Craftsman lathe

Good day, Everyone,

I have a question regarding my Chester Craftsman belt driven lathe as described below :

There is a 3 step pully mounted on the main spindle ,driven by a belt from a rear mounted shaft. This pully can be engaged by means of a spring loaded pin in order to provide direct drive speeds .The gearwheel seems to be keyed to the spindle, nothing wrong there.

What I do not understand is that when backgear is to be engaged, the spring pin is disengaged and another smaller gearwheel, to the lefthand end of the spindle is engaged to provide low gears. This also, I can understand, but since the 3 step pully does not appear to be keyed to the spindle, but can rotate freely, how is the drive transmitted ?

I suspect that the pully should be keyed or has become broken or missing.

At the moment it seems to be more of a friction drive, which cannot be right.

I am not looking forward to stripping down the whole spindle to find out !

Does anyone know, should it be keyed to the spindle ?

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but it has me puzzled.

Any advice much appreciated.

PS Machine seems to be working OK, but it just don't seem right.

I forgot to add there is a tapped hole in the said pully, fitted with a pointed grub screw, as if intended to locate in a dimple on the spindle. I tried tightening this ,but it had no effect.

Here is an image of my Warco BH600G which is the same as the Craftsman.

As you say the drive comes in on the pulley which is free to rotate on the spindle. The small gear to the left of the pulley is attached to the pulley. The small gear drives the large back gear which is fixed to the lay shaft. The lay shaft drives the small back gear which is engaged with the spindle bull wheel. The bull wheel is fixed to the spindle.

Hope that helps,

Adrian

Edited By AdrianR on 30/07/2019 14:15:28

Thank you Adrian, that is exactly the arrangement on my lathe, so it appears there is nothing wrong there.

Any idea what that small screw in the puppy is for, perhaps an oil hole ?. That,s what I used it for, buy why a pointed screw ? Who knows !

Again ,thank you for your speedy reply and I see you use link belts !

If and when my belts were out, I will replace with the same. The thought of stripping everything out just to replace belts !!!!!!!?

That should read pully not puppy ! That,s what old age does for you !

Yeup, it is for oiling the pulley spindle.

The best manual for our lathes is from Grizzly for the G9249 it is how a manual should be for a £2500 lathe.

As an Aside, my BL12-24 ( a similar machine) began to show signs of belt slip, but for no obvious reason. (With the Headstock cover open, the machine will not run )

The belt tensioning lever is mounted on a spindle which carries a short lever, inside the Headstock, which links to the countershaft, to swing to it, tension the belt.

The short internal lever was not firmly fixed to the spindle. Having deepened the dimple in the spindle, for the grubscrew in the short lever, the problem was fixed!

Howard

It shouldn’t even read pully, either! Should be an ‘e’ in there.

Forum seems to be going to the (cats and) dogs this afternoon - what with Howard’s ‘rusty cats’ on the door seal thread.

I've been infected by two viruses,

Fat Fingers and Anno Domini. The latter is especially dangerous, since it sneaks up on you

Howard