What I find strange is that I have a lot of older King stuff in my hobby shop that was bought years ago and even though they are not the best quality (except for maybe the 6" jointer - I love that thing) I have not had any issues with any of them. The list includes; 17" drill press, 6" jointer, 14" vertical bandsaw, small wood lathe, 6" combo belt / disc sander, dual bag dust collector and probably some other stuff I can't think of right now. But all of the stuff I bought within the last year (10 x 22 metal lathe, PDM30 Mill drill and now the 1236ML) has had quality issues, some of them major. When I was chasing the motor issues with the PDM 30 I was in frequent contact with the King head office, I believe my contact was the customer service manager, and I told him the same thing. Maybe their supplier has changed his supplier. In any case, the quality has descended and they should do something about it.
The issues I have with the 1236 are numerous small ones that may become big ones over time. When I first uncrated it I checked for major flaws before starting to clean the shipping gunk off it. I turned the chuck by hand in every gear combo and quickly found that it would occasionally jam when it was in gear selector position "1". This was severe enough that I called the dealer and told him before I even bothered to put power to it. I was ready to return it. He suggested just going through the break in process and see if it would "work itself in". Before doing that, my curiosity got the best of me and I pulled the cover off the gear head and could see that there were 2 gears that were rubbing together if the gear selector was pushed all the way to the high side of "1". I could see that if the selector was moved a little to the left then those gears would not rub. There should be a detent or something to prevent this from happening but there is not. I also noted there was a lot of metal shavings in the gear head (and I have not even run this thing yet). So I took a magnet and went around the entire inside of the gear head to remove as much as possible before adding the oil. I then ran it through the break in procedure. Afterwards I opened the gear head again and there was more metal shavings in it. I started looking for other issues while I had the cover off and noted some minor ones and one that I thought could be major real fast. The lead / feed selector for the carriage drive direction has 2 positions; left for reverse carriage movement and right for normal. When it is moved to the left the mesh is fine, however when the lever is moved to the right the drive gears only mesh across about 1/3 of their width. In order to get the 2 gears to mesh across the full tooth width the selector has to be moved left of the full right position. Again there should be something like a detent to ensure the gears are fully meshed. The natural position is to have the selector all the way to the right.
Here are some pics of what it looked like after the break in.
Metal filings after break in. Note that I removed as much metal filings as possible, with a magnet, before the break in run.
Pic of the rubbing on one side of the low gear. There are also some deeper score marks that don't show up in this pic.
This is the biggest concern. A gear that only partially meshes when the selector is where you would expect to put it. Note the position of the gear collar on the shaft vs the next pic.
This is where the gear should sit. The only way to select this is to do what I did. Pull the cover, find the right position and make marks on the gear selector then on the casing to align the 2 in this position. Note the gap between the gear collar and the shaft. There should be a spacer of some kind here to prevent this.
Then I discover the saddle / carriage lock for my lathe is missing. No way to lock the saddle to the ways. Showed the dealer and he couldn't believe it. While trying to figure out why my lathe doesn't have one and it is shown on the King website parts diagram, I discover that the lathe I just bought was made in Jan 2015, almost 2 years ago. My dealer didn't have one in stock and didn't want to get a display one from one of the other stores, since display ones are often missing parts or have been abused by customers, so he ordered one direct from the King head office. They ship me a 2 year old machine that doesn't have a saddle lock. There is more but I'm tired of typing and I'm slow at it.
Could you imagine the hell (and costs) I would be going through if I bought a machine from a dealer that wasn't concerned about after sales support or if I had to pay for shipping to a service center across the country or worse yet, out of the country.
I'm very glad I have 6 months to decide whether I want my money back or not. The sad thing is that I still want a lathe of this size and if I can't find a better quality one in this price range I may have to do without.
EDIT: I forgot to add that there are things I like about this lathe. It is very robust compared to the 1022 and as you noted the cross slide, compound and carriage movements are smooth. The 1022 couldn't part because it would chatter, vibrate and jam but this lathe is solid. The 3 jaw chuck also repeats well. There may be more positives (or negatives) but I haven't had time to find out yet.
I bought this lathe a few weeks ago and since then I have been out of country for 10 days and now my wife is in the hospital. Further evaluation will have to wait.