Praying just before you turn on that new lathe for the first time...

The_Apprentice

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After reading multiple issues by people with the poor performance of brand new asian lathes, I was holding my breath as I turned on my new mini tonight.

Sure enough, I had that sickening feeling when watching.

I haven't even tried testing anything with the tooling yet, as the first thing I see is the first gear rather wobbly to the point I don't even want to have anything engaged. Even with just the regular eye, I can see that the whole shaft connected to the main sprocket is rather bent off center by a significant amount.

Considering it took me a long time to drive to an area to purchase my lathe, drive back, get it down my steep stairs and set up, etc... is not something I want to do all over again.

Maybe I'll get lucky and hopefully the company will swap out an item or two with me under warranty. Or with my luck, they'll want me to re-ship the whole thing, because taking apart anything could violate the warranty.... ahah!

I'll get around to maybe videoing the issue on my iPhone for others here to examine and give input. I just don't have the time for all of this at the moment...

Stay tuned for future information on my buyer's remorse. LOL
 
Hate that for you. Took me forever to get my new lathe off the floor onto the bench. You need Charles Atlas to move some of these things around.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Also consider sending the videos to the people you bought it from, if the problem is bad enough to see on a video they should send out new parts
Mark S.
 
I hope it turns out to be a minor issue/easy fix.

Considering it took me a long time to drive to an area to purchase my lathe, drive back, get it down my steep stairs and set up, etc... is not something I want to do all over again.

....shouldn't "Steeltown" be littered with machine tool suppliers?

-brino
 
I should update that Brino... I'm actually not living in Hamilton anymore.

In the meantime, I took a video here showing how the gear & back end of the spindle is looking. Now, I'm relatively new to these Chinese mini-lathes, but I'm guessing this is not orthodox?

Maybe I'll get lucky and find out it's not the spindle, but just wobble produced by cheap junk they put ON the spindle? I'll take a closer look at it soon enough.


And while we are on the subject of this matter, anyone know the TOOL that is used for taking off the first two nuts that are compressed there? I see people using wrenches to do this, but I generally prefer the right tools for any job if I can. I just forget the name now...
 
From the video it does look like the shaft itself is good.
What size of spanner does it take for the nuts? The thin long spanners for changing a table saw blade might work.
 
And while we are on the subject of this matter, anyone know the TOOL that is used for taking off the first two nuts that are compressed there? I see people using wrenches to do this, but I generally prefer the right tools for any job if I can. I just forget the name now...

I believe it's this one, but they have several to choose from. Double check the size of the spindle nut.
http://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=1416&category=

Eta: It's probably just the way they have the gear mounted on the spindle, or maybe there's some debris trapped between it and the spacer? Either way, you really need two of those wrenches to tighten things up properly. One to tighten the first nut, then a second to tighten the jam nut while holding the first one still.

I was able to make one that worked well enough using a piece of pipe and a couple of machine screws. Not great, but good enough.
 
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From the video, it appears the bore in the gear was cut incorrectly. That would be a manufacturing defect and the dealer should stand behind the warranty. I would send them the video. The simplest route would be to replace the gear. A spanner wrench is required to remove the spindle nuts. The dealer should furnish that wrench along with the new gear.

There is a chance that there is another component which is messing up the alignment. I would expect that there is a spacer which contacts the inner race of the spindle bearing and that the gear sits against that spacer. the spindle nut and lock nut follow on the spindle. These nuts adjust the bearing preload and should not be tightened completely, The dealer should furnish directions as to how to properly adjust the spindle bearing preload.

If the dealer doesn't want you to do the repair yourself, they should ship you another lathe and arrange for someone to pick this one up . At the very least, they should compensate you for the expense and your time to bring it back and exchange it.
 
Last night I finally figured out the name for these spanner wrenches. Took me a while, and so many other people had the same questions about them. Though the simplest trick I saw, is one machinist who just removes then tightens his chuck around the lock-nuts and manually turns it to unloosen them. Simple... Or does that sound like a bad idea?

I'm hoping it's just the spacer & gears that are wonky... we will see when I get to removing them...

And while on that note, I'm going to take a look at the motor later on today... I am curious for a closer inspection.
 
Some of my newer tools are arriving already... though not everything just yet.
Yesterday I decided to look at the Motor, but all I found on it was a sticker with a part #, and the date of manufacture (or is that installation). Nothing about wattage.

I did notice the screws were put on very loose in many places of my lathe... too loose in many places. The first one I unscrewed to take off the splash guard (have to remove this to take off motor cover) was only half screwed in. Something else I found, seems at random they kept swapping different sized screws for the same holes. Not sure what happened there. It is a jump from 9mm to 11mm. Not a real biggie, just more of a sloppy feel to me.

I have a dial gauge that just arrived today, I'll try to use it to get some readings on the chuck, etc. to see how things line up over there soon...

Image....
 
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