My new lathe has landed

RobCox · Dec 15, 2024

I've spent some more quality time with this lathe now, taking it to bits to clean it and check for anything that's not going to work as it should. So far, so good. The ways are as good as I thought they were:

The allen key in the caphead screw is one I've modified to enable me to lift the head off. I'm going to give the lathe a decent paint job. Once it's up and running it'll not get another. Removing the head will make life easier to clean the bed down and eventually refit the motor first. There's s*d all room to get a spanner in to the motor fixing bolts. The bed will stay attached to the base, no reason to remove it. This is a view of the access to the rear securing bolt head (the bottom one!):

The motor is off:

and the motor has the reconfigurable links to convert it to delta:

I drained the feed box oil which looked old but ok. No sign of coolant ingress. The feed box was then removed for inspection and cleaning:

The bed needs a lot of cleaning up to prep it for paint:

I'm going to paint the base as well, whilst the lathe is in bits.

Headstock oil looked similarly old but otherwise ok. The head will get flushed with paraffin, scrubbed out as best I can without pulling the spindle. The worst damage so far I've found is where someone's tried to engage the low speed range with the lathe going:

Other than the leading edge the rest of those gear teeth are fine. I found the missing bits attached to the magnet on the drain plug. Fine metal dust, not chips. Interestingly, unlike the longbed this one is replacing, the high/mid/low speed range selector has a detent for the neutral position:

Christmas chores will halt play until next weekend

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Colin H · Dec 17, 2024

northwest said:
You will notice the difference in the carriage feed wheel position, long sleeves will be the order of the day. You are right about the gap bed, I have never missed the fact that mine too is solid bed. The two things I lust after are the Ainjest threading attachment and the taper turning attachment. Offsetting the tailstock then having to put it back into alignment every time gets old real fast.

I learned on lathes with right hand carriage wheels and then when I switched to Harrison I ruined quite a lot of parts with that little nudge of the wrong travel :laughing:

RobCox · Tuesday at 3:27 PM

I've got this lathe stripped down as far as I'm going to for now. The head will be coming off later but once the base is cleared up the next job before painting is to modify the backsplash so it doesn't jut out so far and I'll need the head in place to get the positioning right.

I took the suds tank off the back and removed the motor so I could give the tank a good scrape out:

Fortunately the motor is dual voltage so I'll configure it for 220V delta and drive it with single phase and a Steinmetz capacitor.

Next thing off was the apron. I used a sling off my gantry to support it while I removed the bolts:

The apron looks quite clean inside so may not need disassembling, just washing in paraffin. The cross slide however was a different story. Well lubricated... with grease! Here you can see the state of the oil grooves:

The gibs needed a tap with a hammer and brass punch to free them. The taper attachment was packed with filthy grey grease. Elsewhere, a mixture of chips or metal dust, rusted by the long evaporated coolant and bound up with congealed oilmakes for quite an effort needed to get it clean:

The chip tray has a liberal coating of this solidified goo too. The lathe has had a repaint job before except it was done to proper industrial standards - no prep, just spray the paint on. I used a chisel to scrape both the paint and goo off. The paint came off easier!