New To Me Compact 8 Cleanup Thread

I think the intermediate position is a pause position where you wait for the motor to stop turning in one direction before you go in the other direction.

The color mismatch doesn't impair function. If it doesn't bother you, why worry about it? It would bother the hell out of my friend so he went all the way and painted everything the same color - orange!

That makes sense about the switch, thanks!
If it weren't a tool, If probably be more concerned about the paint matching. I'm kind of a function over form type but the majority of the lathe just looked awful so I'm glad that I painted it. The sheet metal all looked fine so that works for me. I was actually really surprised at how well those parts cleaned up. I was fully expecting to need to paint those parts but I got lucky. Not much fun watching paint dry!

Sounds good to me!

Two-tone paint job

Leadscrew cleaned up nicely.

Coming along nicely!

Thank you sir! I'm very happy with it so far but I don't want to jinx myself! I realized it was missing a clip and screw on one of the change gears. I went back and looked at the picture of when I brought it home and realized it wasn't there when I bought it. I had to improvise a bit but it should work just fine:

Update on the leadscrew mount for the cross slide that I ordered from Grizzly that is made for the G4000 lathe. The part is 3mm shorter than the Compact 8 version but works perfectly fine without a spacer block to make up the difference in the shorter part. The only thing I did was add a thin washer that I made out of HDPE between the handwheel and the leadscrew mount. The reason I did this is because the Grizzly leadscrew mount is made out of steel and has a surface that almost feels like it is etched. When you turned the handwheel (which is aluminum) it felt like sandpaper was between the two parts. HDPE wears well and really smoothed out the feel while turning the handwheel. Smooth as glass now and works great! If you take a look at the picture you can see there is a gap between the handwheel/micrometer collar. That is where the HDPE washer is between the two parts. The only other thing I had to do was open up the hole for the leadscrew shaft about .15mm on handwheel side of the new part. The hole is fine throughout most of the length but about 3/4 of an inch from the end where the shaft comes through was just a bit too small in diameter for the shaft to fit through.
It wasn't exactly a plug and play part, but it was easy enough to make it work and the part should be much more durable than the original!

I forgot to mention this, the part may not be steel. It may be cast iron or possibly even 3d printed metal???
I know magnets stick to it and it is heavy. When I drilled the hole out slightly larger it didn't make any curls or chips like steel normally does. It drilled very easily and made a fine black powder instead of cut bits of metal. Any ideas? I'm not very experienced with metal work but I have drilled steel plenty and this didn't seem like normal steel when I drilled it.