5428 quick change gear box mounting

[AndySomogyi]

Hey all,

I’m putting my Clausing 5428 back together, and noticed about a 1/4” gap between the head stock and the guard plate for the quick change gear box.

I never pulled the gear box off, this is how I got it, and seems to work fine.

Is this gap supposed to be here, or is the guard supposed to be flush against the head stock? Should the gear box be moved 1/4” to the right? Or is there some spacer that goes between the guard and headstock?

The manual does not seem to show a spacer, and I’m not sure I remember pulling out a spacer.

 

[benmychree]

It looks like the headstock is supposed to be flush with the end of the bed; the way it is now, does the end gear train line up with the gear on the headstock?

 

[AndySomogyi]

It looks like the headstock is supposed to be flush with the end of the bed; the way it is now, does the end gear train line up with the gear on the headstock?

The headstock is flush with the end of the bed, but the gear box sits proud about 1/4”

There seems to be about 1/8” of backlash in the lead screw.

Should I try to move the gear box to the right? I’m not sure how much backlash the lead screw should have.

 

[benmychree]

There should be as little backlash in the leadscrew as possible, I do not know how your lathe is arranged, but usually, the adjustment for end play is inside the change box. If all the gearing lines up, I'd not worry about the gap if everything else fits up properly, such as the cover. I would doubt that the change box could be moved.

 

[AndySomogyi]

There is a little bit of movement allowed with the gear box mounting bolts. The tail mounting block for the lead screw had a bit of adjustment in it.

All the gears basically line up, but there’s a lot of side to side adjustment built into the quadrant.

 

[AndySomogyi]

Loosened up the quick change, and it has about 1/8” of movement with the screws loose.

So I moved it to the right, about maybe 1/16 or so, and tightened the screws. This got rid of A LOT of end play in the lead screw.

However there’s still this gap between the guard plate and the head stock, so I’ll just make a spacer for it.

I moved the end holder part for the lead screw in until it just touches, so now there’s maybe a few thousands of lead screw end play. Much better than the 1/8” of end play it had before.