Upgrading My PM 1236-T Lathe

Well it has been a few days... once again... life just seems to be getting in the way. I haven’t really made any new ground since the last post other than to fix this really annoying issue I found.

The quill lock on the tailstock had only about 15 degrees of movement to lock. It seemed really annoying because the lever was always hidden behind the tailstock body itself, and as soon as you start to move the lock lever it almost instantly gets tight.
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I thought that if I took 1/3rd rotation off the thread start that it would reposition the end point. That was true as far as completely bottoming the thread on the brass lock itself. Here you can see the 1/3rd rotation, and how the brass nut had moved further after removing the thread:
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It turned out that that didn’t end up being the limiting factor. Instead the shoulder of the bolt face is what needed turned down:
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Now I have a much more reasonable travel of the quill lock lever. It doesn’t lock up instantly as soon as you touch it, and it ends in a more appropriate position that just “feels” more useful.
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Where did you get those neat little “pyramids” that hold up the tail stock when you were painting it?
 
Yep- Roger is right. Just some simple, plastic, paint pyramids.
 
Paint pyramids- who woulda thought? Let's hope a shipment of those never falls off the truck in front of me on the freeway LOL
 
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Update time.

Let's start with the final paint stripping. The apron and carriage were the last to need the treatment.
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Masking the carriage was super tedious! Technically I didn't need to paint the bottom side, but when in Rome...
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Next up was the apron oil sight. I decided to upgrade it to a glass oil sight similar to what David had used on his headstock. In fact, I also upgraded the headstock one as well. The one in the headstock did not need any machining to fit, but the apron did. This was a good excuse to use my new Bridgeport #2 boring head for the first time.

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After that I noticed that the oil drip pan that I made for under the gearbox was a bit too deep to fit in place when the lathe was sitting properly in position in the chip pan. So I machined off the nose and welded on a new front at the same angle as the chip pan. This was then smoothed with JB Kwik and painted.
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And now, the lathe is basically just as it was when it was delivered 65 days ago (sans electronics) except now it's the proper color. Ha! And wow- where did time go!?
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Although, to be fair- I did apparently lose the two knobs for the spindle speed selectors, and I seem to have gained these two M5 x 35 bolts that I can't place. haha!
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What's next? I'm not sure. Because it's so expensive, the electronics are probably not next. I also have some plans in mind for some custom nameplates, but I think those can happen any time. I suppose I will probably start working on the DRO install since I have everything for it on hand.
 
Oh I forgot about this. When reassembling, I found the compound screw to be really tight. It wasn't the gib but rather the screw itself. When I looked into it, I found some serious burrs on the threads of the brass nut.
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I ground this down with a dremel and the screw is MUCH more smooth now. That said, I feel like I have to have the gib too loose for the compound to feel smooth; I'm thinking about finding a scraping service to address this. Also note that you can see some cross hatching on the actual threads of that brass nut. I don't think it's affecting much, but it might account for some of the initial issues. These were there when I took it apart (I didn't cause these).
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Speaking of issues, I also found that the threading lever was really difficult to engage/disengage. When I inspected this, I found that the gib holding the half nuts in place was so tight it was creating a LOT of drag. No amount of oil that I pumped in there was loosing it up. I ended up taking these screws out, putting some blue loctite on them, and then just barely snugged them up. Now the half nut lever is nice and smooth and easy to engage.
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Looks lovely, I like your choice of colour.

Will you be documenting how you realign the lathe parts? Or is this not necessary because you didn’t take the headstock off?
 
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StevSmar said:
Will you be documenting how you realign the lathe parts?
Click to expand...

Thanks! Since that topic is very well documented on youtube by people FAR more experienced than me, no- I will not likely be documenting that on this forum.
 
Wiilly it’s looking great. I’m enjoying watching you suffer through this. Takes me back to earlier times.
 
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