A Mini Lathe

[bogstandard]

I have done a fair amount of work on these mini lathes for a few people, mainly putting them right and adjusting them to run like a lathe should.

What you must realise with all these small lathes, no matter where they are bought from, that they do require a fair amount of stripping down, cleaning and reassembly, and that is even before you start to set them up to cut.

If you know what you are doing, allow a day to complete the setup, if you don't, then your guess is as good as mine.

If you are contemplating CNC, then there are a few pitfalls that would need to be sorted before even starting. The gibs are a nightmare, just strips of plate bolted on to hold the bits in position. The first job to give you the accuracy you require would be fit tapered gibs instead of the plate ones. This would require access to milling facilities and maybe surface grinding as well.

This is a post where I showed a very bad example of these lathes being put to rights, and it also shows how the new tapered gibs were done.

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=627.0

BTW, this was the worst case I ever came across, they are usually a lot better now. But still not perfect.

Bogs

[irving2008]

Thats an impressive fix John, not sure I'd have the confidence to do that on my mill.

One of the reasons I am considering buying one is to aid in the restoration of my 90y old one primarily to make new leadscrew nuts and/or shafts - the lathe in its current state is just not accurate enough to do a bootstrapping exercise. However I don't want to spend a lot of time and effort making the new lathe work right... I have too many old ones that don't (yet)!

Your thoughts on how to approach these things is inspirational - to the extent of rethinking how I might rebore the bearings by hanging the bed vertically from the mill table instead of making up some form of spindle assembly. I also learnt a lot about tapered gibs and the making thereof. Now I have the dilemma of whether to consider making them for the old lathe or not... is it a restoration or refurbishment & improvement I want to do?! I am still trying to figure out what part of the bed/saddle/spindle 'moves' under cutting load to determine why it cuts inverse tapers.