Broken Atlas 6" lathe top slide.

S

Stelni

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Hi all, thanks for the ad to the forum.

I recently acquired an old Atlas 6" lathe, model 10100. It looked like it was in fairly good shape from initial inspection, and it has the cast iron head stock and legs. Apparently the old gentleman that I got it from was the original owner, but it seems that he was not an honest fellow! After I got it home I decide it would be a good idea to clean and lube everything. So I started with the top slide. As I was sliding it off the casting fell apart in my hands! It had been glued back together and excess glue cleaned up so it looked fine. With the tool post attached it actually seemed to work fine when I tested it at the previous owners house. If I had actually taken the time and chucked a piece of metal, and taken a cut, it probably would have been pretty apparent that something was wrong. But I did not so here we are.
Is there any way to fix this, welding, brazing or am I just wasting my time thinking about that?

Thanks for any advice on this.
Regards, Nick.
 

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There are lots of ways to weld cast iron, but none of them will leave your part straight. You can weld and re-machine the dovetail, but for that part the juice just isn't worth the effort of the squeeze. Luckily for us Atlas owners, replacements are easy to come by and you won't have to sell your firstborn to do it.
 
I'd say a new compound is in order. There's just not much meat there to work with. If it were mine I'd at least attempt a repair with the full expectation being it wouldn't work.

I'd make make a jig to hold it by the slide dovetail then drill parallel to the dovetail where there is room and then put in some long pins. Then, I'd grind some relief near the crack area and fill it with brazing. File down the brazing to fit back together and rethread the gib screw holes.
 
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NEW ATLAS CRAFTSMAN 6 INCH SWING LATHE M6-303 COMPOUND TOOL SLIDE

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Thanks folks for all the replies. Not sure that I want to invest more money in this. $150US is nearly $200 Canadian plus shipping, which will put it very close to the $250 that I paid for it! Sounds like trying to fix this one is probably a waste of time, so I may attempt to make a new one from a block of steel.
 
you could also make a simple riser post to replace the compound with in the mean time. You'd loose the ability to do tapered cuts (easily at least) and threading would be different, but you'd gain alot of rigidity.

It's on my project list :)
 
There were two compound slides used on the 10100. The first was also used on the 612, 618, 3950, 101.07301 and 101.21400. The second maybe looks more like what you will find on most of the import 6" and 7" lathes, Either one is fine for the 10100. But finding just the casting might be more difficult.
 
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