Monarch 10EE 7000 Dollar Mistake: Figuring out it's Problems... 

I think its so cool you are helping that young man. God bless my friend

Only a mistake to a consumer. I've always wanted one of these, and I'd be thrilled to be able to spend someone else's money to fix it up! These machines should be preserved in honor of the brilliant American engineers and skilled tradesman that built them. You are a treasure, and I appreciate you going through this machine that I will never get to monkey with. Thank you.

What a project! Just sat her shaking my head back and fourth knowing what youbare facing. I know of only on and last time I saw it it made me sad. I think you will end up with a fine machine. Slow and steady.

What an adventure you've got for yourself. I look forward to each video and will be looking g over your shoulder each step. Thank you.

Very cool. I really look forward to a bunch of mini-projects to get this back up and running. The video is much appreciated.

It's a pleasure to watch a master at work. Your competence, care and patience were missing in whoever created this mess.

Great video Steve! I feel for your friend! I'm like you, get the mechanical right and I can live with different states and colors of paint. My shop is a rainbow of faded and used colors, I love it! Looks like your you are on your way with this project! That spindle you received will be a huge help, if indeed it does fit! So happy to see this great machine being resurrected! Thanks for your time and sharing, Steve! 👍😎✌️

I look forward to the restore work!! Tnx for sharing!!

Its rough but in good hands now. I know you will do amazing things with this not so old machine Steve.

What an absolutely wonderful sharing story of the still GREAT Monarch 10EE in either length these are great machines. Nice share about the fact you can buy upgraded electronics one today. What a really nice guy you are about your helping the youth in your region (once again if we recall) by providing the blue 10EE to him. This should get the young man off to an even better early start into the great forge and machine world of making things. Yes, the green 10EE is rough see your discoveries. Lance & Patrick.

Glad its being saved. Nice score with the new to you spindle. Quite a project

Steve, I watched you go through that lathe and carefully analyze the repair work needed...... And I was thinking "this is the kind of man that makes America as great as it is!" You seem to display the integrity, drive, and stick-tuitiveness that's needed to get a job done right. It will be really interesting to see how this rebuild comes out...... And I wish you all the success in the world!

Looking forward to seeing the repairs, The color looks good At least it's not blue Thanks for the video

The rule of never purchasing a machine tool sight unseen is a good one. Twenty years ago I saw a used Monarch 10EE lathe for sale by a used equipment dealer in another state. The little phrase that caught my eye was: "Government Standby". I purchased a plane ticket and extracted a promise from the dealer he wouldn't sell it before I arrived to inspect. Long story short I have owned it for 20 years, did a complete teardown, inspection, and paint job. Runs like a dream on its original vacuum tube drive. It was built in 1964, converted the one built in 1965 at work to a solid state drive almost 15 years ago and has been running great since. They use armature voltage for 0-1200 rpm and field weakening for 1200 to 3500 rpm. The solid state drive has fixed field voltage so only gives 0-1300 rpm. I put a resistor in series with the field to get 0-1800 rpm for a while but took it out since it compromises low speed torque and I don't need the higher speeds. If I did need the higher speeds it would be easy to keep the resistor in place and bypass it with a switch and jumper around it. Switch open for high speeds and switch closed for lower speeds. Just experiment to find the right resistance value for the maximum high speed wanted. Side note, Monarch incorporates a "loss of field relay" in their drive systems which we retained. I don't understand why but a DC motor will run away until it explodes if there is zero voltage on the field. The loss of field relay opens the armature circuit in case of zero field voltage. We retained the loss of field relay circuit in our system after converting to solid state. Also, I wasn't happy because the taper in many of my chuck backplates seemed to be slightly loose so I put them on the surface grinder and removed a few thousandths from the flat surface where the camlock studs screw in. Now after loosening the 3 camlocks a single light tap on the back of the chuck backplate with the wrench I use to loosen the camlocks dislodges the chuck, I know they are repeatable now. I took to making my own D1-3 back plates and studs after getting tired of paying big money for them then having to rework them to get them to fit properly. I have been using the replaceable cutting edge from a front end loader bucket which is O-2 tool steel which is heat treated to about Rc40 or so and heat treated 4140 for the camloc studs. I draw the temper down to Rc35 and they cut like butter, are easy to tap, and almost look chrome plated. I have a tapered test plug that drops slightly below the mounting surface of a back plate being cut on the lathe and use a depth micrometer to measure how far down the hole it goes to get the proper size of taper hole in a new backplate. If I err it is to make the taper hole slightly oversize since it is easy to remove a couple thousandths after the fact from the flat mounting surface to tighten it up on the spindle taper.

Steve glad to see you saving this "wreck". You might be able to retrofit the drive with a modern DC drive. Going to enjoy watching the restoration of this machine.

Well at least you found the mistakes looking forward to the refurb best of luck thanks for sharing your knowledge and let’s roll

Just came accross your channel, and it looks like I’m just in time.

I'm really looking forward to the repair.

Wow! Big job and, yes, it will be interesting to watch.

Good luck. It will be good to see it back to life.

Don’t know about you, but I get enjoyment out of a challenge of fixing things. Even the “Why would you spend money on that”. I have no doubt you can do it.

Wow .. that poor machine has had a short hard life! Not only the wrong control board, but when showing us that, it looks like Jerry I'm Not An Electrician also did some impromptu arc welding on the left wall of the cabinet!!! Looking forward to the resurrection of this 10EE. Thanks for sharing 🇨🇦

Steve - I had an early wartime model with the original elevator drive that was a bit of a bear to maintain. I intended to update the drive with a 10HP Fanuc spindle drive (fairly common and very well balanced) and a 10HP programmable VFD ). Another benefit of this will being able to get rid of that abomination cabinet on the back of the machine. The shop got too crowded and I sold it before it got to that point and am still kicking myself for letting it go. Looks like you have the spindle covered, but the ways are another thing. If it was me, I would take the bed, carriage, and tailstock to Commerce Grinding in Dallas and either de-shim the headstock (I bet you are going to have to lower it by .020" or so to keep the the drive and lead screws in line) or plane it down by that amount. It is going to be a lot of work but worth it in the end.

Very interesting. I think fixing this will be a great series.

Looks like it's going to be a awsome series.

I use EE at work every day. very good machines, but that one is in rough shape. glad you are fixing it. I'd be fixing also. I thought I heard of those MJ contollers and i thought they made one for EE's. I have several 4 types of right angle 1/4 die grinders and yes I have the Milwaukee.

Steve, I am impressed that you take the time to reply to comments. So many others don't and you wonder if they even read the comments. Thanks, the comments and your replies are valuable.

No doubt this is going to be an awesome machine someday. I just sit here and imagine all the work that is going to be involved. But if anybody can handle it, it's Steve Watkins! Going to be fun watching it getting restored.

This is gona be a journey. Are you really willing? Good luck! Enjoyed watching..Thanks.

Man oh man have you got a handful there. That Drive is going to be a nightmare. Nice score on the spindle though, you should go buy a lottery ticket after that.

That is an original spindle guard. That mess in the top of the apron isn't a filter, it's cotton waste and is intended to slow the oil that goes into thar sump from the 5 psi relief on the right side. If it's crusty the Bijur pump in the apron bottom is bad. Compounds can be found on eBay. If you can't find one let me know and I might find something for you. The backgear interlock is likely just a bad solenoid. I'd just pull it. The suggestion of using Commerce Grinding in Dallas is a good one. I had my 10EE bed, taper attachment and saddle all ground there 20 years ago. They did very nice work. I used Moglice and Multifil to get the saddle and cross slide back to height. LA Bearing has or had spindle bearing sets. When you try and pull the spindle remember there's a pin in the back that's usually painted over. Most of the setscrews on the 10EE will have another sets crew under it or a taper pin at 90 degrees to the screw. Sad the original drive is missing. It's a really nice drive when the field weakening is working. I love the 100:1 range without even using backgear.

This as Artie Johnson on Laugh In used to say will be 'Veddy Intelestink'! It'll probably get old hermit Don over here to watch and move around. somewhat. And if it was made, it can be fixed. This is something that'll heal you back up to maybe before your former glory and glad you're out and doing stuff. Nothing like something to get a mans ears standing up! GBWYou!

I had 2 10EE,s in my shop. Both newer models. One was a tube model and one was solid state. I kept both machines running for 20 years myself with the help of monarch's service dept. The feedback circuit on the tach failed once on the solid state machine and the tube model started to have issues with staying latched to run due to a weak tube. As soon as I bought the replacement tube, it never had a problem again so I have a spare tube now which wasn't cheap but at least I have it. Complex machines to say the least. Best machine I ever used for threading with the spindle stop feature and the detented cross feed for easy position return. The machine carriage feed was clutched so if you did jam the longitudinal feed it would allow slippage to avoid disaster.

I'll be very interested to see how you go about grinding the ways in place. I made a similar mistake by buying a Harrison M300 with substantial wear on its ways.

So lucky to get a new spindle! When you get the old one out would be interesting to put it on v blocks and see exactly how far out it is. I think leave the bed till last, if the rest of it comes together well, shout it a professional grind, if the rest comes out only so-so, then try and work a home brew solution,

And it would be very interesting to see you tig weld the cast iron without preheating. I need to fix the undersight of my lathe way somehow and your solution sound fantastic!

I love the 10EE. Word of advice, at 17:55 minutes in you mention the Electrical Interconnect that keeps the lathe from shifting into back gear above 200rpm's. I run an older model 10EE everyday and I can tell you that you DO NOT NEED to worry about this feature because the only way to do that would be to have the spindle running and you then shift it from belt drive to back gear. Tens of thousands of these lathes were produced without this feature and its not a common mistake made. You know not to shift it from belt to back gear so don't worry about it. Just set the plunger in the open position. Good luck with the machine. I hope you get it running.

This is so sad. I have a Hendey T & G lathe. In fact mine was the very last one ever made. I'm having some serious trouble getting all the pieces I need to finish it. I am very lucky in that mine is at least in very good shape and saw very light use I think. Either that or somebody took really good care of it. In all my searching for parts I came across a literal barn with a bunch of machines all purchased over the years with the intent to restore them. Health problems prevented that from happening. I believe there is maybe 3 or more of these in fairly decent shape along with at least that many parts lathes.... I would be happy to drive back down there and see if I can find you whatever you need.... I don't have any of their information anymore but I'm sure I can find it again.

I have installed MANY Allen Bradley DC drives in equipment. Very dependable and have full control of field and armature. We used to use PLC control systems on these. All can be found on EBAY. reasonably priced.

been using those Roloc discs for 35 years...yes they are awesome... i use mine mainly on air die grinders...

Man that was fortunate somebody had a spindle!

I’m working on a 10ee with a buddy. It has a Mentor II DC drive. It is a 4 quadrant drive with field weakening to get full speed. You do need a gear detector to get your speed feedback for the drive. These are available on eBay. A very heavy duty industrial drive that I would recommend. It is also small enough to fit in the bottom left space. I rewired and got rid of all the old relays. The drive has field loss and plugging protection built in. Good luck with your rebuild.

What do you think of the larger Colchester lathes, they can do inch metric threads as well..

Funding the rebuild will be a pain in the butt but the value of the machine running properly will either give you a great ROI or an amazing lathe in your shop.

Can you do a video on measuring the ways? That would be very interesting. Thanks!

If it sounds too good to be true ... I am really sorry to see thee vast amount of work to do on the Monarch but I do know that I will love to see this being restored in good working condition.

I have a Monarch with the cabinet similar to yours, mine has a VFD controller from Monarch. I scrapped out my VFD shortly after I got the machine, my rotary phase converter when I start it I have a spike of current until it gets up to speed. When the main disconnect is on even though the button in the front of the lathe is not pushed on, there is power going to the VFD. I think the spike while starting the Rotary converter took out the drive. $700 dollars later for a new drive, I now make sure the main disconnect is off until I start the rotary then turn on the Lathe. On the cross slide I would not do anything with it, crack is on the back side and I do not believe it will cause any issues.

I just passed on a Monarch Model C (slightly larger) lathe recently, fearing I would feel as bad as your friend does after buying this model EE. It was missing some of the beautiful art deco moulding from the cracked belt cover and was well worn. I possess none of your expertise, experience nor tooling to take on a project of this magnitude, and wish you well with your project. I will be watching intently.

Hi. I have a Weiler 330 that a freind crashed badly one day. I made a test bar to go in the internal taper, then made a block to go on the bed and worked the spindle with a big bar. A couple of hours later I had it running true enough then touched it up with a grinder. I did the bed on my bridge planer. Put a VSD on the feed motor, to slow it down, and fitted a spindle grinder to the clapper.

I have ground hardened lathe ways on a planer, be extremely careful with heat. The slightest increase of heat on the ways will cause the lathe to bend upwards into your grinding wheel, use coolant if you can, even a wet rag can help, take a few days to do it, it must stay cool.

Keith Rucker (Vintage Machinery) recently scrapped a 10EE power supply and DC motor. He sent it on to some school or something. That power module It might be available if they don't need it might be the ticket to a running 10EE. Although Keith was going to replace the drive with a VFD controller and a better motor. (Variable Frequency Drive)

I have a 1961 10ee. When I got it, someone had removed the Thyratron drive and replaced it with a Variac. This was awful, I don't know how they even considered the lathe useful. I'm an EE, so I designed a drive that controlled the armature and field. The lathe has been working beautifully for the last 25 years.

Oh Steve, the moment you turn on the spindle, you can hear the rump, rump in the spindle as it turns. It is bent!!! One other thing you need to check and the only way to check it is pull the headstock up off the bed and look for mushroom areas around the socket head cap screws that bolt the headstock to the bed. I think you are going to find more hidden damage not seen already! On the compound base, I feel the only fix to that is to make another or find a donor. If you decide to make a new one let me know, I'll get you a piece of G-2 Durabar for you. It won't cost you a thing. I might eat my words on this, but I'll offer to machine one and fit it the top piece too. I love my M12 right angle grinder with similar attachments, too! Sweet!!! Ken

I have an older 10 EE square front that has been converted over to a 5 HP AC motor and VFD, Uses the same speed control and everything, it just won't run up to 4,000 RPMs which isn't a problem for me. I have way too much backlash on the crossfeed and compound and bought new lead screws and blocks from Monarch but haven't installed them yet. The lathe runs well except of the backlash and I hate to tear into it when I haven't ever worked on a Monarch 10 EE before. Just afraid I'll mess something up dealing with the taper attachment, etc. Would love to see you show the process when you work on your 10EE.

I would recommend a DCS880 DC drive for this application. Probably something like a DCS880-S01-0020-05X0.

I'm from the other side of the world and not sure i undertood the story of that lathe, by the way you bought a lathe that seem to be used in production or badly used by someone no much interested to preserve it. Likely it was a very precision lathe when was new , now it is not. Nothing last forever. Don't cry to much , repair what you can and use it for what it is now.

Auctions you have to love them and hate them......

Yes, since you asked I do have a question Steve! 🙄 Since you're gonna go to the trouble of fixing the spindle, shouldn't you make sure that the bores of the casting are not fubar? The bearings need to have the preload set properly for rotation, but don't the bearings rely on the casting to be in line with each other, front and back? Or did Monarch have adjustments to align the bearings with each other? Obviously if you get the bearings replaced they should line up, but it would suck to go through all that expense and time to find out the headstock casting is fubar in itself. IOW, I'd made sure no cracks happened during impact when it crashed. And one thing I want to add to what you've said, which is not a question, is that if you buy old vintage machines the lubricants will need to be replaced for the very reason you stated...you don't know what was in it in most cases, unless the seller knows what he put in them, or you know it was done, in 99% of the machines we have no clue because we didn't know the seller very well. Caveat Emptor, we all want cheap machines, but buying good quality machines from competent sellers is few and far between, especially at auction. It's always a crap shoot.

Have you inquired Monarch to see what they would be willing to pay for this machine?

Big project..... so sad to see such a beautiful machine abused as this one has been..... hurts my heart...

I don't think $7000 was that bad for an Inch/Metric 10EE with a Sojourn? collet chuck as a bonus. Couldn't tell if this one had ELSR or taper attachment sales candy. 10EE's prices have gone crazy over the past 10 years or so, and I/M and 30" bed 10EE's have always commanded high prices. I think the last I/M I saw for sale was over 30K. Even if you dumped $10k into the spindle of this machine, you're still money ahead. I'd ditch the factory motor/drive and put in a modern AC servo motor & drive. I'm a big fan of keeping the back gear box and would adapt the motor to drive that although some folks feel it's not needed with a decent servo setup. Either way it would easily out perform what Monarch was offering at the time. Any kind of D1-3 5C collet accessories have also gone stupid expensive. That one looks to be somewhat trashed but I bet you could easily get $500 on Fleabay for it. FWIW, D1 refers to the style of chuck mount, the -3, -4, -6, etc. is the approx. size of the cam lock bolt circle. So a D1-3 is based on around a 3" bolt circle while a D1-6 would be a 6" circle. Monarch can't produce any new castings because their foundry burned to the ground in think in the late 80's and all the foundry patterns were destroyed. They were all made out of wood so the fire happily consumed them. The costs in making new patterns would drive the price of the new lathes up too much to sell. My 10EE was in my brother's shop when it burned to the ground. Fire was so hot most of the knobs on the front of the lathe melted. Monarch quoted just over $60,000 to rebuild it. Unfortunately, my brother died before the claim could even be submitted, let alone fight with the insurance company and finally get paid a year later so I'm in the process of repairing it myself... Yay me!

Unless you are trying to do some kind of a vintage museum restoration why not just pull that DC motor and stick a 3Ph AC motor in it and get an inverter drive. - No brushes, More accurate speed control, and you can buy parts anywhere. You can get Allen Bradley controls and 5HP motors for peanuts on eBay. There is a reason you don't see DC drives on brand new multi million dollar machining centers centers, you know. (BTW, I think your big transformers are buck-boost and really are not a big time critical part on a DC drive).

Have the mole on the right temple looked at and removed it not good. Nice video.

As recent as this machine might be in Monarch terms, the primary DC drive is completely obsolete compared to modern AC servo motor drive tech. I would think you will find it easier to replace the DC drive with a salvaged modern AC system. Even if you were to find an original control board it would be a ticking time bomb in terms of life expectancy.

If I was taskied to look at the speed and braking problems of this machine, I would be looking up the installation and operation manual of the Spindle Controller (The electronics module in the lower left of the enclosure). At the least, I would be looking at the settings of the adjustment potentiometers (the white circular knobs at the top edge of the module) Min Speed and Max Speed should be examined for the control range of speeds of the spindle. "Accel" and "Decel" control the acceration and braking of the spindle respectively. Other controls of "Regen" and "Torque" need experience and knowledge to set properly. That is an older spindle controller and will not have the modern features of regenerative braking control and DC braking to bring about the stop speed you are requesting

Vintage Machinery is working on solution using dual drives, might watch/view what they came up with

looks like inside the control panel up on the side that something shorted out

The 50 millionth runout on the spindle was an option

How did you determine the amount of wear on the bed?

i removed the motor generator and made a bridge rectifier with a variac feeding it. its quiet and runs great. less than $250 to get that noisy motor generator

I would never guess a 1990 machine could be in that kind of shape. It must have been doing some sort of production work?

It has a small spindle for such a presession machine.

1990? I have shoes older than that!

it was born 2 months after me

Maybe so, but u know as well as i do that unless that thing is like thrown from the top of the Eiffel Tower that it's not that hard to refurbish it.... well, i understand how to most people that what is required to refurbish these type of precision machines is, well.... to put lightly it seems impossible but with enough ambition, some hard earned knowledge, fostered up passion, physical & financial abilities, and finally the drive with resources of the common sense variety, (which takes a lifetime to aquire just 1"if u lucky") it's really not that hard...well, then again once u die 3 or 4 times and can muster up the mentality to jump to another life again with the chance some skill has remained to memory of that specific consciousness the few of us brought into this world as some kind of gift un knowingly, and then hahaha...... hope one person out of the whole community has the balls and honor to respect u despite them and that....i love/loved that color almost as much as Blondie Hey, idgaf if i have the money Steve I'd buy it from u fir whatever u need.😘 😍😘👩‍🔧👨‍🔧👨‍✈️👩‍✈️👨‍🍳👩‍🍳👨‍💻👩‍💻👨‍🌾👩‍🌾👩‍🏭👨‍💼👨‍🎤👩‍🎤👨‍🎨👩‍🎨👨‍🚀👩‍🚀👨‍🚒👮‍♂️👮‍♀️🕵️‍♂️🕵️‍♀️💂‍♂️💂‍♀️💂‍♂️💂‍♀️💂‍♂️💂‍♀️💂‍♂️💂‍♀️

That lathe brand new quoted from monarch is almost $200k

Serious question, do yo really need/want to do a full lathe overhaul? Why not just pass it on, whole or piece by piece, and just buy a fully functional, better condition 10EE?

Why don't you grind enough material off of the nose face to increase the length of the taper, back to specification. That bearing is so large It is possible that it was not damaged. JIM 🤔

Chinese drives on Amazon are far cheaper & they work great. Get one sized for 7-1/2 hp, or 10 hp. Oversized is just fine. There are numerous electronic interlocks that will duplicate all of the electromechanical stuff originally used. You can eliminate most or all of the contractors & relays in the control cabinet. I've had tremendous success doing this on a very similar DeValliere H140E lathe. The drive is in the $500 range for 10hp. I've also done this with a Cincinnati No 2 Universal mill with equally great results. The drives provide full torque at low rpm and provide vastly more speed range options with superior torque. I realize that DC and AC drives are different, but I believe DC drives are less expensive than AC. You could also replace the motor with a good 3-phase AC motor, although it would need vibration isolation to compete with the smoothness of DC. Don't be afraid to gut that control cabinet. A lot of the various door interlocks, relays, etc., can be eliminated by connecting the wiring directly to the drive and programming whatever the function needs to be. It does take time to decipher the bad manual translations, but its worth it.

10EEs are never a mistake although the 1942 versions are better. the motors can be changed out

When you buy a used machine you, you are buying someone else's problems. This lathe is a prime example of people who do not understand ruin everything they touch.

There are worse ways to spend time - mate. atb with the project. Pete

Check out dee dee Chanel, he is in the north west. He has two 10EE he might be able to help you find parts

Скольких людей пережил этот станок.

Steve, my scrapyard 1988 10ee has a solid state regenerative drive not modular drive. Check out my video.

At this just contact monarch and ask them for a rebuild, it seems like the most expensive parts are already fucked.

How much would Monarch pay you for it??

Shit, Houston. You know it's used allot then...

Looks like a $7,000.00 boat anchor.

Did I hear correctly that Monarch is scouring for castings? Perhaps Monarch would give you $7000 for it? Recover your money? Cheers..

If the machine is not going to be restored properly Donate it back to the manufacture So it can be, You are Clearly out of your realm Just by your thought process and remarks to move forward. Put it in a crate and send it back before you turn it into a concrete paper weight.

I hate people! Whoever was able to run that thing at work was privileged, but yet ran it into the ground. I can't imagine the quality of work the guy did. Gross!

Did you see the follow rest on this axelson 14x30 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1p7Y3XSnMpA.html

Sounds like you are throwing more good money after bad money. How much money per hour can you make standing behind this thing 8 hours per day. My guess is not much.

If he is so smart why did you buy it?

Sorry, put an AC servo spindle drive on it, rip out that 1950's junk, it's 2023, modern variable speed drives are just as good if not better.

you should learn to breathe rythemically, it's really hard listening to your strangulated speech, speak on the out breath.

Sorry but the pace of this video is too slow for me. Bowing out at 14 mins falling asleep.

You have got your work cut out for you.