Bought Clausing 6900 series lathe, has 7/8-14 leveling bolts but no isolator feet

Yea I'll see how it continues. The thing I liked about these is that they have a steel washer inside of the counterbore of the foot so the adjustment screw isn't bearing on the rubber directly and it spreads the load a bit more across the rubber. It's overmolded rubber, so it partially encapsulates the steel, maybe that will be a good enough combination to remain stable. I'll have to keep checking it every so often. I had thought about making the feet, myself, whether out of steel or aluminum, as an alternative if this didn't work out.

I have other things like the speed control to fix, tailstock and saddle to tweak or troubleshoot. The glass scale that was added by a prior owner gets in the way of the carriage lock that I'll need to replace or modify. I just fixed the power feed, etc. caused by the cradle gear assembly having been chewed up and dropped into the bottom of the gearbox from an apparent missing roll pin in the engagement lever assembly. For now I have it rigged so that I can disengage the cradle gear but not lose the engagement of the remaining gear teeth. That was quite a battle/partial win in itself.
 
seems to me that the rubber feet would change over time due to either compression or the rubber hardening and mess up the leveling. many lathe manufacturers have details in the operator manuals to bolt to the concrete and level with jack bolts. this is from my manual. and yes, the depth of concrete they show in nuts. I have it on an 8" thick concrete slab.
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yota said:
seems to me that the rubber feet would change over time due to either compression or the rubber hardening and mess up the leveling. many lathe manufacturers have details in the operator manuals to bolt to the concrete and level with jack bolts. this is from my manual. and yes, the depth of concrete they show in nuts. I have it on an 8" thick concrete slab.
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The rubber did not hold up, it seemed to be pretty rigid, but over time it proved to be inadequate. I removed those and placed some square steel pads ~.25" thick under the adjustment bolts so it wouldn't crack the concrete (without anything but the tip of the adjustment bolts).

I was hoping it was a high durometer, low Shore D range, but whatever it was, it wasn't good enough to support that weight over time. It seemed to hold during leveling, but who knows how many hours/days later when it started to creep.
 
I used 6" heavy duty expensive Mason brand rubber/steel pads on my mill as there is less concern over leveling than with a lathe. I leveled it very precisely and recently noticed some movement as I was changing to a new DRO system. it was actually rocking slightly. re-adjusted the pads but don't expect it to last. they just change over time as rubber does.
 
Thanks for the message, mine wasn't rocking, but with a precision level after a few weeks (because of poor surface finish/taper) I found that the rubber had deformed much more drastically than they originally appeared, and much faster than a simple 'throughout the year' type of a process change. Within a few weeks it was completely out of level/twist, then I found them to have deformed like a hard marshmallow, Lol.
 
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