Warco Mini Lathe

Similar, these are the plates with the screws and jack screws. Never had the need to touch the plate on my 280.

I would be inclined to try and get it working better before buying anything else. You could buy something bigger and dearer only to find that it too has problems, the experience in fixing it or at least improving the problem will be a skill you have acquired to take with you when you buy other machinery. I have had to make several modifications and adjustments to my Chester DB10 to get it to turn truly parallel and give a good finish. Even now I am thinking of buying or making a better tool post mounting arrangement as this is now the weakest link in it. Once that's done I will look at upgrading the motor.

Good luck.

Thankfully, there are others on the forum willing to be a little more helpfull.

Tell me Bob, do you have a lot of friends ?

Now then lads play nicely!!

I have had a much larger response than I had ever expected with varying suggestions.

I have now removed the little plates and rubber swarf scrapers and the problem is more apparent.

Looking from the front the right hand end of the saddle is riding on the lower edge of the angular part but on the left end it is riding on the top and as the flat top is wider than the groove at the top of the slope it jams when adjusted as carefully as possible with the grub screws wound out.

The reason I have discovered for the worst part of the rocking and I hang my head in shame is because I fitted a DRO sensor and thought wrongly I had it clear of the bed now that has been removed its better but not good so its a new saddle from ARC for £19 ish as there is a bow in it where the clamp plate goes.

Once I have this I will update.

Many thanks to all who responded.

Jason are you sure your WM280 has these gib adjusting screws, that diagram you show is for the mini lathes which does have these. I didn't think the WM240, WM250 & WM280 lathes had these gibs & adjusting screws under the saddle. They certainly didn't have any adjusters on these lathes the last time i was in Warco's showroom a few months ago, they also don't show these gibs & adjusters in the Warco parts manual for these machines ?

FWIW google "mini lathe tapered gibs". I made and fitted tapered saddle gibs some eight or ten years ago, and it made a huge difference. Mine were more or less i.a.w. "bogstandards" method.

No doubt older (I almost wrote "...and wiser"  heads will comment about Chinese quality etc etc but sometimes you just have to go with what you have.

cheers

Bill

Edited By Bill Pudney on 23/06/2019 04:55:12

Martin, that was meant as a reply to Chris who mentioned his 280, to show hime the Mini-lathe plates are different

Hi Peter,

just read this. I would suggest that if you want a new saddle, consider buying it from Warco as the SIEG saddles are designed for SIEG machines, and probability of them fitting your machine are low. Also, things like these are not retro fit and probably will require some scraping, even after you get a saddle from Warco.

Ketan at ARC

Well my WM250 certainly has a rear gib strip with five adjusting screws and locknuts and I can verify that they are somewhat awkward to adjust. The photo below is at a very strange angle but you can see the gib and the screws.

There are also guide blocks at the front of the saddle but these have no adjustment, I tightened mine up by rubbing the top edge of the blocks on wet and dry. The right hand front block also forms part of the rudimentary saddle clamp and the whole thing was left loose to enable it to move when tightened with the clamp screw on top of the saddle. I modified the clamp arrangement see My Web Page and ended up with a working saddle clamp and a well fitted front guide.

John

Edited By Journeyman on 23/06/2019 09:48:10

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Barrie

It certainly is, it is certainly a very impressive little machine & very accurate indeed. Adjustments are so easy with the tapered gibs on both the saddle & cross slide. You are able to eliminate any movement to such fine amounts + factoring in back lash on the cross slide/leadscrew & saddle/leadscrew can also be reduced to around .0015" - .0020". The finish on the material is unbelievable straight of the tool with no polishing. You can take cuts down to a couple of tenths of a thou if you wish, just out of interest & not something i would normally do i wondered just how much it would remove on a piece of 1/2" diam mild steel with the cheap Banggood carbide inserts that i use. I got up to a 3mm depth of cut ( 6mm off diameter) & it done it ok. So stopped there.

I spoke to Warco this morning about whether there were adjustment gibs & screws on the saddles on there current WM180, 240 & 250 lathes, they confirmed there is none on these lathes. If you have a Warco lathe with this facility on the saddle it was probably made either by a different factory that supplied Warco in the past or the generic design of these lathes which all seem to be the same machines supplied by different sellers around the world was changed to not have the saddle gib & adjustering screws. Its obviously cheaper to produce a machine without this extra facility.