it from round bar stock; material is cast iron which I had bought 2 years ago. (luckily, so there were absolutely no stresses left in the material)
I didn't make a lot of pictures because I simply forgot about it.

Also, scraping gets easier all the time and this surface of the prism has almost been completed. For touching up, I use a granite plate which has a size of 400x300x120mm.
The scraping pattern is getting better with the time - but still is not really good I think.
And there is some progress with assembling

to be continued...

[Florian Eberhard]

The next job was working on the compound slide.
The pattern on the bottom of the "turntable is visible on the second picture.

T get the to angled faces of the guide parallel, I came up with a measuring tool
It is made from two round bars (hardend, from a Printer or something similar) and two pieces of square brass stock. There are two pins on one side and one on the other. The single pin will be hold against another cylindrical pin which i put into the  dovetail. The other pins are just to support the device.
Now i can slightly rotate the device around the single support pin and find the point with the greatest distance.
The whole setup when measuring can bee seen on the last picture.

It seems to be very easy to handle and I can measure the distance with gread reliability. 

again, to be continued...

[Florian Eberhard]

Well , I reached another milestone with scraping:

The compound slide is finished and is going extremely smooth.
And this is also the first time I see that all the work pays out, so you shurely can imagine that I was very happy after assembling!

Now there wasnt much to be done anymore, I "only" had to finish the dovetails of the transverse slide.

[Florian Eberhard]

I don't have any more scraping pictures.

But some others:

I had to make new clamping screws for the compound slide. Also another screw which was destroyed when taking apart the lathe had to be reproduced. Some clamping nuts for the compound slide were made from brass hex stock. Then, the belt arrived and was installed. You can by the way see the guideway protection shields which avoid most of the chips of getting anywhere near the guideways - which is pretty useful.

And finally the first time i turned something on my lathe - just for trial - but really happy that it worked.

Well, that's the story of my lathe.
It is not completed yet, because I have to finish the electrical stuff (actually I am running it on a temporary insallation)

Regards Florian

[lazylathe]

Amazing work Florian!
And a beautiful restoration of a great lathe.

Thanks for the write up!

Andrew

[chuck foster]

that is one very nice lathe and it looks like you are a very good at scraping.

thanks for the pictures.

chuck

[EmanMyford]

Hi Florian, Thanks for posting your restoration. I absolutely love seeing brilliant machinery restored to new condition. 

Kind Regards,
Ewald

[steamer]

Nice Job Florian!
My SB is coming and I'll post the completed lathe here.....
Dave

[Florian Eberhard]

Nice Job Florian!
My SB is coming and I'll post the completed lathe here.....
Dave

Im looking forward to it! 

Florian

[Mcgyver]

An old thread, but just what I needed!

Florian, can you go way back in your memory and guesstimate weights of the heaviest bits?  I'm thinking that would be the tray and motor side of the base?  The bed for the VM looks very similar to a regular 102's bed which I can carry, however the big base casting and tray look heavy.  Just would like to know what I'm against moving them down the stairs.

thanks

Mike 

[pirmin]

Solid Job Florian ! 

[steam guy willy]

Hi , Interesting lathe and I would love to see what is going on inside those protuberances in the headstock side. ??!!  Good restoration and the new colour. What will you be making with it ??
Willy

[Mcgyver]

Willy, its the drive for the lead screw.  This a threading lathe and pitches are selected via change gears.  The leadscrew is a massive 40mm diameter running down the middle of the bed.