Odd behavior in "MX-210V" forward/reverse/power switches

Very nicely done! I have TouchDRO on my mill, so when I get around to this project I will probably use the same tablet for the lathe.
 
Tomzo, you motivated me to tear down and rebuild my MX-210V tailstock -- and I'm glad I did. Here's a list of things found and fixed:
  1. The lubricant (if you can call it that!) in the tailstock spindle was horrible. A heavy smelly sticky dark brown substance more resembling moldy molasses than grease. It took a lot of work and acetone to clean it out, and then I lubed it with some moly.
  2. The steel "flange" that the side-to-side adjustment setscrews push into was actually two pieces of crap metal held together by a 5mm cap screw. I welded the two pieces together, filled in the gaps, then belt-sanded smooth square faces.
  3. The above 5mm screw as just barely long enough, and threaded into the aluminum base, which showed signed of thread wear. I drilled it and tapped it (and the metal "flange") to accept a 6mm cap screw instead, of proper/longer length, and used red locktite when reassembling.
  4. There's also a 5mm clamping cap screw towards the front bottom that rides in a slot to allow some pivoting motion. I also drilled and tapped it to 6mm as well for extra security.
  5. One of the side-to-side adjustment setscrews was a proper 1-ish inches long, while the other was only a 1/2-inch long. I replaced them both with longer 6mm cap screws that make the adjustment much easier to do.
  6. I put a good hard washer under the tailstock spindle lock, which makes it easier to get tight clamping.
  7. I mentioned earlier that my tailstock centerpoint was about 2mm higher than the center point of the spindle. I corrected this by carefully filing down the front of the tailstock main body ever so slightly and also adding a .012 shim to the rear when reassembling the body to the base. The top of the tailstock spindle is now properly parallel with the ways, and the centerline is now the proper height.
  8. And, not related to the original tailstock but to my DRO addition, I cut/ground down the bracket that I mentioned in my earlier DRO video so that the tool post can no longer interfere with the bracket at full extension. I can now reach a choked-up tool to the point of a dead center. I also trimmed the top of the aluminum scale mounting bracket a tad so that there's more clearance with the spindle lock handle.
  9. Finally, I took my time with a tailstock alignment bar to get things aligned very closely, and then followed up by cutting down my own 3/4-inch bar at both ends to the same DRO diameter indication, a bit at a time, to get them within .005 of each other over a 12-inch span. It took a lot of fiddling and very gentle tapping of the tailstock at the end, but I'm very happy with the result. Then I tightened everything up and re-checked that all is still aligned nicely. All's good.
 
Most impressive! That 5mm grub screw in the slot on the bottom is lousy - I may follow your lead there. Five thousandths over 12 inches is pretty darn good for this class of lathe!

Question: How much work did you put into leveling out the ways? That can introduce taper as well, correct?
 
Tomzo said:
Question: How much work did you put into leveling out the ways? That can introduce taper as well, correct?
Click to expand...
Not much, to be honest. The garage cabinets underneath my bench (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-H...n-W-x-32-in-H-x-21-5-in-D-HTC100007/306903547 ) are heavy steel with adjustable feet, and I took a good long while when installing them, a year or so ago, to get them very level in all directions, bolted to each other and bolted to the wall and then re-adjusted a tad more. The bench top is a solid 1.5" thick (3/4" oak on top of the 3/4" oak tops that came with the cabinets) with plenty of screws fastened into the cabinets and with a heavy "back splash" tapcon'ed to the block wall and bolted to the cabinets. It's super rigid, flat and square.

But I did nothing special with the lathe installation/leveling. It's bolted to the bench on both ends with as big of a bolt as would fit into the supplied lathe mounting holes (I think 5/8-inch but may be wrong). As you know, on this MX-210V lathe there are only the two mounting bolts, and the ways sit on a sturdy column rather than having four separate feet, so I think that there's less chance of introducing (or fixing) twist with this setup.

I did purchase a precision level ( https://www.ebay.com/itm/303797138722 ) while waiting for my lathe delivery, and used it to check that the amount of deviation from perfectly horizontal shows the same at the chuck and tailstock end, so I didn't have to do any shimming. Just lucky with that, I guess.
 
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