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Upgrading My PM 1236-T Lathe
- Thread starter wildo
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2015
- Messages
- 519
You gonna sell those Sir?
Ha! Not a chance!
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2015
- Messages
- 2,079
Take is ALL apart Willie. Show us every locknut and grub screw. This might help:
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2015
- Messages
- 519
Wow!!! I wondered if you had this list or not. Damn that is crazy helpful; thanks for sharing!!
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2015
- Messages
- 519
Slow going (as usual) but I have gotten the lathe mostly cleaned up and ready for paint stripping and paint. The threading lead screw was easy to get out, but I haven't quite figured out how to get the power feed and on/off shafts out of the apron yet.
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2015
- Messages
- 2,079
Did you save the sand in the castings?
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2015
- Messages
- 519
Well this feels like such a major milestone! The bed and headstock have been completely stripped, bondo’ed, and repainted. I’ve now moved on to stripping all the bolt on components. I also drained the oil and cleaned out the extra sand & metal shavings, David!
Speaking of David- can’t thank him enough for answering all my questions I’ve sent his way. So helpful!
This EZStrip did not work *at all* so I switched to Citristrip. I had read that Citristrip had been reformulated and didn’t work as well, but it seemed to work great to me!
I had been curious how heavy the bed and headstock alone weighed, so I bought a crane scale. The full lathe is billed at something like 890lbs, so I was surprised that even with everything taken off this assembly only came in at 330lbs
Finally got everything stripped, smoothed with fresh bondo, and ready for paint
I also drained the oil and cleaned sand and some metal grit from the head
Finally- a coat of Steel-It #2203 alkyd primer
...followed by Steel-It #1002 polyurethane base coat
Now that the main part of the lathe is painted, I moved on to the rest of the bolt on components. I liked David’s idea of milling out the head cover in order to fit an 1/4” rubber mat recessed down in there. I brought the casting to the mill and started with a 3/8” ball end mill to create an oil groove about .285” deep. The full perimeter was just out of capacity for my mill table travel so I had to rotate the part. That ended up being not such a big deal.
I would note that the ball end mill is a quality carbide end mill and cut the cast like butter. Then I grabbed my 3/4” four flute HSS end mil from harbor freight and started milling the main recess. This end mill did NOT cut like butter, but it did eventually get the job done.
For the final tool path I did have the capacity to do one continuous cut, but the problem was that the mill table ran into the wall of the room for one corner of the cut. I *should* have stopped and extended the ram but this is yet another one of those “chalk it up to inexperience” lessons. So one corner of the tool path isn’t pretty, but oh well.
Because the four fluter didn’t leave a fantastic surface finish, I hit it with an 80 grit sanding disc on the random orbit sander. Overall, it turned out fine in the end.
And that’s where I’m at now. Moving on to more paint stripping and grey painting...
Speaking of David- can’t thank him enough for answering all my questions I’ve sent his way. So helpful!
This EZStrip did not work *at all* so I switched to Citristrip. I had read that Citristrip had been reformulated and didn’t work as well, but it seemed to work great to me!
I had been curious how heavy the bed and headstock alone weighed, so I bought a crane scale. The full lathe is billed at something like 890lbs, so I was surprised that even with everything taken off this assembly only came in at 330lbs
Finally got everything stripped, smoothed with fresh bondo, and ready for paint
I also drained the oil and cleaned sand and some metal grit from the head
Finally- a coat of Steel-It #2203 alkyd primer
...followed by Steel-It #1002 polyurethane base coat
Now that the main part of the lathe is painted, I moved on to the rest of the bolt on components. I liked David’s idea of milling out the head cover in order to fit an 1/4” rubber mat recessed down in there. I brought the casting to the mill and started with a 3/8” ball end mill to create an oil groove about .285” deep. The full perimeter was just out of capacity for my mill table travel so I had to rotate the part. That ended up being not such a big deal.
I would note that the ball end mill is a quality carbide end mill and cut the cast like butter. Then I grabbed my 3/4” four flute HSS end mil from harbor freight and started milling the main recess. This end mill did NOT cut like butter, but it did eventually get the job done.
For the final tool path I did have the capacity to do one continuous cut, but the problem was that the mill table ran into the wall of the room for one corner of the cut. I *should* have stopped and extended the ram but this is yet another one of those “chalk it up to inexperience” lessons. So one corner of the tool path isn’t pretty, but oh well.
Because the four fluter didn’t leave a fantastic surface finish, I hit it with an 80 grit sanding disc on the random orbit sander. Overall, it turned out fine in the end.
And that’s where I’m at now. Moving on to more paint stripping and grey painting...
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