- Joined
- Feb 13, 2017
- Messages
- 2,138
Craftsman lathes are basicly Atlas machines with a few modifications for sale by Sears. Getting gibs set properly is a long, frustrating, process. One issue that hasn't been brought up is dovetail wear. The dovetails will wear from excessive use, lack of lubrication, or a number of other problems. My C'man 101.27440 came from a cotton mill and wasn't used widely, only for maintenance. I was fortunate there, I have seen dovetails that were so badly worn that they had a visible curve. Dovetails tend to wear where the cross slide (or compound) is regularly used at one setting. In production use, this could be a serious problem.
A tell-tale sign would be to find some point, usually near the middle, where things are loosest and snug the gibs. When you leave that point, in either direction, things get very tight very fast. That is a sign of worn dovetails. . . Dovetails can be recut on a mill, or ground true. Either one is a tedious process, but not that difficult. The only after-effect is that gibs must be a little thicker to allow for removed material.
A C'man machine would not likely have shown up in production work, so that point is usually overlooked. But a casual user that had poor maintenance practices and worked in a small area could have caused such damage. It's worth following up on. One "git by" solution would be to set the gibs loose and a setscrew with a knob to tighten things before making a cut. I have used that as a "git by", it adds some complexity but does eliminate the need to regrind anything. My current C'man machine doesn't have that problem, my experience goes waayyy back to a ship with an Atlas.
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A tell-tale sign would be to find some point, usually near the middle, where things are loosest and snug the gibs. When you leave that point, in either direction, things get very tight very fast. That is a sign of worn dovetails. . . Dovetails can be recut on a mill, or ground true. Either one is a tedious process, but not that difficult. The only after-effect is that gibs must be a little thicker to allow for removed material.
A C'man machine would not likely have shown up in production work, so that point is usually overlooked. But a casual user that had poor maintenance practices and worked in a small area could have caused such damage. It's worth following up on. One "git by" solution would be to set the gibs loose and a setscrew with a knob to tighten things before making a cut. I have used that as a "git by", it adds some complexity but does eliminate the need to regrind anything. My current C'man machine doesn't have that problem, my experience goes waayyy back to a ship with an Atlas.
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