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Wanted: Metal Lathe

I also think that the reason light oil is recommended in the inexpensive Chinese lathes is for ease of manufacture. Our hobby lathes are built to be inexpensive and simplicity is the thing here. If you look at the oil level sight glass in your headstock gearbox you will see that it is lower than your headstock bearings. Our lathes have no oil pump to 'pressure feed" these bearings...it's all splash and drip that lubes the main mechanical part of your machine...light oil will splash much more easily from gear rotation than heavy viscosity oil. All the oil that lubes your bearings is splashed from the sump to a couple of grooves and a "bearing feed" drain journal cast into the top lip of the gear box (remove the box cover, you will easily see this). All of this oil is simply splashed upwards by gear rotation, heavy oil will not "splash" as easily.

While I appreciate all the debate on suitability of oil for its quality, here it is just a specification arrived at because of "cheapness of manufacture"
 
YYCHobbyMachinist said:
Want pictures or even better video of it going down the stairs and re-assembly. Will help swaid my wife into letting me upgrade.
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Yes, I was just thinking about that. I will try to video it. Will prolly do a voice over on the video, cause Im sure its going to sound like a porn with all the grunting.
 
Downwindtracker2 said:
Would an appliance hand truck be of any help on the stairs ?
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Only if I removed the headstock. there is no good way to put it on the handtruck. Plus I would have to drain on the fluids too because it would be tipped on end and as you can see the oil topic is causing a fantastic debate but left me scratching my head a bit.
 
I'm retired now, but I had a rep as a creative rigger. I see some heavy rope and plywood in your future. You use heavy rope because those three guys holding back need some thing to really hang on to.
 
Yes, I am sure it is possible. Just not my skill and we are at the point now where we can just brute force our way through it..... i hope....
 
Anther wrinkle I cant quite get my head around is AW. It stands for Anti Wear. But many descriptions don't really elaborate on what ingredients give it AW properties. What am I lacking in a virgin oil ISO-32 that an AW-32 will give me?

Also, I'm not sure if this pertains to AW's or hydraulic oils in general but some are synthetic, some are non synthetic, some don't say. I haven't checked but suspect synthetics probably cost more & probably overkill for Asian hobby gear trains. I'll probably stick with one brand / type for compatibility & simplicity. Heck if you have a couple litres of ISO-32 and ISO-68, you could proportionately blend & tune your viscosity for 15.7532 degC LOL

https://www.valvoline.com/our-products/heavy-duty/valvoline-aw-46-synthetic-hydraulic-oil
https://www.napacanada.com/en/p/PFQPFAW68RPL
https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/motomaster-hydraulic-oil-5-l-0280205p.html#srp
https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/certified-hydraulic-oil-18-9-l-0280212p.html#srp
 
Here it is in its stripped down state

IMG_1425.JPG
 
Your lathe might be different than mine but have a looksee for any set screws on the underside of the headstock casting lip (red arrows). If present, what these are for is fine tuning the spindle axis relative to the bed way (orange line). Worded another way, the headstock is capable of a teeny amount of rotation looking down on the machine. The set screws jack & lock the correct position. So presuming they have to be loosened in order to detach head, it is super important to set the lathe up properly upon re-assembly. Otherwise you will be cutting a taper with your carriage traversing down the ways & wondering WTF is up. Then everyone will be telling you level your lathe which really means twist the bed by jacking the stand feet and somebodies dads method and yada-yada. Those things may need to be addressed too, but if the head is yawed relative to ways, that issue trumps everything.

You may have a lathe where nothing is there. If so, you get what you get alignment wise. If set screws or shims are present, I cant tell you how to disassemble & preserve the setting, but just pay attention here. When the time comes to re-assemble, I can tell you how to check it & its important that you do.
 

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Oh, a dainty one. Just don't ask me to help lift. ;) I would cover the stairs with sheets of plywood so you have a slide. I would join the plywood end to end with a couple of 2' blocks of 2x4 screwed to the top. Or even all the way down to make a track, allowing space for your crew to come down for the lift on to your PA movers dolly. Anchor the plywood so it won't slide on the floor. Use one guy at the bottom to guide and three to slow . Piece of p***, he said, safely from across the mountains.
 
The headstock and all adjustment screws have been left in place so the alignment currently should stay preserved.
BUT, if I have to remove the headstock or re-align the head stock I am not too worried about it. I got a few people in my circle that have done it before and can help me out.
 
My hands were full so very few pictures but just one strapping lad with a place to plant his feet could lower that unit down a stair slide, i used a dolly with a 1” tow strap from PA and leaked a bit of fluid but topped it off later,
 
I did much research on oils as well when deciding on what oil to use in the lathe that I was rebuilding that replaced the lathe that is the subject of this topic. Most of that rebuild process is posted in thread on this site.

I agree with most of what has been said on oils, but one thing I see missing is a mention of detergent in oils. From my understanding the detergent additives in oils are designed to keep contaminants suspended in the oil. Such oils should only be used in oiling systems that have a pump and a filter (like many engines). The contaminants stay in suspension and are removed by the filter.

Non-detergent oils like the hydraulic fluid that has been discussed here are designed to let the contaminants fall to the bottom of the tank or main gearbox where gravity (and maybe some magnets) helps them stay put.

The bottom line is don't use a detergent-containing oil like engine oil, or automatic transmission fluid in something like a lathe that does not have a pump and an oil filter.

An aside: It is sad to see my old lathe all naked and disassembled. Please get it back together and post some completed pictures of it in good health again! It made lots of happy chips for me. I'm sure it will for you too.
 
JohnW, would R&O labelled oil (rust and oxidization) be considered additives?


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JohnW said:
I did much research on oils as well when deciding on what oil to use in the lathe that I was rebuilding that replaced the lathe that is the subject of this topic. Most of that rebuild process is posted in thread on this site.

I agree with most of what has been said on oils, but one thing I see missing is a mention of detergent in oils. From my understanding the detergent additives in oils are designed to keep contaminants suspended in the oil. Such oils should only be used in oiling systems that have a pump and a filter (like many engines). The contaminants stay in suspension and are removed by the filter.

Non-detergent oils like the hydraulic fluid that has been discussed here are designed to let the contaminants fall to the bottom of the tank or main gearbox where gravity (and maybe some magnets) helps them stay put.

The bottom line is don't use a detergent-containing oil like engine oil, or automatic transmission fluid in something like a lathe that does not have a pump and an oil filter.

An aside: It is sad to see my old lathe all naked and disassembled. Please get it back together and post some completed pictures of it in good health again! It made lots of happy chips for me. I'm sure it will for you too.
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Thanks for the post John.

I will for sure be posting pictures of it put back together on its new stand in its new home ;)
What oil is currently in the headstock, apron and gearbox?
 
We used R&O oils in gear boxes with worm and brass wheel. Hydraulic oils have additives that do cause skin irritation and maybe cancer in California .
 
One thing I haven't seen mentioned here on the move being made, I've moved my lathe twice and a steel or wood cross-piece should be bolted to one of the bed base's. The headstock weight and the narrowness of the base feet makes the thing quite a bit top-heavy and will want to roll on you very easily...and if my opinion is worth anything I wouldn't remove the headstock from its original alignment. I discovered when I removed just the gap-bed section from my lathe that Chinese forgings do not fit back together absolutely perfectly no matter how diligent you are trying to retain the original settings.
 
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