FILENAMES:

Weiler.jpg

DESCRIPTION:

This is a picture of a nice German toolroom lathe. Posted by 
Peter Groepper <peter.groepper@esa.int>. Peter provided the 
following description:

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Weiler.jpg shows a Weiler Praktikant 500R lathe, which I acquired 
in march 2000. The lathe is a very good German High Precision 
Toolroom lathe from the mid 70ies with the following characteristics:

I bought it from a former life-long now retired Weiler staff, who 
still does overhaul work for Weiler lathes on factory’s request. 
He is specialised in adjusting gears and bearings, as he told me 
and does the gears and bearings himself, while he contracts out 
other work like bed grinding etc.. So I was not surprised, to hear 
my machine making only a very healthy “humming” sound while running, 
in contrast to the sound of another Weiler here in ESA’s workshop, 
which obviously is in bad health condition, but they don’t care 
about (and I don’t either, although it makes me kind of nervous...)

Swing over bed: 280 mm diameter
Swing over slide: 160 mm diameter
Distance btw. centers: 500 mm
Speeds: 42 - 2000 in 16 steps via 2-pole motor, 4-gear gearbox, 
  and backgear
Feeds: from 0.019mm to 1.92mm, plane feeds half of long feeds 
  (further feeds with other wheels)
Threads: metric from 0.25 to 12, and 2-72 TPI inch threads
Headstock spindle bore: 36 mm and MorseTaper #5
Tailstock: MT #3 with scale
Weight approx. 600 kg net

The big round drum on the lower left part of the stand is for 
adjusting 4 spindle speeds, which results in a total of 16 speeds 
(backgear and poleswitching) and which must be switched only while 
machine is not running. My experiences so far are very positive, 
but I must confess, I haven’t worked longer than perhaps 20 hours 
with it (excluding another 5 hours for cleaning after use - just 
can’t stand to see it uncleaned after work, and oiled before work)

Peter Groepper	peter.groepper@esa.int