Touchdown, new toy has arrived. Warco WM290V

Jason B, Thanks very much for your help, it was indeed the gear cover micro switch not aligning properly. All up and running now. I still need to find out what size tooling I can use on this lathe, again the manual doesn't state the capacity.

Regards, Mike.

Jason B, Thanks very much for your help, it was indeed the gear cover micro switch not aligning properly. All up and running now. I still need to find out what size tooling I can use on this lathe, again the manual doesn't state the capacity.

Regards, Mike.

If I were to be starting over again it would be a no-brainer to buy this, or a similar model of lathe, so I am a little envious of your shiny new purchase. I have never subscribed to the notion that if a product is of 'far-eastern' origin it must be rubbish because clearly they are not as this nice new machine easily demonstrates. I think the prejudice against Chinese products has almost dissipated but it still rears its ugly head occasionally.

I shim up 10mm on my WM280. I guess it would take 12mm but that's bigger than I need. I find advantage in smaller tools for fine work - the lathe is loaded with 8mm tools at the moment. Main thing is ensuring the shank is small enough to position the cutting edge at or just below centre-height.

If the lathe was delivered strapped with steel-bands, save it! Makes good shims.

Dave

The way to measure the tool size is to put the MT4 centre into the headstock and then measure from th ebottom of the slot in the toolpost to the point of the ctr and that will give the maximum height you can fit

If using insert tools sometimes it may pay to come down a size so you can use smaller inserts which works out a bit cheaper so a 10mm sq shank would tend to take CCGT 06 but a 12mm sq shank CCGT 09. Ditto with HSS as it is a lot easier to grind the smaller sizes rather than the max and you will only really need the max shank if you have excessive tool overhang. I mostly use a mix of 8 & 10mm on my 280 which suits the work I do.

I'm using 16mm tooling on mine now but I do have a quick change toolpost and have milled all the holders out to take them.

Seems a lot more rigid and less prone to chatter with them, I do use inset tooling and take quite heavy cuts though.

Glad you have it going now.

What do you think of it? Only thing that annoys me is the controls not having a stop button, might look at adding one now it's out of warranty.

I did have to sort my steady rest out too, the adjustment threads were stripped out the first time I went to use it!!