First things first with a new lathe?

matthewsx said:
Hi Rich,

Sorry that there's some issues, I guess trial & error is the best plan if the seller doesn't have any better documentation. I would say the damage on the bed is going to be your call as buyer. First see if it makes any operational difference then decide if you can live with it if it doesn't. It's not like the cracked bed another member got and if the carriage doesn't ride on that area it might be better to not worry about it. Again, totally you call but in my experience Chinese sellers are more inclined to offer partial refunds than take stuff back. Maybe you can get enough to buy some tooling :grin:

My guess with the lever is the ball bearing goes in first, you could always take the other one out and see how it's assembled.

John
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Thanks. Yeah, I would think the ball bearing would go in first too, but why two of them? Just looks like an awful lot of "stuff" to be falling out of one lever that came loose, doesn't it? And what the heck are there magnets there for? Just makes me leery, thinking I am missing something important. Or perhaps some of those parts fell out of somewhere else that I haven't looked yet. I remember working in my dad's service station on my '66 GTO many moons ago, and one of the mechanics there would throw extra bolts into the pile I was accumulating when I wasn't looking. Drove me nuts the first time it happened and I had everything together with all those extra loose bolts. Guess I got dain bramaged as a result.

Yeah, I did read that thread about that cracked bed. When I opened the box to peak inside, as best I could, that was the first thing I looked for. Then when I got home, I took apart the crate and took photos of nearly everything so I could look things over closely by blowing up the images.

As for damage on the bad ways, I've been looking over videos of others disassembling similar lathes, and it doesn't look to me that riding surfaces would be affected. I guess I could always JB Weld it and then hone it smooth if it bothers me. I'm planning on cleaning and honing all riding surfaces anyway. Not sure how well JB Weld takes to slicking up, though.

But I am still waiting to hear back from the seller. Should be prime business hours in China right about now. The guy has been real good about getting back to me, so we will see.
 
I am sorry this has happened to you. There are few things worst than sending a serious chunk of money to get something, and receive it broken.
 
I need to take a REAL close look at that lever thing. I am wracking my brain trying to think of why just a lever attached to a knob would be that complicated with springs ball bearings and magnets and I can't come up with anything. So I'm thinking those small parts HAD to come from somewhere else. Just doesn't make sense to me. I'm wondering if the magnets came from the speed sensor pickup on the spindle. Where else would there be small magnets in a lathe? I just need to take a REAL close look at it when I get over to the garage. Got a hurricane not too far away spitting out rain storms and threatening tornadoes.

Anyway, the seller did contact me and wants me to take video of the problems. Not sure what a video would show that my static images can't. But I think that is just SOP for Chinese companies.
 
Used an inspection mirror and looked up into the hole that the lever came out of in the carriage control knob, and it is just a drilled and tapped hole, as best I can tell. Nothing special. So I just screwed the lever back in. I was able to shift the carriage speed fine by hand moving the spindle as needed. And as best I can tell, those loose magnets are identical to the magnets on the back of the spindle that drive the speed sensor. Maybe the same person who put those stick on knob decals upside down also accidentally dropped them into the crate. Just a darn malicious coincidence that they all stuck together looking like a unit in the bottom of the crate, I guess.

Couldn't do a whole lot except used the shop hoist to lift up the lathe on the wooden base of the crate and relocate it to the tailgate of my wife's truck so I could get to it and work on it easier. But with bands of the hurricane knocking out power for a while and the rain beating on the roof of the garage, I had enough of that for one day. Tried to get video of the lathe running, but the rain was drumming on the roof so hard I couldn't hear a thing from the lathe itself. One of the drawbacks of a metal garage, I guess. Maybe things will be better tomorrow.
 
Focus on refund as things falling off are no good and grinding on ways not acceptable.

Normal place would have tossed it back into the "in" port of the foundry and made another one.

The may offer settlement as too expensive to ship but it big shows on and clearly explain that the grinding on the ways is instant failure that requires noting other that eyeball to notice and it should have never been presented for sale.

Parts falling off can be blamed on the shipper but properly packaged would avoid that, but they still will try to blame issue on shipper.

Focus on ways as number 1 QUALITY issue for reject, then the rest as secondary but still reason for rejection.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 
tq60 said:
Focus on ways as number 1 QUALITY issue for reject, then the rest as secondary but still reason for rejection.
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I have to agree. No way would I accept a NEW lathe with the ways ground down like that. That is a casting defect that is THEIR problem, not yours.
 
mikey said:
I have to agree. No way would I accept a NEW lathe with the ways ground down like that. That is a casting defect that is THEIR problem, not yours.
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So, are you saying that that grind area will negatively affect the operation of the lathe? I didn't see any sliding areas that would be directly affected, but heck, I am willing to listen to advice from people who know a whole lot more about this stuff than I do.

One other thing I discovered today is that the carriage control for direction of the carriage independent of the spindle direction doesn't work. Or at least I couldn't come up with the curse words to do the trick. Feels like the control is bound up, which I am guessing might be fixable. Especially since it is stuck in the "REVERSE" position, and the carriage is certainly moving in the "FORWARD" direction. Not that big of a deal to me, since I don't know if I would ever actually use it, but it IS something else that doesn't work like it is supposed to.

I'll see what the seller says. I told him that I believe this is a factory reject and it should have been scrapped at the factory. This thing wasn't exactly cheap for a smallish hobby lathe, at $1300, but I guess I hoped I was at least going to get something worth working with.
 
A new lathe should have precision ground ways that are not damaged. That is just crappy quality control and should not have made it out of the factory. Doesn't matter whether or not it affects function; it is unacceptable in a new lathe. You paid over a thousand dollars for that lathe and, at least for me, I would send it back at their expense.
 
Tired&Retired said:
So, are you saying that that grind area will negatively affect the operation of the lathe? I didn't see any sliding areas that would be directly affected, but heck, I am willing to listen to advice from people who know a whole lot more about this stuff than I do.

One other thing I discovered today is that the carriage control for direction of the carriage independent of the spindle direction doesn't work. Or at least I couldn't come up with the curse words to do the trick. Feels like the control is bound up, which I am guessing might be fixable. Especially since it is stuck in the "REVERSE" position, and the carriage is certainly moving in the "FORWARD" direction. Not that big of a deal to me, since I don't know if I would ever actually use it, but it IS something else that doesn't work like it is supposed to.

I'll see what the seller says. I told him that I believe this is a factory reject and it should have been scrapped at the factory. This thing wasn't exactly cheap for a smallish hobby lathe, at $1300, but I guess I hoped I was at least going to get something worth working with.
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You have a good heart...stop futzing with this as you will not be happy.

Insist on full refund and THEY PICK IT UP!

This is too heavy to try to box and take to ship.

The seller can arrange for a truck to come and get it.

Do not settle and get and save any document stating refund and if they let you dispose of it then tinker but keep paperwork.

Had an issue with laptop years ago, sent back and forth and they sued us for lost sale.

Judge tossed it but we had to drive 200 miles to court.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 
The unfortunate thing is the old mechanism eBay put into place to keep people from unloading junk just doesn't work anymore. They will probably just change seller names and keep on going.

Yes you deserve a working and defect free machine for your money, in China they may not have it but here in the US every product comes with an implied warranty of merchantability that should cover any defective good which your purchase certainly falls under.

If you want your money back file a claim with eBay or PayPal right away. If you claim through PayPal, eBay won't do anything and vise versa. The seller will ask for videos, pictures, more videos, more pictures etc. but this is a stalling tactic. Ultimately they will try to settle with you for a partial refund because they don't want to take it back, EVER!!!!

That's where I was going in my earlier post, you can hold out for a full refund, or decide how much you will accept for an offer. Their cost was probably half what you paid so that's what they're going to want but if you hold out for a full refund you might get 3/4 of your money back.

Everything depends on what works for you, if you know it's gonna bug you every time you look at it either settle for more than you think you can sell it for or figure out how to send it back at their expense for a full refund. Either way it's more of a hassle than you deserve but unfortunately it's the chance you take buying from sellers who don't really care about anything besides getting your money.

We have a great forum sponsor who would be glad to sell you a product they stand behind. More money yes but less heartburn....

John
 
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