Warco 290V comments n feedback

My lathe is free standing; once I had the cabinets replaced I had previously laid a self levelling concrete pad on which I placed a thin rubber mat under ea. foot & levelled from that. I used a combination of my small level ( in previous pic.   ) plus digital level to get as best as I could . I used a combination of a pair of 16mm HSS tool steel blanks & a 12mm blank on the front & back shears to reveal a zero twist & a 0.1* rise at the tail stock end, which doesn't overly worry me as long as I have the zero twist which is more important. The hold down bolts at the Tail / headstock ends were only just nipped up ....

Headstock reading.. zero twist..

Tailstock reading.. zero twist..

Front shear .. 0.1* rise at Tailstock..

Rear shear.. 0.1* rise at Tailstock end..

Test piece after levelling & tailstock alignment check.. 0.00045" difference.. less than 1/2 thou' over 6".. good enough for me..

George.

Edited By mechman48 on 19/12/2014 12:04:20

Edited By mechman48 on 19/12/2014 12:05:26

Very nice pics George!

What size tools are people using with the WM290? I got some nice Glanze 12mm tools for Christmas (Warco told me 12mm was right when I bought the machine), but they need a lot of shimming up in the stock tool post to get anywhere near centre height.

After just 5 mins of test cuts, I'm hating the stock tool post enough to want to splash out on a quick-change. Do I just go for the Warco one, or make/modify another one?

Cheers,

Joe.

Here's one I made earlier

The heresy is - I haven't got round to fixing my mini-lathe down to the bench yet...

Neil

<edit> That's 5.5" at the top, so not as good as George is getting, but not far off.

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 02/01/2015 12:57:29

Hi Neil,

Was yours a between centres turning test as the end spigots don't seem long enough to hold in a chuck?

Tony

> Was yours a between centres turning test as the end spigots don't seem long enough to hold in a chuck?

Yep.

Neil

You are not really meant to use a chuck for a BETWEEN CENTRES test bar

Should have a trued ctr in the spindle and drive it with a dog.

Edited By JasonB on 02/01/2015 14:03:48

Cheers John - that's the sort I was after - look to be about £100 odd for one with a few holders. I'm very impressed by your DIY holders - since I have a mill too, I really have no excuse not to have a go!

> Should have a trued ctr in the spindle and drive it with a dog.

Yep, that's what I did!

Neil

<edit>  actually it was a small clamp as I haven't got any dogs... at least not the fur-less kind.

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 02/01/2015 19:08:43

My two pence worth is: In my experience all heavy plant with revolving parts is bolted down on pads which help level the tool.

The reason for all this expense is to do with wear and tare on the bearings within the machine. As running bearings meant to be at 90 degrees with a load at greater or lesser than square and level will put undue ware on said bearings (centrifugal force being what it is) and so you can do your machine a great service to get her fair and true. It will pay you back in the long run. (unless you use original bearings in a Chinese Lathe of course.)

Also if you don't bolt down be careful to get the job balanced as far as you can in the four jaw or face plate as you could have the whole lot walk off the bench.

Having said the above I haven't bolted my mini lathe down but it is level and I'm happy with the results since I changed bearings.

Jesse.

Jesse I don't really see how bolting down or leveling a lathe for that matter will affect the bearings. Its very unlikely that any adjustments will move the actual headstock which contains the bearings and spindle as these are quite rigid parts. Any leveling will be limited to getting the bed true to the headstock.

J B: As I said perhaps not too clearly this was my experience in watching large plant sighted in factories and so on. Perhaps I got the wrong impression but why then go to all the bother of levelling everything up and bolting it down. I think it would be hard to get a large Lumsden grinder to walk the floor on account of it's weight. They are massive in construction and so one assumes they are stiff enough not to warp or flex during operating. There again a bearing out of true to the rotation of a mass must surely be under loads which it isn't designed for.

The only problem we ever had with one was to renew the main spindle bearing. However that could have just been normal wear and tear.

I'll see if there's any better explanations on the net but you have got me wondering now.

EDIT: There's a wiki on the problems caused by not levelling machinery.

Then again I remember a little about gyroscopic action from school as well, especially a hand held gyro.

Jesse.

Edited By Jesse Hancock 1 on 27/01/2015 19:57:42