- Joined
- Oct 4, 2016
- Messages
- 9
I recently took delivery of my G0765 7x14 mini lathe, and it's somehow exceeding expectations - in a bad way.
Now, before I get into the issues, I just want to say that I wasn't expecting a showroom fresh Hardinge when I bought this thing - I was expecting an import-quality, poorly pre-assembled, atrociously filthy lathe. And that's what I got. But somehow it was a bit worse than I anticipated (and I did *a lot* of research on customer experiences with these lathes).
I didn't even run it before tearing it down, knowing full well the amount of grit and gutter-oil this thing was 'rust-proofed' with (I think they wipe these down with sump-sludge before they ship them). The teardown and cleaning took forever, and after 2 boxes of Q-tips and a couple gallons of isopropanol, I think it's clean enough to start reassembly.
A lot of the 'fit and finish' stuff I expected I'd work through as I went along, but there are a handful of issues I need to address now - if for no other reason than I feel like I might actually damage the lathe by running these parts as they are.
I would be extremely grateful if anyone intimately familiar with these import mini lathes could chime in with their experiences. I'm particularly curious if my lathe is 'standard fare' for these things, or if I managed to get a particularly bad example (in which case I might take it up with Grizzly).
As of right now, I don't know if these are defects or just the usual "you get what you pay for".
Now, my brother is a CNC machinist, and he's happy to help, so I'll be leaning on him a lot as I go through this, but I can't just hand off parts and say "here, make this not suck, please". So any direction on what operations make sense to correct these issues, would also be *greatly* appreciated.
Well then, on with the show:
The two images above are of the saddle (seats? faces? unsure of the nomenclature, but they're intended to ride on the bed's ways). The majority of those tool marks look to be about 10 thou deep. I just can't run these as-is. I was going to ask my brother to clean these up, but I don't even know what that entails.
There's no real reference surface I can see (save for maybe the cross slide dovetail, but I'm pretty sure its 'scraped' surface is purely cosmetic), and cutting the vee's depth such that its hypotenuse is the level with the other seat (after also being cut) - while maintaining planar-parallelism and orthogonality with the cross slide dovetail - seems like an awfully tall order, especially as a favor to ask of my brother using machines 'between setups'.
These next images are of the cross slide gib, however all the dovetail gibs on this machine are nearly identical (merely shorter).
The burrs are obvious to see, but easy enough to take care of I suppose. What concerns me more is the severe lack of straightness (seen against a Starrett straight edge resting on a pair of 123 blocks) , as well as the completely wonky gib-screw engagement (which likely wasn't helped by the fact that they used socket-head-caps-screws in lieu of cone-point set screws).
I'm not sure what to do here either. I feel like attempting to straighten them will only make matters worse, and those screw engagement points leave me worried that they'll be inclined to pivot and bind somehow. I'm also less-than-certain that the gib screw holes are drilled entirely straight.
Next, the half nuts:
Err, yeah. Casting voids, extremely roughly machined - or whittled with a chisel? Can this possibly be 'normal' for these things?
I'm not exactly sure what to do here.
Lastly (of immediate concern, anyway), there's the ways. These look pretty good, actually, though the only actual measurement I've taken is thickness, of which there was less than .020 mm variance over the length of the bed (only 10 or so points checked). Parallelism and surface irregularity are unknown at this point. There are, however, a couple issues which appear to be purely cosmetic, but I thought I would let those more knowledgeable than I weigh in.
The first picture is some casting voids in the 'rear' way, which I don't believe anything rides on (hence my assumption that it's cosmetic). The second is the vee way under the headstock. Is this normal? Either way, can I call it 'cosmetic' since nothing should sit on the crest of the vee way anyway? Some of those serrations are better than 10 thou deep.
And that's it for this first post. The headstock and tailstock both concern me immensely, as I imagine I'll find a lot of issues with bed alignment, concentricity, and general parallelism (especially given their mating surfaces are almost as bad as the saddle's) - but I thought it best to get it back together and take some actual measurements, before just assuming they'll be garbage out of the box.
I'd also like to apologize for such a novelesque post, and thank anyone who responds in advance for taking the time to share their wisdom. I've had this thing torn down for nearly a week, chewing on (and researching) what to do about the above items the whole while. I'm still stumped. I'm also anxious to get it back together and start turning. Any and all help is immensely appreciated.
Thanks!
Edit - I didn't realize the images would be so heavily resized. A lot of the detail was lost, which makes some things (the saddle in particular) look less severe. If anyone would like more detailed photos, I can find alternate hosting.
Edit 2 - Realized I forgot to add some pictures that were discussed in the text. Editing again to rectify that.
Now, before I get into the issues, I just want to say that I wasn't expecting a showroom fresh Hardinge when I bought this thing - I was expecting an import-quality, poorly pre-assembled, atrociously filthy lathe. And that's what I got. But somehow it was a bit worse than I anticipated (and I did *a lot* of research on customer experiences with these lathes).
I didn't even run it before tearing it down, knowing full well the amount of grit and gutter-oil this thing was 'rust-proofed' with (I think they wipe these down with sump-sludge before they ship them). The teardown and cleaning took forever, and after 2 boxes of Q-tips and a couple gallons of isopropanol, I think it's clean enough to start reassembly.
A lot of the 'fit and finish' stuff I expected I'd work through as I went along, but there are a handful of issues I need to address now - if for no other reason than I feel like I might actually damage the lathe by running these parts as they are.
I would be extremely grateful if anyone intimately familiar with these import mini lathes could chime in with their experiences. I'm particularly curious if my lathe is 'standard fare' for these things, or if I managed to get a particularly bad example (in which case I might take it up with Grizzly).
As of right now, I don't know if these are defects or just the usual "you get what you pay for".
Now, my brother is a CNC machinist, and he's happy to help, so I'll be leaning on him a lot as I go through this, but I can't just hand off parts and say "here, make this not suck, please". So any direction on what operations make sense to correct these issues, would also be *greatly* appreciated.
Well then, on with the show:
The two images above are of the saddle (seats? faces? unsure of the nomenclature, but they're intended to ride on the bed's ways). The majority of those tool marks look to be about 10 thou deep. I just can't run these as-is. I was going to ask my brother to clean these up, but I don't even know what that entails.
There's no real reference surface I can see (save for maybe the cross slide dovetail, but I'm pretty sure its 'scraped' surface is purely cosmetic), and cutting the vee's depth such that its hypotenuse is the level with the other seat (after also being cut) - while maintaining planar-parallelism and orthogonality with the cross slide dovetail - seems like an awfully tall order, especially as a favor to ask of my brother using machines 'between setups'.
These next images are of the cross slide gib, however all the dovetail gibs on this machine are nearly identical (merely shorter).
The burrs are obvious to see, but easy enough to take care of I suppose. What concerns me more is the severe lack of straightness (seen against a Starrett straight edge resting on a pair of 123 blocks) , as well as the completely wonky gib-screw engagement (which likely wasn't helped by the fact that they used socket-head-caps-screws in lieu of cone-point set screws).
I'm not sure what to do here either. I feel like attempting to straighten them will only make matters worse, and those screw engagement points leave me worried that they'll be inclined to pivot and bind somehow. I'm also less-than-certain that the gib screw holes are drilled entirely straight.
Next, the half nuts:
Err, yeah. Casting voids, extremely roughly machined - or whittled with a chisel? Can this possibly be 'normal' for these things?
I'm not exactly sure what to do here.
Lastly (of immediate concern, anyway), there's the ways. These look pretty good, actually, though the only actual measurement I've taken is thickness, of which there was less than .020 mm variance over the length of the bed (only 10 or so points checked). Parallelism and surface irregularity are unknown at this point. There are, however, a couple issues which appear to be purely cosmetic, but I thought I would let those more knowledgeable than I weigh in.
The first picture is some casting voids in the 'rear' way, which I don't believe anything rides on (hence my assumption that it's cosmetic). The second is the vee way under the headstock. Is this normal? Either way, can I call it 'cosmetic' since nothing should sit on the crest of the vee way anyway? Some of those serrations are better than 10 thou deep.
And that's it for this first post. The headstock and tailstock both concern me immensely, as I imagine I'll find a lot of issues with bed alignment, concentricity, and general parallelism (especially given their mating surfaces are almost as bad as the saddle's) - but I thought it best to get it back together and take some actual measurements, before just assuming they'll be garbage out of the box.
I'd also like to apologize for such a novelesque post, and thank anyone who responds in advance for taking the time to share their wisdom. I've had this thing torn down for nearly a week, chewing on (and researching) what to do about the above items the whole while. I'm still stumped. I'm also anxious to get it back together and start turning. Any and all help is immensely appreciated.
Thanks!
Edit - I didn't realize the images would be so heavily resized. A lot of the detail was lost, which makes some things (the saddle in particular) look less severe. If anyone would like more detailed photos, I can find alternate hosting.
Edit 2 - Realized I forgot to add some pictures that were discussed in the text. Editing again to rectify that.
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