King 1236ml (grizzly G4003) Is Home

Well I've been playing (I mean working) with the new lathe and I must say this is a big improvement over my smaller lathe in many respects and I am discovering some new issues that I hope to resolve soon.

The biggest improvements over the small lathe are parting and thread cutting. Parting is a piece of cake (watch this come back and bite me in the butt), no shaking, vibrating or other scary things. It just slices through the steel like it should. Thread cutting is now a pleasure too. With my little lathe I would have to take very light cuts, like 0.001" or 0.002" when cutting deeper threads and sometimes it would still jam and the drive belts would slip. Plus the lowest speed on the small lathe was 150 rpm. The new lathe has a spindle speed of 60 rpm and easily takes 0.010" cuts even plunge cutting in the deeper threads, that I was having issues with before.

One of the latest issues is that the tail stock will slide away from the work piece. This happens quite often, especially when drilling. My small lathe never had this issue even with larger drill bits. I cleaned the underside of the ways, underside of the TS and the hold down clamp to see if that would help and it did somewhat but the issue still occurs sometimes. I even tried cleaning the surface of the ways to give the TS a better grip on them but thought this was a bad idea since the TS needs to slide on the ways plus my small lathe ways always have a light coat of oil on them and it is not a problem on it. Hoping this will just work itself in. Time will tell. I still have around 5 months to figure it out.
 
John, good to hear that you are using the machine and working out the kinks.

I read somewhere on this forum about another user who had to machine his tail stock clamp to make it hold as it was slipping like yours, not sure which lathe it was. I'll see if I can find that thread and post it.

On a different note, how are the Norton shifters working on your machine, do they move easily and click into there holes accurately.
The one in KMS seemed to be very hard to get them to slide without using 2 hands to hold them to get the small movement otherwise they would not move until they then went way to far, maybe something that you get used to with time.

Cheers,

David.
 
David, I am trying to come up with some projects to make use of the lathe so I can determine if this is going to be a keeper or not. I really like the heft of the machine and that makes it so much more solid than the 1022. All the tasks I have performed so far are just much easier with this machine. I'm not saying this is a good machine, just that being bigger and more powerful makes it perform better. I really wish there were some other brands of lower end Chinese 12 x 36 lathes around that I could look at and check for similar issues.

I checked the TS to see if it wasn't seating properly on the ways, just using a piece of paper to see if I could slide it out from under various parts of the TS and I couldn't, which suggests to me that it is making full contact on the surface of the ways. I tried looking at the clamping bar but it's too hard to see properly. There are a lot of imperfections on the underside of the ways, where the clamp rides and that may be contributing to the problem. I'll pull the clamp and see if it is straight where it clamps to the ways.

The Norton gears are quite hard to move, despite the copious amounts of oil I have put on them. Like you stated, it is easier to use 2 hands to adjust them. But they do seem to line up with the mating gears (that said without visually checking them). I think the shifters will get easier to move, with use. The main gear shifters are also difficult to move and mate with other gears. I think that is just the nature of a gear head lathe but given my inexperience with this kind of equipment, I could be totally wrong.

I'm still considering another brand like Craftex or PM but would need to have hands on one before making that decision, especially since any warranty / service issues could be costly. I'll be hard pressed to find a dealer like the one in Kamloops. I know Matt has a good rep on this site and has helped out other Canadians having issues with their lathes. I think they were Craftex. By all accounts on this forum Matt is a stand up dealer and I wish he was closer or had an outlet in BC or northern Washington. That way I could check the quality of his machines. The dollar is a little higher now but even so a basic PM1236 would cost me about $900 more than the King1236. If they have the same issues it would be a waste of money but if they are better quality it may be worth it.

John
 
Well I checked the clamping bar under the TS and found it's ways were not parallel. Not much out of alignment but I was hoping that was the cause of the TS sliding when clamped down. I put it in the mill, used a DI to set it up as close to level and parallel as possible, then milled the 2 ways at exactly the same setting. When done I was sure that would solve the problem, since the ways were a little rougher so they would grab better and would now grab on a bigger surface area. Wrong! It's still doing the same thing. Not sure what to check / do next.
 
John, call Matt at PM on Monday and ask his opinion on the PM 1236 and see if he believes their machine is a better class of machine or if all Chinese 1236's are similar with regard to the issues you have discovered with your machine.

When I was researching my options Matt suggested the the PM 1236/PM 935TS instead of the PM 1340GT/PM 935TS if I needed to trim the budget so he must have faith in their PM 1236 as a quality machine.

There are quite a few PM 1236 owners on this forum, so maybe ask the question in the PM section and see what info comes back.

David

PS. Matt will give a discount for cash bank transfer/cheque, I used XE Money transfer and kept an eye on the rates and locked in once I was comfortable with the rate.
It went a slow as 1.31 last week. CC were still 1.36 or 1.37 so that makes a bit of difference and Matt may be able to give you additional discounts if you ask for a quote.

http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CAD&view=1Y

David
 
David, good idea about posting on the PM section to see if others have experienced any of these issues. Maybe someone is willing to take the cover off their gear head to see if their machine has similar issues or not. I may also post the same questions on the Grizzly forum.

I think most people get their new lathe and just use it until something breaks or it starts making strange noises and if that is true then the issues I have discovered would not be noticed, except for the sliding TS, until something goes wrong. Maybe these issues are common and don't present long term problems but I'm inclined to think they would. I think I have significantly reduced future failure problems in the gear head by marking the gear shift levers at the locations where the gears make the best contact. If others aren't doing this and their lathes have the same design flaws then maybe they aren't as bad as I think. Sure would be easy to fix at the factory though.
 
First as far as the gears locking up, there SHOULD (I sad Should, because its not our machine, so I do not know for sure) be detents on those levers, but if you just put the lever all the way to one side, that may happen. It may be an issue that you need to look at, or possibly just adjusting the detent springs or even just getting a feel for where they go. Same with the alignment on that other gear, but it all should be something you can fix and take care of easily. The detents should be under the arrow pointer stickers on the face of the gear change levers, they are just a spring and a ball. Not saying they are all in the right position, I do not deal with that factory and never have, but they are all very similar.

There is not going to be a big difference between the PM-1236 and what you have. It Is a completely different factory, the machine you have is different, but similar. I have never worked with that factory, so I can not comment on the specifics. There can (And many times IS) a good bit of difference in them, but, they are still both Chinese lathes. Remember what you paid for it, although its a good bit of money, for what all you are getting, think about what all is there for the money.
My advice is, Keep the machine you have, put some time in to learning it and making the necessary adjustments/fixes etc, unless you go up to the machines that are from Taiwan, and that higher price level, there is not going to be any major difference between Chinese lathes. Our service and support will be the best, but it sounds like the place you are dealing with has really good support too. If that is the most you want to spend, that is the best you are going to get, and it sounds like you have a good dealer that you are working with there, so I would stick with what you have. If you trade it in for another, its probably going to be exactly the same as what you have now.
 
And also, best wishes to your wife's health, that's much more important than messing around with a machine right now!
 
WOW Matt. Your post speaks volumes about your character. I am truly impressed!!!! and on a Sunday too. Thank you for your honesty.

I know a similar sized machine that is made in North America would cost me somewhere between 3 and 5 times as much (even more if I wanted it too) and have accepted the fact that I am buying Chinese at a much lower cost and quality and I'm good with that. I guess my real effort was to see if the other Chinese machines in this class are all the same or if the brands from a different factory are better quality. I am prepared to work through the issues with this lathe, as I did with my first one and after reading your post I will probably keep this lathe. I did with my first one and it had a lot of issues but my dealer helped me by letting me swap bad parts from mine for good ones. I did all the labor and a lot of traveling back and forth but at the end of the day I have a small lathe that works well enough. There are still some rigidity issues when parting but I know I can fix that by making a better hold down system for the compound. Probably won't bother now that I have the larger lathe.

I would still like to see your PM1236 just to compare, since your machines do come from a different factory.

I checked the King service manual on line and the Grizzly one too. They both show detents on the 2 main gear selectors but not on the one that selects the drive shaft rotational direction. I will pull mine apart to see why they are not engaging and fix that. Thanks for that information. I see on the parts diagram for your lathe there are detents shown for all three of these selectors.

Thanks for the kind words about my wife. She had a partial stroke 2 weeks ago and her right side from just above her stomach to her toes was paralyzed. Doctors figured it was due to her unstable neck, that has been an issue for the last 6 years, and that 2 vertebrae shifted causing a blood vessel along her spine to get pinched and her spinal chord to be impacted. It took 5 days, 6 CT scans, 3 xrays and an MRI to figure it out. They operated last Tuesday and put plates on her spine, at her neck. She is now home using a walker to get around but isn't able to do much. I'm learning to appreciate all the things she does around the house, since those duties have fallen to me. The good news is that she is slowly gaining feeling and some mobility in her leg. This could be a long haul but all signs are good and we are heading in the right direction. There is a silver lining to this story too. As a result of the neck fusion, she will no longer suffer the agonizing pain in her neck from nerves being pinched and will no longer need to get rhizotomy's every year.
 
Before getting dinner ready I sneaked out to the shop and checked for detents on the lathe. With the lathe off and no background sounds I could hear the detent balls push into position as I turned the selectors and there were detents on all of the selectors. I think the issue is that the selectors are very stiff and hard to turn plus the gears don't usually line up so it is necessary to use a fair amount of force to turn the selectors and I couldn't feel a detent engage as the selector moved past the proper location. Now that I know they are there, I can hear them push into place and if I move the selector close to the detent location I can actually feel it engage. I think the selectors will eventually loosen up and then the detents will be more obvious. The good news is that the detent locations coincide with the marks I made on the selectors and the housing. I may pull the gear head cover off to see if I can move the retaining clamps on the selector shafts to make them easier to turn.

I also think I may be getting closer to solving the TS sliding issue. I pulled the TS off and took a close look at the ways (if that is what they are called) on the clamping bars and I could see that they are only riding on a very narrow strip on the outside edges. I used a hand file to reshape them a couple of times so far and will see if I can get a larger contact area between the clamp and the underside of the bed ways. I used some layout die on the clamp ways the last time and after using the TS in a locked position and it moving, I could see that one side of the clamp was still riding on one edge but there were also individual marks more central in the clamp way, that suggested it was riding high on some of the bumps on the underside of the bed ways. When I get a chance I will keep at this until I get it figured out and will post the solution here. Now it's off to clean up the mess I made when making dinner and to do the dishes.
 
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