Warco GH600

Most of these lathes have grown out of older western designs from back when a bit of oil leaking was not a problem.

Centecs for example have one proper shaft oil seal on the 3 shaft gearbox and none in the vertical head so they weep and make a mess.

It would be a mistake to bin off a lathe that clearly suits your needs, space and pocket and pick another that may have unknown issues till you get it home.

Better the devil you know

Had my GH600 for a little over a year now. A few silly faults , easily corrected . No oil leaks

Brian

Iv had my GH600 since January, it’s used daily and it does leak oil. I have only topped up the oil up twice since January so it’s not a huge problem.

Tboy did send me his write up on solving the leak, I intend to do this when I have time.

cheers

What oil are you using Lee? I think I'm just going to buy some from Warco, but I'm open to other suggestions

Hello Jed

Warco kindly sent be a couple of litres when I first complained about the leak.

Hello Dave

The silly issues are a pain in the whatsit but if it was too much to bear and if most of us weren't engineers and enjoy a challenge, I'd probably would have returned it.

However, it is a good lathe as far as I know and enjoy it too much to allow it to be anything more than a minor "challenge" here and there.

The Warco oil is most likely to be an ISO32 or an ISO68 industrial gear oil.

I would say that the lead screw gearbox may engage gear slightly better with the ISO68 oil as one of the shafts is free to spin when the gears are in between engagement - this can make its slightly more tricky to get it engaged as when you turn the chuck to giggle things about the free shaft turns with it just from the side force friction between the gears and the teeth stay miss-aligned. A little extra drag from oil would do no harm at improving this. I probably haven't described that well and I'm not suggesting any fault with the way it is - a little bit of a experience and you get the hang of changing the gears.

The main gearbox on my machine seems to drag a little when cold if you use the high speeds (1500/2000). Be interesting how it run with ISO32.

Grizzly do spec oil in their manuals and recommend ISO32 in the main gearbox and ISO68 in the lead screw gearbox on their smaller GH machines.

Any recommendation for lead screw lubrication? I have thoroughly cleaned mine and from the factory it was well plastered in red grease around the half nut area. Is red grease a good lubrication for the half nut and worm gear?

I would normally have chosen on oil for the lead screw but i am a little unsure with the worm gear.

Dan

Jed,

I am using shell tellus 32. I buy this in 20 litre drums for my day to day work anyway.

some recommend 68 oil in gear head and 32 in apron etc. I just use 32 for everything. Keep it simple.

thanks

Daniel and Lee, thanks for that information, I'm off to read about oils

Jed, Daniel, Dave, Brian, Lee, TriumphBoy, thanks for sharing your views and experience. Yes, the GH600 seems to suit all my needs much better than anything else I've seen. My fervour is re-ignited!

Hopefully I'll be able to share in this thread soon as an owner - will let you know,

All the best

Hi All, New guy here.

Thanks for all the valuable info in this thread.

I'm wondering if one of you GH600 owners could give me a height measurement from the machine, drip tray to switch gear as I have a space on my workbench which has a 580mm height clearance between the bench top and the cupboards above and I want to know it it will fit.

Many thanks.

Steve

Hi Steve.

Distance from drip tray to top of switch gear is 500mm .

I used the Warco headstock oil for everything when I changed the oil .

Brian

Brilliant, thanks Brian

Steve . I have sent you a PM

Brian

Hoping someone can help me out.

I have a GH600 on order from Warco, should be here end of November apparently. I'm looking to order a Multifix QCTP probably from Create as they seem to get good feedback. I'd like to get one ordered and need to work out the correct size...

I need the following info please:

1) How many millimeters is the distance between the surface of the top compound slide and the middle of the chuck?
2) How wide is the top compound slide?

Thanks in advance

Edited By Steve Lawes on 10/11/2020 12:21:26

Hi Steve

Distance from top of compound slide to c/l of chuck is 23mm

Compound slide is 80mm wide ,

PM me if you want any more info .

Brian

Thanks Brian

I suppose an oil change is now long overdue.

Anything I need to watch out for, or is it fairly straight forward?

No problems but it is VERY messy . Drain plugs for Apron and Gear Box are very close to the tray .

Short hex key undoes them but catching the oil is . very messy . For the gear box I built a dam with rag to isolate the left hand end of the tray and drilled a 12mm hole in the corner of the tray. I was then able to catch ( most ! ) of the oil in a container . For the Apron I used a shallow tray to catch the oil managing to get the drain plug back before the tray over flowed . The headstock drain is behind the gear train . I made up a cardboard chute to direct the oil down into a container . Again it caught most of it !

I am seriously considering putting a new drain plug for the gearbox on the front face although I am not sure that this will come out low enough to get all of the old oil out. I have to say that the oil I drained out was , in all cases , clean with no sign of anything nasty , A thin wire with a magnet on its outer end failed to pick up anything either although it worked well when tried with steel filing on the bench .

I am also considering fitting magnets to the drain plugs but this is a long way down the need to do list ..

Brian C

Hello Brian, How are you?

Since my post I had a look through the 'manual'. I had forgotten how bad it is.

It does not detail where the fill and drain plugs are, or how much oil is required.

Before I do anything I will post some pictures to confirm what I think the plugs.

I will speak to Warco before I order the new oil from them, but in the meantime, do you know how much oil I will need?

Ta.