Member postings for Andrew Culverhouse

1 the lathe has been dismantled completely before, the head stock came of with ease (alen key by hand) and the bed did the same (by hand no force required).

2 the seller told me he had drained the oil in the head, as it was black and filthy (the seller had said that the oil was well looked after so this goes against the ebay add) - " It is in very good mechanical condition - headstock and gearbox oil has been kept nice and clean and all the bearings and slideways are good." - also when the head came off i noticed the oil filler was totally undone.

3 "I have been using a modern motor (which I have removed to use on a different lathe). Please assume that the motor / vairator will need refurbishing if you want to use them - but you may prefer to use a new motor instead." yet i asked him a question about the slideways being very stiff / lumpy and he then said he had never used it...

4 when the Vairator went in the van it tipped 45% and oil came poring out of it (the in side of the van has soaked up a lot of it unfortunately - this oil however was quite clean.

I still have to collect the last bits, and i do feel i over paid for it compared to others i have seen. with the info above, if i am going to service and recon it, where should i start?

And again anyone have any thoughts on my notes above?

Andrew

So just an update, i have some of the lathe home (well in my van under st Pauls london at the exact time i write this), i am missing the bed base and motor. I only got 1 hour with the seller and the lathe because of a total disaster at work which took all the rest of the weekend friday night and today until now.

its obviously paid for, i only had a short piece of Titanium for stock to play with so i used a dti to measure the outer edge of movement of both the chuck and the stock. both came back with the same figure, there is 0.010" movement when rotated at one side (if that makes any sense), the seller said that that might just be that the chuck needed re-seating. whether i screwed up or not, it didn't seem like a huge amount of variance, their is little to no rust so i paid for it.

Afterwards the flowing came out/was apparent (next post)

To be fair, the issue isn't being able to drop out of the purchase, I do want the lathe, it’s not like this is a purchase I've gone sour on, and if it’s as described then that's perfect. I think so far on eBay purchases I have lost £3000 through fraud or things not being as described and the fault only being hidden and then found after the fact over the last 15 years so now I do my research (unfortunately in this case after the fact).

What I came here for was not a way out, but a way to check that its ok and as described, I will be using a VFD so the motor and variator are not going to be used anyway (its either going to be running on 110v/60hz or 220/60hz long term anyway so the motor most likely cannot be used). And the rest of the description is perfect for what I want, even that (maybe) it can be broken down on site – with help. But if I am (was) going to break it down, I needed to know how to, I also needed to know what to look for in respect of condition to ensure the description of the units condition is what I am paying for– which is meant to be very good.

For those of you every buying like this, if the item is not as described then you can walk away, small courts in expensive and if you’re in the right the other person will just be wasting their money, unfortunately even at this amount and even with actual fraud (I double paid someone on ebay £800 in cash and via bank transfer for a car and never got one of the payments back (thanks HSBC)) it’s often not worth going after someone. Now with who I work for I can get my legal fees paid for, but who wants to do that? (as well as the fact once broken down, who is to say it wasn’t my fault that whatever is wrong and with the weight of it, it likely could be).

Notice the maybe and was above, I hadn’t thought of something which has been pointed out by you all (thank you), taking the head off it will change its alignment, as will the bed, so I will have to see if we can make it light enough to load/unload without taking those off, as there is no point in ruining it just to move it, if it’s really not possible to load / unload it with what we have available to us, I will apologise (and pay for it of cause) and hire something that will allow it to be loaded, or even pay for pallet shipping.

Thanks for the feedback from you all, and I will of cause let you all know how it goes. And if the seller ever reads this, sorry, if you had been ripped off as often as me I am sure you would understand, and some of the feedback above should get us both back to our wives quicker tomorrow!

Andrew

You are right I was talking about the dials. I didn’t realise though that there were imperial and metric gearboxes, I thought that the one did both with only certain threads avalable? That for me may be another deal breaker, everything I do is metric, imperial will be little to no use to me.>>

Andrew.

Thanks for the responses, I've gone back to a few of you in PM on offers of help.

Bill you found the right item, I haven't linked it because the seller has been very pleasant to deal with and I don’t want to damage his credibility. The fact is he told me he has 2 is of his own free will, he has been very polite and accommodating. Unfortunately I work in IT for a law firm and deal with their fraud issues, as I did for a national transport company before and for two industrial parts manufacturers. And I would be lying if I said I hadn’t see a parts swap happen before on a large item like this. Hell I have even see a £100k + part superglued together so that it could be shipped to pretend that it broke on route. With these sorts of tricks and others changing the oil on a car before you sell it/ having the engine warm before you test it etc. (which I have fallen for before) it’s very easy to see more than the story you are being told and because of this I thought I’d reach out.

Durhambuilder the location of the serial numbers is very useful thank you for that I will check them first.

What I know of the Chipmaster is:

It’s a metric and imperial model (the plastic gears internal to the metric driven side are damaged though – this likely will be the first thing I try and fix as I am more interested in metric than imperial).

It’s a quite late model. The variator has the welded formed mount and is vee belt to the clutch. This should also make it a hardened bed (something I would want).

It also has the taper cutting unit with it which has got some damage but apparently doesn’t affect use, and can be repaired (which I may be able to do as I have a Fronius 2200 magicwave tig welder).

From what I can see all the parts are there but the drive side is slightly different to all the photos of the Chipmaster I have found, I am going to insist that we find every part and fastener before we break it down. I am breaking it down because I have to move it with a van and no engine hoist at the other end! And even with ramps and being 6ft 9” tall I can see that being a challenge! And then I am due to move house shortly too so will need to move it again by hand for a long distance transport.

Anyway the big day is tomorrow so hopefully with your guidance it will all go well and this Chipmaster will be moving from the Newbury area to Redditch Worcestershire.

Many thanks

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Culverhouse on 10/08/2018 10:31:08

Hi, my first post. I’ve had a moment where your heart sinks and may have realized something.

So I’ve agreed to buy a Colchester Chipmaster Lathe for £800 (ebay) which has already had its motor and gearbox and some of the running gear removed (it’s meant to all be there – I will have to break it down to move it anyway). This was done I was told because the Lathe was being repainted by its current owner who now doesn’t have the time so is selling it. It’s coming with no extra’s at all, no quick change toolpost, and one chuck.

It now turns out though I found out the owner has another Chipmaster and there is a good chance that the motor variator etc. have been swapped onto his other machine with him cherry picking all the extras and the best motor/ variator for his other lathe and just hasn’t bothered putting it back together after stripping the parts off it.

Now annoyingly the guy is 100 miles away so viewing wasn’t an option and I will have to check it and pay for it, then move it the same day – and its not going to be running so other than moving things I hand I cannot test the running gear.

Apart from agreeing that I might be very stupid, what do I need to / can I check on it, to make sure that I am not buying a lemon? I do plan to switch to a VFD and new motor anyway so I don’t care about the old motor or the variator, I also intend to paint the whole thing and then eventually its going to be moving with me to the USA (I am in the UK now). I do have access to test dial indicators and mounts so I can check for how true it runs etc if I can be told what to look for.

Anyway thanks for the help!

Andrew