- Joined
- Nov 14, 2011
- Messages
- 27
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?
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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