New to me lathe, Atlas by Clausing 6 x18

[T Bredehoft]

I found this lathe through the (what have you seen on Craigslist) forum. It was advertised as an Atlas by Clausing 6 x 24 lathe, there were four or five pictures and a price. I discussed it with my 'financial adviser' and she said Go Ahead If You Want it. The least I could do was go look at it. After a 70 minute drive I saw it, smaller than it looked in the pictures, but that's not a problem, it was a whole lot bigger than the HF 5 by 12 I was thinking about. Long story short the seller was a really nice guy, has a whole shop full of lathes and mills both in operation and under construction. (about a 3 car heated separate building) It came on a fabricated wood and metal base, we removed the lathe from the base and put them both in my Subaru. I got home (70 minutes later) and got the lathe into my shop. The seller had put a 1/2 piece of steel in the Jacobs chuck on the end of the spindle and made some chips to prove that it worked. In reality those were probably the first chips the lathe had made. I examined the ways under a good light and found one minor scratch about 10 inches long on the back way, an oil stain on the front and no other evidence of use. I'm in the process now of dis-assembly and cleaning so I can be sure all the original oil and grease has been replaced with new. Its the model with the cast iron head, not the Zamak which Clausing called die cast aluminum. How to tell them apart, the aluminum headed lathes are painted blue, the cast iron gray. The four jaw chuck that came with it has never been mounted, there's still cosmosline on the mounting threads.

I'm looking forward to some very satisfactory work from this lathe.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

congrats on your new lathe! I think that they're very capable machines for their size - all the features of larger lathes, but small enough to fit on the front seat of your car

How much did it set you back? Pics?

 

[T Bredehoft]

Re: New to me lathe, Atlas by Clausing 6 x 18



I figured it cost the same as a Harbor Freight 5 by 12 plus freight (which I'd have to pay anyway). I have found, much to my surprise that it doesn't have cross feed. But I can turn cranks if I have to.

The part to the right of the picture is just ways and tail stock, they all look alike. What can't be seen in the picture is the ways, covered with grinder marks, no wear.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

Re: New to me lathe, Atlas by Clausing 6 x 18

looking good and a good price too! It will be a lot more capable than one of those microlathes, even for doing small stuff. You won't have to stress about getting a drill chuck and drill in there for a start!

 

[Crafted]

Re: New to me lathe, Atlas by Clausing 6 x 18

I have a Unimat at work for small fixes and such. Been thinking of buying one of the small China mini lathes. However, I'm wondering if a refurbished Atlas 6x24 wouldn't be a much better choice?

Dave

 

[wa5cab]

T,

First, it's a 6 x 18, not a 6 x 24. Atlas never made a 6 x 24. It was known as the Atlas 6" MK2. I recently ran a survey on the MK2 here and on two of the Yahoo Atlas groups. I got a lot of responses from Yahoo but not from H-M (two, I think). I'm about ready to write up the survey results, which I'll publish here and on Yahoo.

There turn out to have been three major groups and some minor ones. The color is not a consistent identifier. There were four model numbers sold, 3950 (inch), 3925 (metric), 10100 (inch) and 10200 (metric). Plus Sears sold the 3950 (only) as their Model 101.21200. The 3950 is gray, has a cast iron headstock with ball bearings, and the compound slide is the same as on the earlier Atlas 618. All 10100's have Timken tapered roller bearings and a different spindle part number. The first roughly 10,000 10100 's also had cast iron headstocks. The first few hundred were still painted gray. Somewhere between 000235 and 000895 they changed the color to blue, but the headstock casting and part number remained 383-017 for a while after that. Sometime after 002165 it was changed to 383-020 with no other apparent changes but the paint color. And the early round-top compound slide was replaced by the later flat-top one.

Somewhere along the time line, the material call out on the 383-020 drawing was changed to aluminum but no aluminum headstocks turned up in my survey. Only two Zamak headstocks plus the one photo on the UK site were reported, one being a 10200. One Zamak headstock was reported as still having a 383-020 casting number. The other two do not have legible casting numbers.

Robert D.

I found this lathe through the (what have you seen on Craigslist) forum. It was advertised as an Atlas by Clausing 6 x 24 lathe, ...

Its the model with the cast iron head, not the Zamak which Clausing called die cast aluminum. How to tell them apart, the aluminum headed lathes are painted blue, the cast iron gray. The four jaw chuck that came with it has never been mounted, there's still cosmosline on the mounting threads.

I'm looking forward to some very satisfactory work from this lathe.

 

[David S]

Re: New to me lathe, Atlas by Clausing 6 x 18

I have a Unimat at work for small fixes and such. Been thinking of buying one of the small China mini lathes. However, I'm wondering if a refurbished Atlas 6x24 wouldn't be a much better choice?

Dave

Dave I started out with the Unimat DB200 years ago and did a fair amount of small work with it. In the early 70's I got a chance to purchase an Atlas 618 from a retired machinist who only used it to make a scale model steam locomotive.

It is my main machine and haven't used the Unimat in years. I know someone who has a mini lathe and for me the distance between centers at 8 or 12 inches can be quite confining when you have something in the 4 jaw and a larger bit in the tailstock. With the Atlas at 18" it provides lots of room for what I do.

David

 

[Fabrickator]

I had an Atlas 6X18 like the one in the pic for my first lathe (10100/Blue-cast iron). As Robert said, one of the big differences besides the head stock material was the later models had Timken bearings and the earlier ones had ball bearing spindles. The Timken model is the preferred one, that's what I had. Mine still had a little "Timken" sticker on the head stock. Mine came with an old used Craftsman motor that I'm sure was not the original. The capacitor start was not working and I had to "give it a spin" to get it turning.

Overall, it was a great first lathe, but I soon outgrew it and bought a Grizzy G0602. I sold it in a couple of years for what I paid for it ($400) but threw in some tooling and a QC tool post. There is a website that a guy put together that has the history and particular nuances for identifying these lathes if you do a search. Also, I found the manual for mine online as well.

T,

First, it's a 6 x 18, not a 6 x 24. Atlas never made a 6 x 24. It was known as the Atlas 6" MK2. I recently ran a survey on the MK2 here and on two of the Yahoo Atlas groups. I got a lot of responses from Yahoo but not from H-M (two, I think). I'm about ready to write up the survey results, which I'll publish here and on Yahoo.

There turn out to have been three major groups and some minor ones. The color is not a consistent identifier. There were four model numbers sold, 3950 (inch), 3925 (metric), 10100 (inch) and 10200 (metric). Plus Sears sold the 3950 (only) as their Model 101.21200. The 3950 is gray, has a cast iron headstock with ball bearings, and the compound slide is the same as on the earlier Atlas 618. All 10100's have Timken tapered roller bearings and a different spindle part number. The first roughly 10,000 10100 's also had cast iron headstocks. The first few hundred were still painted gray. Somewhere between 000235 and 000895 they changed the color to blue, but the headstock casting and part number remained 383-017 for a while after that. Sometime after 002165 it was changed to 383-020 with no other apparent changes but the paint color. And the early round-top compound slide was replaced by the later flat-top one.

Somewhere along the time line, the material call out on the 383-020 drawing was changed to aluminum but no aluminum headstocks turned up in my survey. Only two Zamak headstocks plus the one photo on the UK site were reported, one being a 10200. One Zamak headstock was reported as still having a 383-020 casting number. The other two do not have legible casting numbers.

Robert D.