# Noisy Atlas Lathes?



## BluCab (Jun 9, 2013)

I was reading another thread and saw another mention of noisy, vibrating Craftsman Lathes. 

I often hear people say that the Craftsman lathes are noisy and vibrate a lot, but have not experienced that with my 12" 101.07403. I am not sure if that is because the previous owner tuned it or I just got lucky, or what. 

When I bought it, it had been sitting on a garage floor for a number of years, and did not have a motor, countershaft, or legs, so I could not run it to hear it. After getting it home, I tore it down and cleaned and painted it, then greased and oiled it as I put it back together. I bought a Baldor 3 phase motor for it from Ebay. Found a VFD from a website, and purchased a countershaft assembly from Ebay. When I fired it up the first time, it did vibrate a lot, but that was in the countershaft. The pulleys were rough and would grab the link belt. The countershaft shaft was badly worn, so I bought a replacement from McMaster-Carr. Then I fired up the VFD-motor (just the countershaft. it was not connected to the lathe) on dead-slow (about 60 to 80 RPM) and trued the large 2 step pulley with hand tools and files till it ran smoothly. Once that was done, I did the same for the small diameter step pulley on the countershaft. 

When I reassembled the headstock after cleaning it, I greased and oiled everything and made sure that it would spin freely by hand. Any roughness was located and eliminated. I then attached the countershaft via a link belt and smoothed the headstock pulleys (they were in pretty good shape).

As a side note, I found this strange part as a separator on the spindle pulley.



I am not sure what it was for, but I could not get things to align correctly with it, so I removed it. 

For lubrication, I used Superlube grease, moly open chain lube for the gears, spindle oil, and way oil.  

I built a base for it from 3/4 plywood. The top and base top and base are 3/4" x 3' x 4'. I put 1" cast iron wheels on the base and I used 6 3/4" x 36" threaded black pipe screwed into pipe floor flanges top and bottom and screwed into the plywood. the pipes are arranged like this: (looking from the top) 

        back
----------------------
--O----------------O--
----------------------
------O---------O-----
----------------------
--O----------------O-- 
----------------------
        front

Edit: The forum compressed out my spacing, so I redrew the above. The dashes are the plywood, and Os are the black pipe (as seen from the top).

For strength, I used U-Bolts attached between the back two pipes and a 3/4" x 4' x 4' piece of plywood. It worked fine this was, but with all the oil, I wanted a metal table top, so I found a local steel supplier and bought a 1/4" x 4' x 4' piece of A-36 steel and cut it to 3' x 3'3" (the extra three inches allow the steel to give me a nice lip for clamping to the tabletop. With the lathe bolted to the steel on top of plywood, it does not move much. 1/4" plate weighs about 10 pounds per square foot, so that gives me about 120+ pounds of mass under the lathe. The steel plate is also great for attaching magnets to. Left it unpainted with the scale on, but wiping oil drips away keeps the rust away too. It ain't pretty, but it is quite functional.

It seems to run quietly with little vibration. I can put a 3/4 inch ball bearing ball on the ways, and it will not move.  I would love to have a South Bend, but they are not as common here as they are in the Northeast.

Is my machine unique? What have other AtCraft owners experiences been?


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## Dranreb (Jun 9, 2013)

Well you made me curious so I had to go and try your ball bearing test..:bitingnails:

Running my rebuilt 10" atlas at top speed, 2072 rpm, the ball shivered a tiny bit but didn't move off the spot, the large counter shaft pulley does have a little run out.

Mine's on cast legs bolted to a big mass of concrete, so I would say you've done very well to get it that smooth and portable too... :thumbzup:.

Bernard


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## pdentrem (Jun 9, 2013)

On my Atlas 10F24, it was mounted on a heavy wood stand and I had most of my steel cutoffs etc on the shelves in the stand. I have a picture posted on my website showing the Atlas on the stand if you are curious. The stand likely weighed twice as much as the lathe with all the metal and gears, chucks etc. I never had issues with vibration or chatter, except on a few occasions. Granted I almost never ran at top rpm either. 

The Jet BDB1340 at work vibrates like crazy if spun at max rpm, and it weighs 1000# without the stand. I feel the stand is the real problem in the Jets case.
Pierre


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## davidh (Jun 9, 2013)

my 12" x 42" craftsman / atlas smoothed out a bunch and quieted down lots when I changed the belts to the link type.


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## pdentrem (Jun 9, 2013)

I agree, link belts are so much better for vibration, ease of replacement.
Pierre


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## tripletap3 (Jun 10, 2013)

My personal philosophy has always been that a Atlas lathe is only as good as what it is mounted to. Most of these kind of complaints come from people that have mounted it to a old desk or a flimsy plywood workbench. I believe Alas lathes had lighter beds by design to assist in shipping or costs and were intended to be mounted to something solid and straight enough to reinforce it. This is why Atlas provided such specific instructions on mounting surfaces if you didn’t buy the factory stand.   Just my thoughts.


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## Dranreb (Jun 10, 2013)

tripletap3 said:


> My personal philosophy has always been that a Atlas lathe is only as good as what it is mounted to. Most of these kind of complaints come from people that have mounted it to a old desk or a flimsy plywood workbench. I believe Alas lathes had lighter beds by design to assist in shipping or costs and were intended to be mounted to something solid and straight enough to reinforce it. This is why Atlas provided such specific instructions on mounting surfaces if you didn’t buy the factory stand.   Just my thoughts.



I tend to agree, most likely wood was used as to shelf/spacer and between the legs and bed for the same reason, all saves weight in transit.

Bernard


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## Ray C (Jun 10, 2013)

Pierre,

On the Jet, take the chuck off and then spin it up fast.  If it vibrates like heck w/o a chuck, you got some debugging to do.  If it only vibrates when a chuck is installed the chuck needs balancing.


Ray




pdentrem said:


> On my Atlas 10F24, it was mounted on a heavy wood stand and I had most of my steel cutoffs etc on the shelves in the stand. I have a picture posted on my website showing the Atlas on the stand if you are curious. The stand likely weighed twice as much as the lathe with all the metal and gears, chucks etc. I never had issues with vibration or chatter, except on a few occasions. Granted I almost never ran at top rpm either.
> 
> The Jet BDB1340 at work vibrates like crazy if spun at max rpm, and it weighs 1000# without the stand. I feel the stand is the real problem in the Jets case.
> Pierre


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## pdentrem (Jun 10, 2013)

Ray C said:


> Pierre,
> 
> On the Jet, take the chuck off and then spin it up fast.  If it vibrates like heck w/o a chuck, you got some debugging to do.  If it only vibrates when a chuck is installed the chuck needs balancing.
> 
> ...



Most work has been held either in the 3 jaw or a drill chuck mounted on an arbor. I will have to try with both chucks and see which is the problem, I was just thinking the same thing. If it is unbalanced, how many wheel weights can I glue to it?:whistle:
Pierre


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## Ray C (Jun 10, 2013)

You'll have to look that up in Machinist Handbook -but probably only 1 or 2 :LOL:

Give it a spin w/o chucks installed to get a baseline of how smooth it's capable of running...

Ray



pdentrem said:


> Most work has been held either in the 3 jaw or a drill chuck mounted on an arbor. I will have to try with both chucks and see which is the problem, I was just thinking the same thing. If it is unbalanced, how many wheel weights can I glue to it?:whistle:
> Pierre


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## BluCab (Jun 10, 2013)

pdentrem said:


> Most work has been held either in the 3 jaw or a drill chuck mounted on an arbor. I will have to try with both chucks and see which is the problem, I was just thinking the same thing. If it is unbalanced, how many wheel weights can I glue to it?:whistle:
> Pierre



Instead of adding wheel weights to the light side, I think that MSC sells do-it-yourself hole kits. You can just add holes to the heavy side.


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## pdentrem (Jun 10, 2013)

I will send the rookie across the street for a "bag of steam":roflmao:
Pierre


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## doninreno (Jun 25, 2013)

Seems to me that one of the biggest areas for N-O-I-S-E production is the gear train, especially when the feed drive is engaged. I quieted mine down a bunch by going through the gear train and checking/setting the tooth depth of engagement snf doing some cleaning and re-lubing.. If you get them too deep they make all kinds of racket and if not deep enough they are noisy noisy (and weak, I think). When they are in the right spot (the sweet spot, noise wise, it seems to me) the gear train is significantly quieter than when not. BTW, mine has a quick change setup...but I have heard the same noises from both non-QC and QC setups if not adjusted right!


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## doninreno (Jun 25, 2013)

pdentrem said:


> I will send the rookie across the street for a "bag of steam":roflmao:
> Pierre


  A guy has to be kind of careful with this stuff....A good friend of mine, while serving as a helicopter crew chief/mechanic in Viet Nam and HIS buddies sent a newbie off to find 50 yards of flight line. They didn't see him for like 3 or 4 days and when he did re-appear, he did it accompanied by 3 or 4 big dump trucks that were backed up to the hangar doors where they dumped their Loads of PSP (PSP = Perforated Steel Planking, which is what was put on the ground on flight lines and in front of hangars (see the picture)....it makes a HUGE, HUGE racket when you just dump it out like that!! And there was about 50 yards worth of it!! Needless to say...they had overlooked the fact that this particular guy, though new in country, was on his second tour there and instantly recognized that he was being screwed with and knew just how to fix THAT. OH, yeah....they never screwed with him after that!!  :rofl:


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## pdentrem (Jun 25, 2013)

Yes i can understand what happened there.
In '79, I remember that our QMASTER assistant was caught liberating some parts that were in desperate need to repair our rifles from another regiment's stores. They had a lifetime supply that was not going to be used while we had none. Fortunately the right people were involved, NCOs who knew the situation, and things were taken care of.
Every regimental Qmaster, has a expert scuronger working for him.
Pierre


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## schor (Jun 25, 2013)

I've got a th54 and mine is not noisy IMO. In back gears it is more noisy. I keep everything well lubed all the time. Here's a quick vid of it in operation making parts for my speed change pulley for my atlas drill press.

The lathe starts running about 1:45 into the vid.

[video=youtube;gBJkQkLPWb4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBJkQkLPWb4[/video]


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## Sundossa12 (Aug 18, 2013)

I always thought mine was noisy, now I see that its normal and running in great shape.


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