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