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Delta 45-460 Reeves Drive Noise

Brad Bistritz

Brad Bistritz

Joined
Nov 8, 2015
Messages
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Location
NJ
I have a delta 46-450 lathe with a reeves drive...It started producing a clunk at the same point on every rotation yesterday...any speed, with or without chuck or hand wheel...pulled the spindle and all looks fine...removed the belts and it will not make the sound....obviously because the drive is not under load...spinning the spindle with no belt is quiet...the center part of the reeves drive that goes back and forth was very hard to move back and forth so I lubricated the shaft and put the whole lathe back together again only to hear the exact same sound...I now have it pulled down to the reeves drive and noticed now that the drive pulley is moving easily there is some play in it if I move front and back ( in reference the the front and back of the lathe)...should there be lateral play? Is there a key underneath i cant see??? Any info would be greatly appreciated, Thank you so much!!!!!!!
 
If it like my lathe, there is a 4 mm key on the motor shaft. If your pulley is made of the same material as mine (die cast zinc alloy) then it is not very durable. My motor pulley had a lot of wear in its key slot so it had a lot of rotational slop which contributed to a clattering noise. It also had a loose fit on the motor shaft due to wear despite keeping it greased. I don't know if this would be similar to your problem. The clicking sound at the same position doesn't seem to fit what I experienced. There could also be another problem such as a warped pulley. The metal is soft and I had a couple motor pulleys that were warped.

Replacement pulleys are no longer available for my lathe, but even when they were the price had increased to the point that it didn't make sense to spend that much money.

If the pulleys are worn out, it might make more sense to change the drive to a fixed pulley or just put the money in a new lathe. If the noise is the only problem and it runs OK then earplugs might be the answer because there isn't much else that can be done. Run it until the wheels fall of and then get a better lathe.
 
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