Lathe criticism

[Pete.]

Acorn tools (Atlas 10f clone), has some nasty alloy type substance used for several gears and other parts. This is the bracket/bearing housing for the power cross feed gears, it's under the saddle so difficult to see when assembled, but well worth checking if you were to buy one. This one is cracked right through and falling to bits. I've started machining a new one, but lost interest a while ago. With the arrival of a new milling machine in the next few weeks, I will be back on this project.

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Zamak. Sod all you can do with it when it crumbles. 'Orrible stuff.

 

[Turbo]

Myford ML7
Oil nipple for the back gear that's impossible to reach. Likewise the socket head screw for releasing the back gear.
Stupid drip feed oilers that are impossible to regulate & don't close off fully so they always empty themselves when the lathe is not used.
The motor is positioned in exactly the right place to catch the oil flung off the chuck, the oil that has ran out of those pesky oilers overnight & gathered on the chuck!
The mixture of thread types used on the fasteners - metric, BA, unc, unf, bsf & whitworth can all be found. Nightmare for spanner sizing, even worse when sourcing spares - the parts list is useless as they seemed to use whatever they had in stock at the time!

 

[optima21]

just thinking about my little hobbymat lathe, seems like there isn't anything that annoys me about it, either I've got used to the way it works over the last 25 years, or I've modified parts of it to suit my needs.

 

[God mode restorations]

Myford ML7
Oil nipple for the back gear that's impossible to reach. Likewise the socket head screw for releasing the back gear.
Stupid drip feed oilers that are impossible to regulate & don't close off fully so they always empty themselves when the lathe is not used.
The motor is positioned in exactly the right place to catch the oil flung off the chuck, the oil that has ran out of those pesky oilers overnight & gathered on the chuck!
The mixture of thread types used on the fasteners - metric, BA, unc, unf, bsf & whitworth can all be found. Nightmare for spanner sizing, even worse when sourcing spares - the parts list is useless as they seemed to use whatever they had in stock at the time!

Why use so many different thread sizes....And I thought the parts list was one thing that made them more popular because a lot is available. Never owned one but an intresting post.

 

[zx9]

Why use so many different thread sizes....And I thought the parts list was one thing that made them more popular because a lot is available. Never owned one but an intresting post.

I suppose they were in production / evolution for so long, perhaps to a lesser extent but like a 70's or 80's car.Think Cortina or Range Rover each year of production they got new parts and as time went on the fasteners changed to reflect those commonly available, and some which were not so common like a metric thread on a AF head but that was more a Japanese thing IIRC.