Lead screw mods.

I really wonder if that was intentionally designed that way or if the light weight part just ended up working that way you really dont see that on any other lathe?
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The following is an excerpt from the Manual of Lathe Operation circa 1937:

The lead screw bearing on the tail end of the lathe serves as a "safety valve" protecting the lead screw. One of the most common accidents on the lathe is letting the power feed drive the carriage into the headstock or tailstock. Serious and expensive results from such an accident are prevented by the light construction of this bearing. The lead screw simply forces itself out and breaks the bearing casting. In this way the light bearing prevents what would otherwise be an expensive breakdown.

It would appear to me that the engineers in the early 90's intentionally designed it that way. I suspect that many of those shops turning out those 'improved' or 'stronger' bearings, are not aware of the intended design feature.

Terry
 
It is amazing they come up with that I dont believe I have seen that on any other lathe. I guess if you watch what your doing and not hit the chuck or headstock you should be fine.
 
I can only speculate that perhaps they had the hobbyist in mind when they designed it. Thinking, how can we spare the guy will very little money a big headache after he buys our product. Whereas in larger production lathes, I would guess the mindset is, the operators should be properly trained before using the equipment.

Terry
 
You can modify your leadscrew so that you can use a shear pin. In Projects In Metal Vol 1 there is an article on how to cut the leadscrew, slip a coupler ie pipe, pin one side of the coupler and shear pin on the other half. I did this years ago so that I did not have to replace the support bracket. I used an alum siding nail as the shear pin. I never had to replace the pin but luckily I did not have a crash either.
Pierre
 
That lead screw bearing was used to cut cost verses a clutch as most outher lathes have. The later model craftsman commercial and atlas had a clutch.
 
Just got off the phone with the nice folks at Clausing and the two washers and the bearing will be in the neighborhood of $100. I think I can do better for less, I guess we'll see...:dunno:
 
They are very proud of their spare parts, and most of them are priced accordingly. I was surprised, however, to find that the half-nuts were only 34.63. Those are on my list of must haves in the near future. The brass nuts for the compound and cross feed were not quite as inexpensive, 10F-19 was 76.96, and the 9-306 was 44.72. I've seen some for sale on fleabay that claim to be new, one seller in particular has a set for 58.

Terry
 
Clausing doesn't (unfortunately for us) use new equipment sales to subsidize old equipment parts prices. Parts cost what they cost. My guess is that the old equipment parts department operates close to income neutral. When the day comes that they can't do that, they'll disappear.

Robert D.
 
I'm with Robert on this one. We are lucky that Clausings still supports these lathes. Many companies dump their inventory of spares into the secondary market or worst recycles the metal into something else. The list of parts is getting smaller every few years as the old stock is used up. Eventually there will a sale out of Clausings for the remaining parts and they will be gone.

Remington purchased the Parker shotgun maker a long time ago. Later they had lost interest in servicing these old guns and sold the entire parts inventory, there were no takers at first. Ending up going to one of their employees. Fortunately said employee and his son who is still repairing these guns, can make a living at it. It is a labor of love and dedication, and one does not always get that in the service and repair field.
Pierre
 
I was actually pretty impressed with the prices, especially compared to buying them from Sears (the washers were over $30 ea.). I priced about a dozen parts and they had every single part in stock, which is pretty freaking amazing in my book, but I'm a cheapskate who likes "improving" things. My vision for this project is either a roller bearing or graphite-impregnated bushing in a steel or aluminum mount, attached with breakaway bolts, OR, I could just pay attention and not crash the carriage into anything solid! :lmao: I also thought about using a detent type system, where the lead screw would just pop out of the mount in case of a crash.
 
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