Help with Lathe compound movement.

[jwmay]

Obviously I derailed this thread instead of just googling it. Oops.
People born in England are called English or British and can say that they live in England, Britain and/or the UK. Most people in England tend to say they are British rather than English.

 

[RJSakowski]

Brits, or more properly, British - What I've always used.
Others may have more colorful terms :~)

Trivia note. The term Limey to mean a Brit originated from the British navy providing limes to their sailors to prevent scurvy.

My wife is British, having been born and raised in the English Midlands. She was once chastised by her father for referring to herself as British. He said, "you were born in England and you are English".

Now back to regularly scheduled programming.

 

[pontiac428]

One other thing on the Atlas/Craftsman lathes that can cause your issue is the brass acme nut. Backlash is usually what we talk about with acme nuts, but those lathes have a single fixing bolt in the cross slide that, with a little loosening an use, starts to wallow the interface between the casting and the soft(ish) brass nut. Of course, locking the gibs will isolate this, but that's a band-aid. Also take all the play out of the lead screw at the hand wheel by closing the gap between the thrust surface of the infeed scale; those lathes take a delicate touch to adjust, but can be dialed in with some careful setup.

 

[RJSakowski]

The problem you are experiencing; undesired compound movement, accompanied by rotation of the crank, is entirely a gib adjustment issue. Backlash has nothing to do with it. I tighten the gibs on my compounds so they require a small amount of effort to move. Since they are used only infrequently, this doesn't significantly increase wear.

Of coarse, backlash should be minimized for other reasons. Backlash in conjunction with loose gibs can cause chatter. Lost motion/backlash isn't as important on a lathe as it is on a mill as machining is usually only done in one direction.