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MX210 D/S MT5 8x16 lathe review
- Thread starter greenail
- Start date
I just made a block to replace the compound slide and I still can't seem to get any rigidity. my little 7x10 lathe is much more rigid! I'm planning on talking the spindle out to see if it in fact actually has roller bearings. All the chatter when parting seems to be coming from the headstock at this point so I'm not sure what else to do 
. Worst tool I've purchased in a while.
. Worst tool I've purchased in a while.so i ended up pulling the spindle. There was grinding dust thick in the bearing seats. The wear patter on the roller bearings was top on one half, bottom on the other half. This seems to indicate there was something pushing them out of square. The rear of the boar where the back of the bearing seated had huge burrs. Every surface stacked up on the spindle had burrs, the gear, the spacer with the magnets, the pulley and both of the nuts.
I figured I had nothing to loose by re-assembling it after deburring everything. I used a die grinder stone to deburr the bearing boar seats by hand. I couldn't really do much about the inside where the seals were. it was like 60 grit sandpaper on the inside of the headstock. I "lapped' all the components with 320 grit on a surface plate. I chucked some of them up in my other lathe to deburr some edges. The seals actually were not that bad, too bad they don't help squaring anything. I used a chunk of 1.5" aluminum to tap out the bearing races and I cleaned them up with all the other parts in the ultrasonic cleaner. The rear bearing got dropped on the floor and about 3 oz of chips were on there when I picked it up so I ended up putting that in the cleaner also. All i had was white lithium grease so I packed that in the rear bearing and reassembled everything. I also noticed that the bearing races had to be tapped into the start of the bore but they spun freely by hand when fully seated in the bore. This made me think it could have been one of the sources of chatter. I added quite a bit of preload (figuring I had nothing to lose). I ran it for about 10 minutes and it didn't get warm or hot.
The rebuild seems to have helped though I'm not sure what had the most impact. I did a test part on steel and I was able to feed it without chatter. I have about 0.3mm of taper over 150mm which isn't great and i'm not sure how to fix that. the milling on the bottom of the headstock was an awfull mess. the casting was very pourus and felt like velcro to the finger. I stoned it down and knocked off some of the really bad high spots but it still had some teeter/twist. It was also odd that I preloaded the bearings before i put the headstock back on the bed. When I tightened it to the bed I ended up needing to add more preload so I'm assuming the twist was somewhat straightened and relieved some stress on the bearings. not really sure but it wasn't exactly a scraped surface. A file may have done a better job actually.
I think my HF7x10 lathe is actually still more rigid without the roller bearings or larger bed... The only thing good about this lathe so far is the 1.5" spindle bore and the chucks it came with, though it still strikes me odd that it came with both a 3 and 4 jaw self centering. I bought a 6" independent 4 jaw but it's mt5 taper back plate doesn't fit and I havn't bothered to make a new back plate for it yet.
I figured I had nothing to loose by re-assembling it after deburring everything. I used a die grinder stone to deburr the bearing boar seats by hand. I couldn't really do much about the inside where the seals were. it was like 60 grit sandpaper on the inside of the headstock. I "lapped' all the components with 320 grit on a surface plate. I chucked some of them up in my other lathe to deburr some edges. The seals actually were not that bad, too bad they don't help squaring anything. I used a chunk of 1.5" aluminum to tap out the bearing races and I cleaned them up with all the other parts in the ultrasonic cleaner. The rear bearing got dropped on the floor and about 3 oz of chips were on there when I picked it up so I ended up putting that in the cleaner also. All i had was white lithium grease so I packed that in the rear bearing and reassembled everything. I also noticed that the bearing races had to be tapped into the start of the bore but they spun freely by hand when fully seated in the bore. This made me think it could have been one of the sources of chatter. I added quite a bit of preload (figuring I had nothing to lose). I ran it for about 10 minutes and it didn't get warm or hot.
The rebuild seems to have helped though I'm not sure what had the most impact. I did a test part on steel and I was able to feed it without chatter. I have about 0.3mm of taper over 150mm which isn't great and i'm not sure how to fix that. the milling on the bottom of the headstock was an awfull mess. the casting was very pourus and felt like velcro to the finger. I stoned it down and knocked off some of the really bad high spots but it still had some teeter/twist. It was also odd that I preloaded the bearings before i put the headstock back on the bed. When I tightened it to the bed I ended up needing to add more preload so I'm assuming the twist was somewhat straightened and relieved some stress on the bearings. not really sure but it wasn't exactly a scraped surface. A file may have done a better job actually.
I think my HF7x10 lathe is actually still more rigid without the roller bearings or larger bed... The only thing good about this lathe so far is the 1.5" spindle bore and the chucks it came with, though it still strikes me odd that it came with both a 3 and 4 jaw self centering. I bought a 6" independent 4 jaw but it's mt5 taper back plate doesn't fit and I havn't bothered to make a new back plate for it yet.
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2020
- Messages
- 108
Many questions:
First, I see the Harbor freight 7x10 mentioned a few times above. It's locally about 570 with me thinking I can use their 20% discount coupon to put it in the price range of an ebay competitor. It seems none of the mini lathes anywhere have 4 star plus reviews. Is this more because they are nearly all poorly built or because they are mostly bought by people not prepared for the ride or is it because I am looking in the sub $1k price range?
Is the HF 7x10 better than the $70 cheaper HF 7x12 available only online?
I see a few members sharing what appear to be hands on experience with the WM210V. I really am drawn to the 1.5" or 38mm Spindle bore. Still I see a lot of comments regarding runout or alignment problems. Is this the go to budget lathe for spindle bore > 1"?
Is the WM210V a good choice or should I be looking for a more painful acquisition with expectations of a more pleasant future?
First, I see the Harbor freight 7x10 mentioned a few times above. It's locally about 570 with me thinking I can use their 20% discount coupon to put it in the price range of an ebay competitor. It seems none of the mini lathes anywhere have 4 star plus reviews. Is this more because they are nearly all poorly built or because they are mostly bought by people not prepared for the ride or is it because I am looking in the sub $1k price range?
Is the HF 7x10 better than the $70 cheaper HF 7x12 available only online?
I see a few members sharing what appear to be hands on experience with the WM210V. I really am drawn to the 1.5" or 38mm Spindle bore. Still I see a lot of comments regarding runout or alignment problems. Is this the go to budget lathe for spindle bore > 1"?
Is the WM210V a good choice or should I be looking for a more painful acquisition with expectations of a more pleasant future?
It really comes down to how you want to spend your time and how you value your time. Plenty to learn with this "kit" but if you don't want to fight the machine all the time I'd pick something else. If you value your time at say $50/hour then this is a real money pit. I bet I have 20 hours into mine. Something as simple as changing the speed can be a whole project since you have to take the back panel off to access the screw for the pulley... The banjo doesn't actually work for most of the metric threading pitches I needed. I've detailed most of the problems i've had but I'm sure I forgot a few hours of miscellaneous chores I didn't really want to deal with.
All that said the 7x10 lathe isn't exactly a cure. Mine was an older model and I think I got lucky both on the price and the chuck which has 0.01mm runout. I converted it to CNC and got rid of the compound. I'm not sure i'd want to use it with the compound since it is very hard to get tuned in and reduces rigidity quite a lot. I also replaced the motor.
i wish I had experience with precision matthews, they seem to get good reviews but I have not set one up so I can't compare.
hi I have the same wm210v machine and I have the same problem gear charts are all wrong have you found the right chart for this tour
hi I have the same wm210v machine and I have the same problem gear charts are all wrong have you found the right chart for this LATHE
Last edited:
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2013
- Messages
- 4,409
Let me try to help. You haven't posted any pictures of your lathe, and I know nothing else about it. Apologies if this is already known to you. But I'm going to get pretty basic and somewhat generic, just for the sake of completeness.
1. I assume you have gears both in the headstock and in a QCGB (quick change gear box) just ahead of the leadscrew. The thread pitch will be a combination of both gear sets, plus the lead of the leadscrew.
2. Headstock gears - If a series of gears is meshing with each other (ie, in a common plane), then intermediate gears don't affect the final ratio. The ratio is determined by the tooth counts of the first and last gears only. If a pair of gears is on a common shaft (ie, cluster), with previous gears driving one of them and subsequent gears being driven by the other, this tooth ratio must be multiplied in.
3. Commonly used sets of cluster gears for metric threads are shown in the table below. Only the 127/120 gives "exact" metric threads on an inch lathe, or "exact" inch threads on a metric lathe. The last column gives the thread pitch error of the alternate sets. You mentioned having a 56 tooth gear. It should be "clustered" with a 44 tooth. Assuming you have an inch lathe - your leadscrew has threads evenly divisible by inches, you'll want the headstock gear (and intermediate gear if used) to drive the 56 tooth gear. Subsequent gears should be driven by the 44 tooth gear.
4. If you have a QCGB, you'll want to open it up and do tooth counts of all the gears. This will give you a set of possible ratios. Note that the last gear in the headstock is on a shaft common with the gear(s) in the QCGB, so this constitutes a cluster. If no QCGB, you're driving the leadscrew directly from the last headstock gear, so no additional ratio needs to be factored in.
5. Once you've calculated the turns ratio between the spindle and the leadscrew, you multiply by the pitch (inches per turn) of the leadscrew to get the inches of carriage movement per spindle turn ... the thread pitch you will cut.
Here are two gear calculators that might be of help:
Change Gears for Threading
This calculator determines the correct change gears for any thread pitch. Works for all mini lathes and HiTorque Bench Lathes.
And here's the diagram I made for metric threading on my 12x24 lathe. Note the pictorial in the upper left, showing how the gears are arranged. The "A" gear is on a shaft driven by the spindle through some internal gearing, so it's part of a cluster, and thus becomes part of the final ratio. The "SET" column indicates the settings of the two levers of my QCGB.
If you could, please go ahead and post some photos of your headstock gearing setup, etc. Given specific info, I (we) can offer more specific advice.
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