Headstock spindle morse taper deformed?

[jrista]

Well, I have suddenly run into an issue with my Wen lathe. It is a 14x20, and the one I do all my pen turning on. Since I bought it in 2020, its run very strong, and has served me very well. Just in the last week, it seems, something has happened to the morse taper on my headstock. It used to be perfectly round, and fit my centers perfectly. I was out trying to turn last night, and I was getting this loud sound from the headstock. So I started to investigate...

Two times in the past, the pulleys had started to come loose (set screw liked to back out), which caused an odd sound. I ultimately fixed that with some blue loctite, and haven't had a problem since...but that was the first thing I checked. All good. Next I wondered about the bearings, as that was what it sounded like, a bearing going bad. However every test I did seemed to indicate the bearing was just fine, and even with pressure from a live center in the tailstock, it seemed to spin quietly.

I only heard the sound when I had some kind of center in the headstock. So, I started looking closer at that, and noticed that my centers were in fact NOT STABLE when inserted into the headstock spindle. They were loose in one direction, though tight in another. I then started wondering if the center I was using was bad, but nope, it seems to happen with all my centers. Looking closer, I was able to see that the morse taper hole in the spindle itself, somehow seems to have become defomed... It is slightly (very, very, very slightly) oval, and it is clear that two sides touch my centers while two do not.

The sound I'm hearing must be the center rattling within the spindle's morse taper hole.

I haven't yet been able to find the proper replacement part for my particular lathe...the lathe is not even a full three years old, so I would imagine the part is out there, I just need to figure out what part it is. So the intention is to replace it...

That said, I am completely, utterly baffled as to what could possibly do this to a lathe. It seemed to be fine one day, then deformed another, and in the intervening time, I did not use the lathe. It just sat there. The last thing I did was to turn a pen. The next thing I did was to turn a pen. I certainly don't use much pressure when turning pens...just enough to avoid blank spin while I turn... Totally baffled...

 

[egnald]

Sometimes inserting a center in a taper that has even the little seemingly insignificant piece of debris in it and then using it under load can bugger up the center and/or bugger up the taper. A can of Dychem would be very useful for checking to see how bad things really are. If it's not really - really bad, you could consider getting a Morse Taper Hand Reamer (or a reamer set with both the coarse and finish tools) and some Rocol RTD (or other metal cutting lub/fluid - Automatic Transmission Fluid?) to see if you could tweak it back into shape. I would guess you can pick up a set for under $50. (I'm sure there must be some YouTube on using a taper reamer for doing repairs).

I don't know of any other options other than replacing the spindle and taper assembly.

Regards,
Dave

PS If you do try reaming, don't try to make it perfect which could lead to reaming too deeply, then your centers might need to go farther in than they can before they seat. I have some where the head of the center almost bottoms out on the quill when I am inserting it, so I know if I would ream the taper too much, the center may not be able to go in far enough anymore.

 

[monophoto]

Dave's advice is good, but reaming a morse taper is major surgery, so before going there I suggest just cleaning out the taper. You may nave just accumulated some crud inside the female side that keeps the male half from seating properly.

The recommended tool for cleaning out morrse tapers was the Green Weenie, but they are no longer being made. Instead, you can use a brass 20ga shotgun brush

 

[jrista]

Apologies. I should have mentioned, I've done a thourough cleaning on the spindle, as well as all my centers. I had. this bright LED flashlight and was looking into the morse taper, and ran my pinky along the inside and did not feel anything that could cause the issue. There was a bit of dust in there, but that was all.

Note that, I can actually SEE deformation of the entire morse taper pupil. It is not that the hole is round, and there is just something inside the morse taper... There clearly appears to have been some deformation of the entire spindle's morse taper.... Logically, it makes me think something was jammed in there REALLY hard...but, I don't believe I've done that myself...

 

[Woodchipper]

Hmmm. jrista, sounds like someone else messed it up.
Cleaning a headstock- there are tools for that but many opt for a brass brush and a mop used for cleaning shotguns. A 12 gauge measures about 0.725.

 

[Muddydogs]

Sometimes inserting a center in a taper that has even the little seemingly insignificant piece of debris in it and then using it under load can bugger up the center and/or bugger up the taper. A can of Dychem would be very useful for checking to see how bad things really are. If it's not really - really bad, you could consider getting a Morse Taper Hand Reamer (or a reamer set with both the coarse and finish tools) and some Rocol RTD (or other metal cutting lub/fluid - Automatic Transmission Fluid?) to see if you could tweak it back into shape. I would guess you can pick up a set for under $50. (I'm sure there must be some YouTube on using a taper reamer for doing repairs).

I don't know of any other options other than replacing the spindle and taper assembly.

Regards,
Dave

PS If you do try reaming, don't try to make it perfect which could lead to reaming too deeply, then your centers might need to go farther in than they can before they seat. I have some where the head of the center almost bottoms out on the quill when I am inserting it, so I know if I would ream the taper too much, the center may not be able to go in far enough anymore.

I would have never figured that a little something could mess up the steel in the taper, guess I should pay more attention to mine. I think I have a big bottle brush around here I could use for a quick brush out.

 

[jrista]

Well, I may have found the culprit. My Beall 3-wheel buffing system...its morse taper insert is all mucked up. I don't know when that happened, but I am thinking the last time I was buffing, that must have messed up the spindle. I'm not sure what happened to the morse taper on this...it has pitting as well as a rim that wasn't there before. I don't see corresponding pitting or anything in the spindle, but, the morse taper is in pretty darn bad shape...

I think I'm going to have to replace both that morse taper, as well as the spindle on my lathe... I just hope I can FIND a replacement spindle for this lathe...

 

[James59]

Try ereplacement.com they may have parts for your lathe

 

[rherrell]

Beall is out of business, check with Lee Valley and see if they can help with a new buffing system, they bought out Beall. If you can't get a replacement I can probably fix it for you.

Your best bet is to replace the spindle, if you can't find a replacement I might be able to repair it for you.

 

[jrista]

Beall is out of business, check with Lee Valley and see if they can help with a new buffing system, they bought out Beall. If you can't get a replacement I can probably fix it for you.

Your best bet is to replace the spindle, if you can't find a replacement I might be able to repair it for you.

Yeah, I knew Beall was out of business. I heard about it December last year. Managed to pick up one of their Pen Wizards though!!

I already ordered the replacement morse taper from Lee Valley. They have an entire section for the Beall stuff they picked up.

Still looking for a way to get the replacement part. I may just have to call Wen. They list the part in the manual, its literally just called "Spindle", and they have a part number for it.

 

[jrista]

Ok. So I finally got some details from Wen about the spindles. At first I was told they were no longer manufactured, however I found that the lathe that replaced my model, the 34035 (mine is a 34034) had only ONE part change: the tailstock clamp! Which is not surprising, as the tailstock on my lathe tends to slip a bit under pressure. ALL other parts are the same. It turned out that the part was just out of stock, and they will have stock in about a month.

Which is good, but, I do need to be able to turn pens in the mean time...

I think I've discovered what happened. I am not actually sure if my spindle morse taper hole is actually deformed. I think it looks that way, when I put a dead center in there, but maybe its not (if it is deformed, then its basically deformed by a few thousandths to be slightly oval). What I did find though, is that there must have been something, some piece of grit or something, or maybe a couple, that got stuck in between the spindle morse taper hole, and the morse taper of my Beall buffing system, maybe a month or so ago. This dented the inside of the morse taper hole in the spindle (I can feel two spots that are just barely out of reach of my small finger), and there are two corresponding scores on the Beall mandrel's morse taper. The mandrel is in worse shape, it must have been wobbling around, and it got fairly scraped up, has this ring right where the end of the spindle is when its inserted into the lathe, etc.

Anyway...I'm probably going to have to replace my Beall system. Doesn't look like Lee can get just the mandrel, and even if they did, the whole systems is $100, so...its doubtful the part would be much cheaper than that on its own the way things like that usually go. In the mean time, I am wondering if anyone knows of a way to try and fix the morse taper hole in my spindle so that I could actually turn some pens in the next month or so. Or, would trying just screw things up? I don't have a metal lathe...I figure someone who did, might be able to fix these two spots. Maybe even fix the Beall mandrel's morse taper. I don't know anyone who does though.

As such, I'm kind of SOL right now... :\

 

[jrista]

Well, Wen won't be restocking the parts for my lathe for at least 3-4 months, maybe longer. I ended up having to fix things myself.

I did some measurements. The morse taper hole in the spindle is apparently slightly out of round only at the opening. There is a slight chamfer machined into the end, and it looks like that is the only part that is slightly out of round. The rest of the morse taper hole seems to be good within around a thousandth of an inch (maybe less, but I can't measure the inside of anything that well). What I did find, was that there were several mushroomed spots on the inside surface, and that was primarily what was causing the rocking of my centers. I ended up wrapping some fine metal sandpaper around this #2 MT adapter I have for some Beall buffing system (forget what it was for), and used that to clean up the inside surface of the spindle. That worked, and I'm able to use all my centers without issue now, and in fact they seem to spin truer than they did before. I ended up taking the spindle out of the lathe, but in the long run, that was actually unnecessary, and the way I resolved the issue I ended up putting it back in so I could have the lathe on and rotating at a slow speed to level out those mushroomed spots.

I also worked out the issues on the Beall buffing mandrel's morse taper, as well as numerous marks on my centers from the spots inside the spindle. Talked to a machinist about machining them smooth, but instead he gave me some pointers about using honing blocks to maintain the angle while leveling high spots. This has worked quite well, and I've fixed all my centers with the approach (basically, where I was trying to rotate the part on the honing block, he put the part on a flat surface, rested the honing stone on the surface of the part that needed leveling, and rotated the part underneath the stone...which works so much better!)

The Beall mandrel still doesn't seem to be working right, so I'm still working on that. It may well be that, the mandrel was not in fact manufactured properly. The machinist worked on that for a bit, and leveled out as much as he could see and feel of the damage that was done to the morse taper. It feels pretty smooth to me, and continued honing with my stones doesn't seem to be changing the profile, so I suspect the few spots that are left are pits, not peaks. Regardless, the mandrel doesn't seem to fit into the morse taper properly. The machinist's thought was that the #2 MT wasn't machined properly, and since it wasn't firmly seated within the spindle's morse taper hole, it spun while I was buffing...causing the entirety of the issue: damaging the inside of the spindle, damaging the morse taper on the buffing mandrel, and subsequent damage to my centers.

I just picked up another Beall 3-wheel buffing system, and am going to see if the mandrel in that kit works any better. If not...then, I suspect there is some manufacturing issue, and I'll try to let Lee Valley know. We did check to make sure that the depth of the morse taper hole in the spindle was deep enough to accept the morse taper of the mandrel, and it is (by just shy of an inch), so its not that the morse taper isn't fitting deeply enough. It seems more like the angle of the morse taper on the mandrel is just incorrect, so it doesn't seat properly. Every other center I own works perfectly fine, in both of my lathes, it is just this mandrel that seems to have a problem. Maybe it could be re-machined with a proper #2 MT angle, not sure... I did ask Lee Valley if they could sell just the mandrel, and apparently they cannot. Some day, I may pick up a metal lathe and see if I can fix the issue myself. The length of the mandrel is more than enough to shave off a little bit of metal to correct the MT, so maybe that will salvage it. In any case, I don't plan on using it again so long as it runs the risk of spinning within the spindle and causing damage again.