# Craftsman Commercial 12" Rebuild



## Nitmare67 (Dec 30, 2015)

Hi everyone I'm new here but I've gained alot of knowledge reading nonstop. I'm rebuilding my first lathe. Its a Craftsman commercial 12" with the matching cabinet and under drive, quick change gear box. It was all given to me by a friend of mine that owns a machine shop. It sat for 15 years in his garage after he trained his son on it.  I'm an electrical engineer by day and aspiring machinist by night haha. I will try to post up some pics soon. So far I have diassembled and derusted everything and began painting. Replaced the Timken spindle bearings with new C3 fit Timkens. For motor controls I'm using an Allen-Bradley Plus 40 Vector drive... 115vac input and 240 3 phase out to a 1hp Allen-Bradley vector drive specific motor...... honestly its a 1500 dollar motor and vfd package in a 500 dollar lathe but I get all of the parts free though my work because we have so much in our surplus from shutting down old plants and upgrading machines. I was able to get a brand new 1hp motor and appropriate 1.5hp VFD.

I'm in the process of restoring everything right now including paint because it was all in bad shape. Im finishing up painting everything so far which as came out very nice.

A few things I would like to find.

Does anyone make brass gibs for these machines?

What about tumbler gear upgrades? The forward tumbler gear is worn and I would like to purchase some steel gears instead of the alloy OEM ones.


Thanks guys


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## Rob (Dec 30, 2015)

My understanding is that steel gears are noisier than the original gears, at least that is what someone else posted somewhere.  You can still buy the new gears from Atlas (Clausing) http://www.clausing-industrial.com/partsService.asp.  The originals do last a long time.

Boston gears make gears that are a direct fit.  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_4...on+gear+gb+change+gear&ie=UTF8&qid=1451488722


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## Nitmare67 (Dec 30, 2015)

Will check that out.   I have been looking at Boston gears on Motion industries for gears I could modify to make fit. You're probably right with them being louder I just thought if I'm going to buy new ones why not buy better. Maybe a good set of oem ones would do the trick. I will call Clausing later today but I doubt there open until next year.

Thank for the help man!


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## wa5cab (Dec 30, 2015)

I haven't that I can recall seen any newly made gibs offered for the Atlas.  Which is actually quite surprising.  Maybe someone else has.  I agree that the plastic ones were a cost savings mistake on Clausing's part.  But the best material to make new ones from would be steel, not brass.  The carriage gib should still be steel.  Until sometime in the late 60's, so were the ones for the cross and compound slides.  The parts are the same size as in the 10" and early 12".  The coefficients of both static and dynamic friction of steel on steel are lower than brass on steel.  And note that the compound gib is the same as the cross slide gib except a little shorter.  In the later parts lists, the part number for both are shown as being the same.  I have always assumed that during assembly on the production line, they assembled the compound slide and then just cut off the excess.


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## brino (Dec 30, 2015)

Hi Nitmare67,

Welcome to the site. It sounds like you will fit right in here.

It also sounds like you have what most here would consider a dream job with access to a pile of used parts.
Lucky you! 

-brino

Edit: BTW, got any pictures of your before/rebuild/after?


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## wa5cab (Dec 30, 2015)

Nitmare67 said:


> I'm an electrical engineer by day and aspiring machinist by night haha.



That pretty much describes me 30 to 40 years ago.  Only back in those days, you didn't often find bargains on decent US made machine tools as the Chinese takeover was just beginning.  I had to pool my "Christmas Ataboys" for about four years until I was able to buy a new 3996.


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## Nitmare67 (Dec 30, 2015)

I love this site already haha. I love vintage anything. My main passion for my entire life has been racing cars. Drag racing and circle track racing... 1/2mile oval stock cars and such. All I play with anymore though is drag cars and very fast street cars. Having my own mill and lathe is a HUGE help is doing what I love to do.... and i  also enjoy making stuff so its a win win. My current two toys are my 67 Mustang and my 99 Mustang GT. The 67 was my first car i bought it back in 98 for 5k dollars and it was in pretty nice shape. Since then I completely restored and modified it... Now its a 600hp pro street type car. Has a 418 cubic inch small block ford stroker in it, big CNC aluminum heads, solid roller cam, 11:1 compresion with a built C4 and a big stall converter. Runs 10.50s on motor and runs on pump gas.

My 99 GT is a 35 anniversary car. This car actualy makes more hp than the 67 and is faster but much more streetable. It has a 4.6l ford 2 valve modular engine it. Thats the engine that all 99-04s came with. Forged crank, rods pistons. Trick flow aluminum heads, custom cams that I designed and a Kenne Bell twin screw supercharger making 20lbs of boost. Also running a methanol injection system which sprays up 18 gallons per hour of pure meth when under boost via the progressive conroller. Current format its making 660 HP to the wheels... so about 720 off the flywheels. Totally streetable. We drove it cross country to a Mustang show last year.

The mill and lathe is a new hobby to support a current hobby lol


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## Nitmare67 (Dec 30, 2015)

As far as gibs - the gibs in my lathe were steel in the cross slide and compound but it looks like somebody tried to make a new plastic one for the saddle.  Maybe I will just find another steel one for the saddle. My hopes are to make my own once my lathe is running with the mill attachment.


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## Mondo (Dec 30, 2015)

Welcome aboard!

I too have a 12x36 Craftsman Commercial, complete with under drive cabinet, all waiting for me to rebuild it.  I purchased it as a pile of parts several years ago.  Someone else started to rebuild it but didn't get much farther along than breaking it down into sub-assemblies.  A year later I moved and it came with me, now five more years gone by and it is still in parts on shelves.

The lathe I am using is circa 1935 Craftsman 12x24.  I replaced the tumbler gears with steel gears procured from Boston Gear.  I had to do some machining to get them to fit, but that was easy.  They certainly were a lot noisier to start but have quieted substantially with only a few months of occasional use.  Lubricating them with "Open Gear Grease" helps to reduce the noise level too, especially when new.  They seem to get plenty of spindle oil overflow from the Babbitt bearing on the small end of the spindle and most of the grease has long since been washed off, and the noise is no longer objectionable. 

You can replace the carriage gib easily enough with a length of precision ground flat bar.  Speedymetals.com has this in stock.  Purchase by thickness and width, cut it to length then drill some divots for the adjusting screws and file off any burrs from cutting and drilling.   Cross slide and tool post slide gibs will need to be beveled and ground.  Any machinist who has a surface grinder should be able to do that.  The tailstock gib is precision ground square stock and should not need to be replaced.

Keep us posted!  Remember that we all like photographs!

Spiral_Chips


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## Nitmare67 (Dec 30, 2015)

Thanks again for the info.

And luckily my cross slide and compound gibs look good. I'm going to hand scrape them in once I have things close to ready to go.


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## Nitmare67 (Mar 5, 2016)

Update with some pics. Some of you have prob already seen these pictures posted in other topics but anyways

This is where I started.








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## Nitmare67 (Mar 5, 2016)

Part way through. I rebuilt the spindle and also bored and bushed the back gear journals in the headstock. MUCH tighter and more precise now!









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## Nitmare67 (Mar 5, 2016)

The stand in primer.... my 7 year old did all of this scraping and painting. He did a good job!!









Dorian quick change tool post - AXA and the Sensorless Vector VFD upgrade.






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## Nitmare67 (Mar 5, 2016)

New 3/4hp Inverter Duty Motor.





The cabinet was then painted





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## Nitmare67 (Mar 5, 2016)

Everything going back together nicely.









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## Nitmare67 (Mar 5, 2016)

So I have never ran this lathe before it was given to me rough shape and broken. I didnt know what to expect so I just hoped for the best. I rebuilt everything I could but I didnt touch the bed in hopes that it would be ok. Well it turnes out to have some pretty bad wear in the middle. Bad enough that it chatters and if i set the gibes tight enough it binds up once I roll the carriage back very far. Probably made production parts over and over. 

So i picked up the phone and called Clausing to see if they still stocked the original Atlas 12" lathe beds and guess what..... THEY STILL HAD ONE. So I purchased a brand new 30-40 year old stock Atlas Lathe bed... commercial so it has the 1/2" ways. Now if you had bought an Atlas/Craftsman lathe new some 30-40 years ago it would have showed up like this... minus the 40 years of dirt. So cool like opening a piece of history! Still covered and protected in Cosmoline. I'm going to have the the nicest Atlas lathe in existence eventually lol. SOOO I also guess my color isnt a close to factory as I thought haha. I will paint it to match though. I've gone this far.


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## Nitmare67 (Mar 5, 2016)

COSMOLINE IS OFF AND CHECK OUT THAT FINISH BABY!!!


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## Nitmare67 (Mar 5, 2016)

You can still see where I have a bit more cleaning to do as I prep for paint. I'm going to color match it to my Machine gray like everything else. I'm not a purist. I want pretty and functional.


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## Nitmare67 (Mar 5, 2016)

Now that I have 2 lath beds already painted and looking nice I'm going to regrind the other one eventually and I will mate the too beds together to make one longer lathe. I have no plans on actually machining that far out I just want the ability to run my steady rest and tail stock out there.

So thats where I'm at today. Cleaning and prepping the brand new 40 year old Atlas lathe bed for paint. Then I will swap the beds on the lathe and start tramming it back in. Sadley i wont get to finish this project here completely because we're moving to a new house... new to house. We just bought a built in 1916 Craftsman style home in beautiful shape and best of all.... it as an 1100Sqft detatched garage.... 15 foot ceilings and enough room for all my toys or years to come!!


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## FOMOGO (Mar 5, 2016)

Nice job on the lathe, and congrats on the new home and shop. Mike


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## Steve Shannon (Mar 6, 2016)

Nitmare67,
You rock!


 Steve Shannon, P.E.


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## wa5cab (Mar 6, 2016)

Mike,

Paint tends to darken with time.  In 30-40 years, everything will probably be back to the color that the NOS bed was,    I bought my 3996 new in I think 1982 (I recall the dealer saying late in 1981 that they were out of production).  I envy you the larger garage.  Mine is only about 600 square feet, about 200 of which is closed off for the radio area.

Did you actually buy the last bed?  I was told that I bought the last follow rest.  And was too late for the last rectangular tank coolant system.  Should have bought it in 1982.


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## Nitmare67 (Mar 6, 2016)

What kind of radio area? I used to be really into CB until a few years ago. Used to run 2k watts out of the garage on a 5/8 wave. I built a 70 foot crank up tower that took me 6 months to finish. It's at my dad's now but rarely cranked up. Used to talk skip all over the country on AM and SSB. Finally got tired of it though and sold it all. I still have 4 100 amp power supplies I built for running class C amplifiers in the garage. Now if you're an amateur radio operator then you don't like anytbing I just wrote haha.

Now I just race my Mustangs and play with machines.

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## tertiaryjim (Mar 6, 2016)

My understanding on gears is... The cast iron gears dampen vibration and noise but steel gears are stronger.
As for gibs.. I had to make some and it was a real learning adventure.
Cutting them from steel stock, tried cold rolled and hot rolled. They curled like a banana. Had to cut it way thick and keep flipping it, machining just a bit off 
each side and using force to straighten them up enough to flip for the next pass.
Haven't tried putting them in the oven. That might help!
Cut some from brass. Same problems.
Finally got some in brass and some in steel good enough to scrap flat but even scraping tended to make em curl.
Lots of people will scrape the old gibb and put shims behind it to fit. Nothin wrong with that.
I would have done so but the original gibs were so mis-sized and crappy I deemed em trash.
The brass gibbs I put in my lathe seem to be working fine, haven't had to make any adjustments since installation,  but after getting more use on em will pull the slide off and have a good look.
I understand that steel is better than brass but cast iron gibs are the best for low coefficient of friction as well as for dampening vibration.


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## Nitmare67 (Mar 6, 2016)

I believe I purchased the last one or one of the last ones of this type. There was 3 left when I ordered mine a couple weeks back.


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## brino (Mar 6, 2016)

Nitmare67 said:


> my 7 year old did all of this scraping and painting. He did a good job!!



That is fantastic! Good for both of you. Show them young that you can do things like this by yourself!!!!



Nitmare67 said:


> We just bought a built in 1916 Craftsman style home in beautiful shape and best of all.... it as an 1100Sqft detatched garage.... 15 foot ceilings and enough room for all my toys or years to come!!



Wow! Nice. Congratulations!!!!
I bet you fill it before too many years are up 

-brino


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## wa5cab (Mar 6, 2016)

Nitmare,

  I've been a ham since 1962.  The radio area is a combined operating area and maintenance area.  At present, the only equipment in the operating area is a TCS-14, an R-388/URR, an AN/URC-35B, an AN/PRC-47 and a BC-312-D.  Obviously all ex-military.  It occupies about 1/3 of the space.  The other 2/3 is taken up by test equipment and work bench space.


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## Nitmare67 (Mar 8, 2016)

The new bed is all painted now and ready to go back together.





and with the tape peeled... Wow


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## FOMOGO (Mar 8, 2016)

Good to get them in the shop young. Something they will remember and appreciate for years to come. What did you use for your chip pan? Mike


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## Nitmare67 (Mar 8, 2016)

Ya both my boys love being out here with me. They will love the new bigger garage even more I'm sure. I plan to have the corner area setup with a flat screen and some stuff for them to do so they can just hang out in the shop with me all the time if they want.

The pan is a 14 gauge stainless steel pan that I made similar to the original specs but a little deaper and 1 inch wider... with the 1 inch being offset towards the operating side of the lathe. I did this so the QCGB levers wouldnt be so close to the pan and hopefully prevented my fingers from being smashed over time lol


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