- Joined
- Mar 10, 2012
- Messages
- 1,380
A friend has had a G4003G for months now and finally getting around to leveling it, alignment, etc. and has asked me to help. He's not PC savvy so I'm his lifeline, so to speak. He surprisingly anchored his lathe to the floor after I advised him I had done so with mine. The lathe is leveled as close as he can get it using my machinist's level. He did the 2-collars test (I gave him Richard King's writeup on 2-collars test along with a few of my tips) using a 12" rod of 2"diameter 6061 aluminum. He's using the 3-jaw chuck with about 10" stickout with 1/4"-wide collars at the ends. Yesterday I remind him to lock the cross slide and now he's getting .002" difference between collars.... .002" over roughly 10".
Running the level up and down the ways sitting upon the compound the bubble doesn't move so I know the ways are leveled. Only thing I can think of now is his headstock/spindle needs to be moved to get better alignment. The one strap we used to lift the lathe was really tight up against the front-side (closest to operator) of the spindle nose when lifting so I'm wondering if that moved the headstock over a bit. Now I didn't need to do this on my G4003G, thank God. Anyone know if there's a locating pin under the headstock or what's the best way to achieve the alignment? Thank you.
Running the level up and down the ways sitting upon the compound the bubble doesn't move so I know the ways are leveled. Only thing I can think of now is his headstock/spindle needs to be moved to get better alignment. The one strap we used to lift the lathe was really tight up against the front-side (closest to operator) of the spindle nose when lifting so I'm wondering if that moved the headstock over a bit. Now I didn't need to do this on my G4003G, thank God. Anyone know if there's a locating pin under the headstock or what's the best way to achieve the alignment? Thank you.