Hello,
I recently took delivery of a 1236 lathe, and have been trying to get it set up over the last few weeks. So far I have leveled the bed to the ground, and mounted it on the feet provided by Matt. The issue is no matter what I turn, I end up with a very rough surface finish. I have tried many feed rates and RPMs on the spindle, but it seems to make little or no difference. Occasionally it will look slightly better, but never really smooth. The only previous lathe experience I have is from a 7x12 from harbor freight, so I am looking for some help here troubleshooting. After searching a bit I saw that some in the past have had motor issues, so I did pull the drive belts and run it under no load. It does seem to be getting rather hot with short amounts of runtime, plus it may be a bit noisy. I have attached a few pictures of cuts I have done, as well as a short video of the motor running.
I recently took delivery of a 1236 lathe, and have been trying to get it set up over the last few weeks. So far I have leveled the bed to the ground, and mounted it on the feet provided by Matt. The issue is no matter what I turn, I end up with a very rough surface finish. I have tried many feed rates and RPMs on the spindle, but it seems to make little or no difference. Occasionally it will look slightly better, but never really smooth. The only previous lathe experience I have is from a 7x12 from harbor freight, so I am looking for some help here troubleshooting. After searching a bit I saw that some in the past have had motor issues, so I did pull the drive belts and run it under no load. It does seem to be getting rather hot with short amounts of runtime, plus it may be a bit noisy. I have attached a few pictures of cuts I have done, as well as a short video of the motor running.