# Upgrading My PM 1236-T Lathe



## wildo (Apr 19, 2019)

Well I wasn't really planning on creating an entirely new thread on this, but I might as well. It all started when I uncrated the lathe and realized I just can't stand the white color. I asked on here, and did you guys ever deliver! You see, I had planned a one-shot oiler as well as a drag-chain DRO install. I'm also converting to VFD drive on 3 Phase. Someone linked me to David Best's amazing lathe build thread on Flickr and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Not only did he already do all of the upgrades I was planning, but he also fully documented them and had plenty of other cool ideas as well. So yeah, I'm basically just copying his lead. I doubt you'll find anything new here that you didn't see in his build.

I started with the paint. I am using the Steel-It paint he used (I'm using both primer and base coat of the same brand). That plus the paint stripper (EZ Strip) and drop cloths arrived today. I also ordered a drag chain from Igus (118-048-063-0) which arrived today as well. And finally, I ordered a LOT of aluminum pieces to work on mounting all this stuff up. I'll pick up the aluminum cuts tomorrow.

Tonight I started on the gearbox drip oiler. As I said, I intended to do a one-shot oiler anyway and I really liked David's implementation on this part. I actually ordered two oilers- one will hold gear oil for the gearbox, and the other will hold way oil to feed the cross slide (a la Keith Fenner's Rutland build). I got the shape profiled and it fits well. Tomorrow I'll drill the oil galleries.


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## wildo (Apr 19, 2019)

I will say- this is the kind of thing that I'd like to learn more about with machining. Since my Burke Millrite doesn't have the head nod, I could not for the life of me figure out how to mill the angle on the front of the aluminum plate. I came up with this rather sketchy setup with two dowel pins to support the work, and then toe clamps _kind of_ holding everything in place. I climb milled only so that the tool pressure would be into the dowel pins. It wasn't until after I completed that I realized I could have taken the moving jaw face off of my Kurt 5" anglock and moved it to the rear, creating a vise span far long enough to hold the part. Then I could have tilted the mill head sideways. But it simply didn't occur to me at the time. This is the sort of thing I want to get better at.











Another thing I discovered that I don't have a clue about is how to chamfer round a corner. David's part looks totally amazing. His chamfer follows the curve perfectly. I thought that because I used a 1/2" ball nose end mill to create the corner, then using a 1/2" 100* chamfer mill would create a perfect chamfered corner. Yes- I can hear you all laughing from here. Naturally I was NOT cutting on the 1/2" diameter of the chamfer mill, and even if I was that still wouldn't have created the nice corner like David's. I don't know how to properly perform this operation.


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## davidpbest (Apr 19, 2019)

Willy, I really enjoyed your posts on this.   Great work.   I'm inspired to share some thougths now that you're in the deep end of the swimming pool.   LOL  

Your angled face milling setup looks fine.   But for future reference, here's how I often machine angled edges on the mill.   Since I'm primarily a woodworker and have very precise equipment in that sphere, I take a chunk of squared-up wood, go to the sliding table tilting arbor saw, set the blade to the right angle, and split the wood.   I then use this wood gizmo as a clamping aid in the vise for the material to machine - like this:






Drilling the galleries in the rather long oil distribution plate was a bit perplexing.   On my mill at the time (RF45 - yes, the real deal, not a clone), with limited Z, I had a challenging time drilling the galleries in that oil distribution plate, but this is how I got it done - aircraft bits were just barely long enough for the main line.   I started the hole with a jobber bit as shown below, then took the plate off the mill and continued drilling with the aircraft bit in a handheld drill on the bench:







The ball-end corner you find challenging I sent off to Stefan Gotteswinter in Germany, he didn't know how to do it either, so he sent it to Robin Renzetti.   Robin then referred it to Tom Lipton and he took it to Lawrence Berkeley Labs and they did some kind of particle accelerator treatment.   LOL   Just kidding.   So first cut a half-deep trough with a square end mill, then plunged the ball end mill into each corner to full depth (running the tool very slow RPM to prevent chatter), then cut the remainder of the trough with the ball end mill moving the XY table, progressing down in 3 steps with the ball end mill.  

If I were doing this oil distribution plate again, I think I’d put a slightly larger drip hole at the end of the line of galleries (above the feed shaft bearing) so that the priming of the plate takes less time and there is more oil distributed to the end point than along the gear train.   It’s the end point that needs the oil the most because of that feed shaft bearing.

Keep posting.   I'm really looking forward to seeing your progress.


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## wildo (Apr 19, 2019)

davidpbest said:


> The ball-end corner you find challenging I sent off to Stefan Gotteswinter in Germany, he didn't know how to do it either, so he sent it to Robin Renzetti.   Robin then referred it to Tom Lipton and he took it to Lawrence Berkeley Labs and they did some kind of particle accelerator treatment.   LOL



Ok- this made me laugh out loud! Hilarious!! That's definitely all the right names! hahaha!!


Great idea about using wood for fixturing; I'll remember that! Regarding the other part, I was actually referring to the smooth external radius on the top surface. I was able to use a ball end mill to get the inside radius at the bottom of the trough part- no problem.

[EDIT]- thinking about it more and considering you are big into woodworking, I'd almost guess you used a router & router bit to get that round over since it's just aluminum. Hmmmm....


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## davidpbest (Apr 19, 2019)

Ah, I misunderstood.   Indeed, that was done on the mill using a carbide router bit with guide bearing.   This kind of thing, although solid carbide - probably 3/8" radius on 1/2" shank:






A have had really good results using carbide router bits cutting aluminum on the lathe as a form tool, so I decided to try it on this oil distribution plate.   Example on lathe:






Finished result for that part:






I'm very much looking forward to following your project.   Keep posting please.


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## wildo (Apr 19, 2019)

OMG that's a cool trick!!!


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## wildo (Apr 19, 2019)

Alright! Wrapped up this part of the project. To line up the oil drip ports, I blued the bottom of the plate and then scratched the locations through the gearbox with a piece of 1/16" rod bent to 90* in order to reach up in there. The oil galleries weren't really all that bad to drill. A while back I picked up this extra long drill bit set which made the hole a breeze. I went with 3/16" galleries throughout, with 1.5mm oil drips for most of the gear train, and 2mm oil drips at the back of the line above the feed shaft bearing. The part was clamped to an angle plate and the mill table taken nearly all the way down. Like David, I started the hole with a standard jobber drill bit, and then carefully finished with a hand drill using the long bit. The ends of the galleries were threaded and Loctite 272 was used- not for the high temp characteristic, but rather because it's more viscous than standard 271 and I thought that would help with thread sealing (which both formulas will do). It is also tolerant of machine oil.
















The long drill bit came within 1/4" of the end of the plate when drilled to the last flute.





...And so that's exactly what I did.















There was one oil spot that was a bit tricky to get to. I extended the oil gallery beside it, and then drilled at an angle to pick it up.










Galleries are blocked with 1/4 - 20 x 3/8" grub screws





I don't yet have a 1/8" NPT tap, so this street elbow will go in once I order one.


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## wildo (Apr 19, 2019)

The internal galleries are connected like this


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## wildo (Apr 23, 2019)

I haven’t had a lot of shop time lately, but I did take possession of all the metal bits I needed for the accessories being mounted.


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## wildo (Apr 23, 2019)

I did find some time not so much in the shop, but out in the garage today. I'm trying to tackle the projects that will need to be painted along with the lathe so that I can do all the painting at once. This gearbox oil pan was a cool idea; even my SB 9a drips a ton of oil out of the gearbox. (I suspect they all do since the bottom of the gearbox is open for the tumblers.) Fun little welding project...


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## wrmiller (Apr 23, 2019)

You gonna sell those Sir?


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## wildo (Apr 23, 2019)

wrmiller said:


> You gonna sell those Sir?



Ha! Not a chance!


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## wildo (Apr 27, 2019)

Nothing is ever straightforward. I needed to do a much needed garage cleanup in order to find space for the degrease/strip/paint. Finally got that taken care of and I’m ready to move forward.


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## davidpbest (Apr 27, 2019)

Take is ALL apart Willie.   Show us every locknut and grub screw.   This might help:


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## wildo (Apr 27, 2019)

davidpbest said:


> Take is ALL apart Willie.   Show us every locknut and grub screw.   This might help:


Wow!!! I wondered if you had this list or not. Damn that is crazy helpful; thanks for sharing!!


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## wildo (Apr 30, 2019)

Slow going (as usual) but I have gotten the lathe mostly cleaned up and ready for paint stripping and paint. The threading lead screw was easy to get out, but I haven't quite figured out how to get the power feed and on/off shafts out of the apron yet.


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## wildo (Apr 30, 2019)

After entering all the screws into mcmaster and seeing the cost, I think I might be drawing the line at the stainless steel hardware upgrade! Wowza.


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## davidpbest (May 1, 2019)

Did you save the sand in the castings?


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## wildo (May 9, 2019)

Well this feels like such a major milestone! The bed and headstock have been completely stripped, bondo’ed, and repainted. I’ve now moved on to stripping all the bolt on components. I also drained the oil and cleaned out the extra sand & metal shavings, David! 

Speaking of David- can’t thank him enough for answering all my questions I’ve sent his way. So helpful!

This EZStrip did not work *at all* so I switched to Citristrip. I had read that Citristrip had been reformulated and didn’t work as well, but it seemed to work great to me!





















I had been curious how heavy the bed and headstock alone weighed, so I bought a crane scale. The full lathe is billed at something like 890lbs, so I was surprised that even with everything taken off this assembly only came in at 330lbs










Finally got everything stripped, smoothed with fresh bondo, and ready for paint










I also drained the oil and cleaned sand and some metal grit from the head










Finally- a coat of Steel-It #2203 alkyd primer





...followed by Steel-It #1002 polyurethane base coat






Now that the main part of the lathe is painted, I moved on to the rest of the bolt on components. I liked David’s idea of milling out the head cover in order to fit an 1/4” rubber mat recessed down in there. I brought the casting to the mill and started with a 3/8” ball end mill to create an oil groove about .285” deep. The full perimeter was just out of capacity for my mill table travel so I had to rotate the part. That ended up being not such a big deal.










I would note that the ball end mill is a quality carbide end mill and cut the cast like butter. Then I grabbed my 3/4” four flute HSS end mil from harbor freight and started milling the main recess. This end mill did NOT cut like butter, but it did eventually get the job done.










For the final tool path I did have the capacity to do one continuous cut, but the problem was that the mill table ran into the wall of the room for one corner of the cut. I *should* have stopped and extended the ram but this is yet another one of those “chalk it up to inexperience” lessons. So one corner of the tool path isn’t pretty, but oh well.





Because the four fluter didn’t leave a fantastic surface finish, I hit it with an 80 grit sanding disc on the random orbit sander. Overall, it turned out fine in the end.






And that’s where I’m at now. Moving on to more paint stripping and grey painting...


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## rwm (May 9, 2019)

That Steel it stuff is expensive. My brother paints his race cars with it. Takes a long time to dry also. One big advantage is you can weld through it or at least near it.
Robert


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## wildo (May 9, 2019)

It's all relative, I guess. I bought a quart of primer, a quart of base coat, and three spray cans of base coat shipped to my door for $175. When I painted the South Bend lathe, the DTM paint was $65/quart and it _still_ chipped off around the high use areas of the lathe. I found the Steel-It to dry fast (the primer where I started seemed to be basically completely dry by the time I wrapped around the lathe) and the top coat took about 2 hours to dry to the touch. I think that they do state that it gets harder over the next few days of curing. It seems pretty durable based on reviews in the off road car world, but I guess time will tell.


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## davidpbest (May 9, 2019)

WIlly, it's looking really great.   Where did you buy the Steel-it?   I got mine from McMaster, but they don't carry the full line.   The inside of your head looks nice and clean.   When you get it all finished, I'll share with you be royal purple velvet covering cloth plans.


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## wildo (May 9, 2019)

davidpbest said:


> WIlly, it's looking really great.   Where did you buy the Steel-it?   I got mine from McMaster, but they don't carry the full line.   The inside of your head looks nice and clean.   When you get it all finished, I'll share with you be royal purple velvet covering cloth plans.



Thanks! I've had a really well documented path to follow, ha! I got the Steel-It paint from Wild Powersports. I went with them because I wanted to get the actual Steel-It product, and as best as I could find, McMaster is selling a knock off version. I'm sure it's perfectly acceptable and good, but since I have never used it before I wanted to get the real stuff. On top of that, the price McMaster is selling for is the same (or more) than the real product. I will say that the two quart cans came pretty badly damaged, and I'm surprised that they didn't leak all over. I guess all is well that ends well- but for such expensive paint- or really any can of paint- you would think they would ship it as if they gave a ****.


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## wildo (May 9, 2019)

I did make some more good progress tonight, though my shop time has expired and now I have to go be an adult and clean the house for company tomorrow. Got the change gear cover, lead screw retainer thing, carriage back gib holder thing, electronics box, headstock cover, and gap paint stripped and a layer of bondo on relevant pieces. I also have paint stripper on all the motor parts. 

I do want to upgrade to the vector-capable motor, but it's another $500 (if I'm lucky- not seeing any on ebay at the moment) and I'm still deciding if the $600 of electronics to convert to VFD is crazy talk, or a good investment. For my South Bend lathe, I bought a VFD and used all the VFD ports to control the lathe. It's still unclear to me why all these contactors, fuses, bus bars, etc, etc are needed. I'll get it figured out though. Just crazy to think that I'm still $600 away from being able to plug in my $5K (now $6K) lathe!


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## davidpbest (May 10, 2019)

wildo said:


> Thanks! I've had a really well documented path to follow, ha! I got the Steel-It paint from Wild Powersports. I went with them because I wanted to get the actual Steel-It product, and as best as I could find, McMaster is selling a knock off version. I'm sure it's perfectly acceptable and good, but since I have never used it before I wanted to get the real stuff. On top of that, the price McMaster is selling for is the same (or more) than the real product. I will say that the two quart cans came pretty badly damaged, and I'm surprised that they didn't leak all over. I guess all is well that ends well- but for such expensive paint- or really any can of paint- you would think they would ship it as if they gave a ****.
> 
> View attachment 294352


That's interesting.   When I bought Steel-it from McMaster a couple years ago it was the real deal.    They  even ordered some of the Steel-it products special for me that they don't normally carry.   Maybe the new stuff is a Chinese clone.   LOL


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## davidpbest (May 10, 2019)

wildo said:


> I did make some more good progress tonight, though my shop time has expired and now I have to go be an adult and clean the house for company tomorrow. Got the change gear cover, lead screw retainer thing, carriage back gib holder thing, electronics box, headstock cover, and gap paint stripped and a layer of bondo on relevant pieces. I also have paint stripper on all the motor parts.
> 
> I do want to upgrade to the vector-capable motor, but it's another $500 (if I'm lucky- not seeing any on ebay at the moment) and I'm still deciding if the $600 of electronics to convert to VFD is crazy talk, or a good investment. For my South Bend lathe, I bought a VFD and used all the VFD ports to control the lathe. It's still unclear to me why all these contactors, fuses, bus bars, etc, etc are needed. I'll get it figured out though. Just crazy to think that I'm still $600 away from being able to plug in my $5K (now $6K) lathe!



I'm really glad I found the Baldor IDNM3587T - NOS on eBay for under $500.   Really great motor.

As part of the electronics upgrade, there were two controls the I would not be without and highly recommend.   The first is a jog joystick.   I use it for tapping with taps and dies, and to position the spindle for coupling and uncoupling the various chucks.   The other is a proximity sensor for the carriage stop - makes threading so much easier.

I'm enjoying following your progress.


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## wildo (May 10, 2019)

Interesting! The proximity sensor was the thing I was thinking about nixing in order to save some cost. It's really that useful??


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## davidpbest (May 10, 2019)

A lot of the threading I do is with dies and taps, and the jog-joystick is very useful for this.   When I do single-point threading, the proximity stop is VERY useful.   Have a look at this thread, especially Mark's video:   https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/pm1340gt-lathe-threading-with-a-proximity-stop.45977/

That said, I find the proximity stop actually more useful for boring operations - where you're driving a boring bar down to the bottom of a blind hole.   It's very easy to miss the target depth without a proximity stop.   The other times I use it is as a safety limit stop - to prevent the carriage from driving a tool into the spinning chuck jaws - just in case I'm not quick enough or get distracted.

Here is a test I did that illustrates the repeatability of the proximity stop:

*








						Video showing proximity stop in operation
					

The proximity stop senses the carriage, and signals the VFD to stop the motor of the lathe.   Generally, the lathe stops within one revolution of the signal, and the carriage will stop at the exact same position next operation within 0.001-inches as demonstrated here.  This setup take all the...




					tinyurl.com
				



*


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## wildo (May 11, 2019)

More painting. Definitely at the point where I’m beyond sick of paint stripper, acetone, shop towels, and paint! But almost there; I just have the tailstock, apron, and carriage left to deal with. Everything else is either completely painted or has primer applied.


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## wildo (May 13, 2019)

That’s a nice way to wrap up the weekend!


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## wildo (May 18, 2019)

I guess it has been a minute since I've posted. This week I focused mostly on the back splash and the chip pan. I went with a silver/aluminum color for the back splash, and I'm not really 100% sold on it. On top of that, there is never enough natural light in the garage to really gauge it. For the chip pan, I found a brown that feels a bit middle of the road between the aluminum color and a bronze color. I quite like it. I'm not sure if I'll repaint the backsplash in this color or not. I might just rock the tri-tone! haha.

The chip pan got some basic surgery, but man was that difficult! I don't have a mig or tig welder, so I had my buzz box turned all the way down to the lowest amperage. It was still blowing through the thin steel on the pan. I managed to get just enough buggers on there to hold it in place, ground down the crappy welds (I'm actually a pretty good welder, but clearly not on this thin sheet metal!) and filled the remaining holes with JB Weld. I ground down the JB Weld and then smoothed the area with Bondo. In the end you'd have to look pretty close to see the modification, and even then the bed of the lathe is going to be covering this area. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I also added some custom poor man's embossing. You're welcome, PM. ha!




























































































I'm in the home stretch now. There's still a few small components to paint, and then it's on to machining all of the aluminum pieces for mounting the accessories.


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## davidpbest (May 18, 2019)

Great job.   I wasn't at all successful plugging the hole in the supplied chip pan and had a new one fabricated.   Your welding technique is far better than mine.   It's all looking terrific.   I only question if PM deserves the special call-out with the raised lettering - the conditions of the spindle bearings might tell that story.   Keep posting - this is fun.


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## wildo (May 18, 2019)

davidpbest said:


> I only question if PM deserves the special call-out with the raised lettering - the conditions of the spindle bearings might tell that story.   Keep posting - this is fun.



Thanks! It's slow going, but I'm working on it as I have time. Plus... it's my time, so I guess I can take as long as I feel like! haha! But I'm happy with the progress. I feel like doing a proper paint job on a machine tool (as opposed to slathering a bunch of paint on an assembled tool) is a daunting amount of work, and somehow here I am approaching the finish line. That's an accomplishment for sure!

I have a Starrett 670B hole attachment arriving on Tuesday and will be able to use my new (to me) Federal indicator to measure spindle runout.


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## StevSmar (May 19, 2019)

Looking very nice!

Knowing that the bed and head is 330 lbs is very helpful, thank you for sharing this.


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## wildo (May 20, 2019)

Thanks to some quick help from a few of you on my tailstock thread, I was able to press on tonight and get the tailstock stripped, those weird plugs ground down, bondo’ed & smoothed, and in primer. 


I would note to anyone taking apart their tailstock to be mindful of the detent ball #24. Since it just applies some drag to the dial, I didn’t even consider that there would be a ball under there. That thing shot to the other side of the garage somewhere and is lost to the ether. I doubt it will be all too difficult to find a chrome bearing ball to replace it with.











You can see the weird plugs that we have decided were either core supports for the casting, or fixturing features. Either way, they looked like crap and stuck up quite a bit. I ground them flat, then applied bondo to smooth it all.





















The back side was also smoothed, although it was quite challenging to get the inside “pocket” corners really well. In the end, it’s far from perfect, but it’s miles better than from the factory.


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## davidpbest (May 21, 2019)

Looking good Willy.  Are you seeing any similarity between this Bondo work and cake icing yet?  LOL.


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## markba633csi (May 21, 2019)

Will how did you do the "poor man's embossing"?  It looks great
Also like that Krylon color, gotta get some
Mark


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## wildo (May 21, 2019)

markba633csi said:


> Will how did you do the "poor man's embossing"?  It looks great
> Also like that Krylon color, gotta get some
> Mark



I wondered if anyone would ask. I used sticky back letters. That doesn't SEEM like it would work very well, but I also did this for my SB lathe when I restored it nearly 3 years ago. They lettering has lasted this long without peeling off. I think the real key is to make sure that you get a thick layer (or two, or three) of paint on there so that there are no pin holes for oil to seep under the sticky letters and cause them to peel.


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## markba633csi (May 21, 2019)

Aha! Very resourceful, sure fooled me- I would never have guessed


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## markba633csi (May 21, 2019)

I want to take another look at Krylon, I used to use it a lot in the before-time, then somehow got coaxed over to the Rustoleum side. 
Some of those new colors and textures look interesting


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## wildo (Jun 1, 2019)

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.






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:











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:






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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## chiroone (Jun 1, 2019)

Where did you get those neat little “pyramids” that hold up the tail stock when you were painting it?


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## rogerl (Jun 1, 2019)

They are painters Pyramids. You can get them at Amazon. I bought some at Woodcraft. Below is a link to Amazon.






						Amazon.com: Painter's Pyramid Stands, Yellow (KM1257)
					

Shop Painter's Pyramid at the Amazon Arts, Crafts & Sewing store. Free Shipping on eligible items. Save on everyday low prices.



					www.amazon.com
				





Roger L


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## wildo (Jun 1, 2019)

Yep- Roger is right. Just some simple, plastic, paint pyramids.


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## markba633csi (Jun 1, 2019)

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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## wildo (Jun 13, 2019)

Update time.

Let's start with the final paint stripping. The apron and carriage were the last to need the treatment. 















Masking the carriage was super tedious! Technically I didn't need to paint the bottom side, but when in Rome...






















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. 



























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.

























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!?




















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!






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.


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## wildo (Jun 13, 2019)

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.





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).






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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## StevSmar (Jun 13, 2019)

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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## wildo (Jun 13, 2019)

StevSmar said:


> Will you be documenting how you realign the lathe parts?



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.


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## davidpbest (Jun 13, 2019)

Wiilly it’s looking great.  I’m enjoying watching you suffer through this.  Takes me back to earlier times.


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## wildo (Jun 13, 2019)

davidpbest said:


> Wiilly it’s looking great.  I’m enjoying watching you suffer through this.  Takes me back to earlier times.



It's always a TON of work. This isn't my first rodeo... I knew it going in. And while I get frustrated at the lack of progress (which for me causes me to not want to work on it even more) I still ultimately find the journey satisfying! I hate painting and yet I seem to do it to every machine I buy. But now... onto the fun stuff! I'm excited to fabricate all these crazy mounting brackets


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## davidpbest (Jun 14, 2019)

Keep this in mind.  You will, as I do now, look back on these projects with pride, a sense of something done right, and a demonstration of your integrity in the tasks you take on.  Even though few people will laud, or even recognize your accomplishments in these pursuits, you have the gratification of knowing you gave it your all.  I commend you.  

Let me know when you’d like to dump the Norton gearbox for an electronic feed and threading upgrade, or start the CNC conversion.  Example:  



   Have you considered a self-aligning bed/tailstock mechanism?


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## wildo (Jun 14, 2019)

Since I do a LOT of dog training for performance and competition, that saying about journey/destination is well established in my psyche! It's such an important lesson, actually. I am following that leadscrew series with great interest! I discovered that channel not too long ago and I think I've binge watched all of his videos; they are fantastic!

When you say self-aligning bed/tailstock mechanism, are you referring to a lathe mounting/leveling system? That would be a no for me because I plan on mounting it to a 1.5" thick hard maple top. This will end up being a PITA no doubt, but I'll have to use shims under the feet for leveling. As it is, the lathe is already going to be ridiculously high (maybe too high- cross fingers) and there is zero room for putting something else under it.


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## StevSmar (Jun 15, 2019)

That sounds interesting... I’d love to see some photos.



wildo said:


> ...I plan on mounting it to a 1.5" thick hard maple top....but I'll have to use shims under the feet for leveling. As it is, the lathe is already going to be ridiculously high (maybe too high- cross fingers)...


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## StevSmar (Jun 15, 2019)

davidpbest said:


> Let me know when you’d like to dump the Norton gearbox for an electronic feed and threading upgrade...



As an electrical engineer, I have a tainted view of additional electrical complexity. Why would you want an electronic lead screw when there’s a perfectly good non-temperamental non-electronic solution.
(written in jest with tongue in cheek. I like the challenge of this idea and think that soon elctronic lead screws will be far more commonplace, like variable speed drives are becoming)
(but I still don’t trust electronic complexity...LOL)


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## jmosley (Dec 30, 2019)

wildo said:


> Slow going (as usual) but I have gotten the lathe mostly cleaned up and ready for paint stripping and paint. The threading lead screw was easy to get out, but I haven't quite figured out how to get the power feed and on/off shafts out of the apron yet.
> View attachment 293708
> 
> 
> View attachment 293709


Hi - thanks for this detailed documentation! it helps so much to see this lathe torn apart. 

I received my PM-1236T this week and have moved into our kitchen (and of course - it happens to arrive on our anniversary!), on its way to the basement. Now that I see it in person (um... its bigger than it looks on the internet) I'm quite worried about taking it down the steps - via any method - including hiring movers. I have already taken off the motor, the tailstock, backsplash and cross-slide, drained the headstock. 

It sounds like the cost-benefit of weight reduction is not worth the time of realigning when it comes to removing the headstock - and I can see you didn't take that step.

I'd like to lighten it more - and protect the lead screw and drive bars - so I was considering removing the gearbox and carriage/apron - ideally in as few pieces as possible. 

For instance, would it be possible to remove the gearbox, the carriage/apron and the tail-end shaft block all in one go rather than in pieces? What would you recommend? 

Is the alignment of these parts critical when reassembling?


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## davidpbest (Jan 31, 2020)

Willy, it's been a long time since you posted about this.   What's going on?


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