What Is Wrong With The Lathe Now? 

Personally i wouldnt mind a multipart project fixing those gears. Perfecting little bits like that to just get everything running as good as it can be is why i love watching machining

Cast Iron is used for backplates because it's dimensionally very stable, it dampens vibrations, it's much more resistant to getting dinged up or chips embedding themselves into it than steel and it's got better wear resistance since it is basically self lubricating. If you plan on changing chucks regularly for the next 30 years, it might make a difference, but I think regular steel is totally fine for a hobby shop. Maybe be extra careful about cleaning the spindle nose, so you don't have any chips embedding themselves into the steel.

the joys of having a lathe, the only machine that can make every part of itself including add-ons.

that home improvement sound caught off guard :D:D Edit: cast iron is used for backplates because of vibration and chatter dampening capabilities.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the "I build a new lathe from scratch" video came out next week. Lol

The machinists at my work (hydraulic repair shop) use brass pieces on their steady rests because ball bearings would ruin the chrome on the rods. They put the machine coolant where the steady rest runs to keep it lubricated

The reason why Cast iron is normally used it is soft and easy to machine also cheap. 1045 is a bit of overkill in comparison, any steel or even brass provided its not threaded will do. Being a 4 jaw you usually go for the narrowest solution as they are normally going to be the one holding the biggest parts. You could have just drilled and taped new threads in the back of the chuck and that is a perfectly acceptable solution even oh a tool room lathe. The thing that might be worth attention or checking at the least is the tail stock. When drilling a hole I noticed it jump a little. This could be related to a bent chuck or drill bit but sometimes it it the tail stock itself. Even on commercial grade machines it is quite common to see this problem normally due to abuse but i have encountered it several times on brand new machines. It isn't to difficult to test, all you do is mount a clock against the chuck and measure the concentricity of the tail stock quill at different extensions. As its difficult to measure the quills internal accuracy the usual method is the fit a dead center and measure that with the quill wound in , out and central to generate a its center line in relation to the chuck axis. You may find it's pointing in the wrong direction. You can also do this on different locations on the bed as if your lathe has been re scraped in particular this can be off. Its very common on a re scraped lathe to have the carriage ways pointing downwards towards the chuck as well. Its a shame to see just how sloppy the internal gear train is in the head stock those lathes have gotten a lot worse over the years. The lubrication specked for them is also not the greatest. It's the most basic cheapest hydraulic oil and nothing more. In my machine that is the same as yours I had the same problem. I substituted the 32 iso for some engine oil used in Automatic transmission in classic Minis/ Motorcycle wet clutch engine oil. It shut it up and it felt a lot smoother in operation. When I worked in machine tool repair for 25 + years when faced with similar problems I have upped the viscosity by either using an iso 68 or a blend of 46 and 68. It depended on heat it generated. I have used additives as well but thats a deep dark hole that is best not one dived into here. Any way none of this was intended as criticism just a heads up . Cheers

Thicker oil. Chainsaw chain oil has an extra sticky additive which stops it flying off, sometimes called climbing oil. Lol, in my youth, banana skins in an old car's gearbox was a great silencer!

Noisy gears: You can try a thicker oil, like the oil that is used in differential gear boxes. You still can see metal shavings in the oil, maybe you should place a magnet at the bottom of the box (usually the outlet screw). Collects the shavings and they don´t go round and round infinetely... But don´t magnetize your gears and bearings!😉

For round cast iron I look for people giving away old weight sets on craigslist and facebook. I put a 6" 4 jaw on my 8.5" swing lathe, made the back plate of 1/2" sheet steel. No issues a year later.

Oil between the guides and the part also helps a lot with steady rests to keep them from wearing out faster and from marring the part. Really cool modification vid!

instead of kerosene, run a gear oil full of emulsifiers/detergents, i.e. automatic transmission fluid, since ATF will pull all the dirt into suspension, and drain. just make sure you do one or two flushes with normal gear oil to remove the emulsifiers and detergents as those are not good for splash lube geartrains in the long run. although it's a fairly good solvent, kerosene has a very low lubricity so you risk causing more harm than good.

Nice project, great work on your new chuck. Thanks for sharing.

Instead of Ball bearing for the steady rest I would highly recommend making some wear pads out of PA6, its fairly tough and when lubricated with oil it won't damage your surface, I've used mine a lot on Chrome rods and its just wonderful, ofc you are limited with doc and load but it's completely resistant to chips and embeds small chips without surface damage

I have a similar lathe, just sold under a different brand name in South Africa. The gearbox sounds exactly the same, I'm also think ing of pulling it apart, but first I'm trying a thicker oil. Thanks for the video.

I don't have any if the tools you do (lathe/mill etc..) but one thing I've always appreciated that you show is that with a little bit of time and effort you can 'convert' cheap shoddy parts into genuinely good tools. Obviously when buying tools you pay for them to not be rubbish in the first place. And for some people, like pros running a commercial machine shop, you don't have time to fix stuff and time spent doing so is lost revenue, so spending on the high quality tools is a must. But for a hobbyist having fun and doing stuff 'just cause' its a great way to build up a collection of tools with less spend (and improving skills in the process).

My dad is more lazy and holds the 4 jaw in his 3 jaw and says come on, i'm building a steam engine, they dont care for tolerances!

The chuck key holder was genius bud! Love the channel and the work, stay awesome!

I have the same 4 jaw from vevor. I just made two new threaded holes in it to convert it into 3 bolt system.

Home improvement and last man standing 2 of the best comedy. Sitcom shows ever!

The tinny housing covers in effect amplify all noises between their sources and your ears. Sticky-backed acoustic foam on the cabinet inside where accessible would help.

Hey dude, I love this channel, it's amazing to see a local fella make good machinist content. Keep it up :)

Great upgrades, like the steady a lot, way better. Cheers 👍💪✌

Hi. Great video as always! I have the same lathe, and also copped the same issue (with bolt holes) when I bought a 4 jaw chuck. Instead of making a back plate, I drilled 3 holes in the chuck to suit the lathe. Works a treat.

That back plate turned out great. It makes me motivated on figuring out why I'm getting so much chatter with an old lathe I bought. I would love to be able to make clean looking parts like that!

The noise improvement was remarkable, thank you for sharing your time.

Thanks for sharing 👍 Some good fixes.

I agree with the other comments about thicker oil for your gearbox. The oil you were using seems very thin for gear oil especially if it wasn’t really warm when you either poured or removed it. Whilst a much thicker oil won’t completely remove all the noise I think it will really make quite a difference. Love the channel 👍

Properly done! Good job!

That backplate for the independent 4-jaw chuck is a great project. I made one of those myself a while ago.

I bought a cheap Chi/Com 13x40 lathe back in the 1980's. Gear Head, very noisy. The oil they recommended was thin. I have heard of people using 90 wt gear oil. I am going to try a synthetic multi-grade because my shop can get below freezing in winter. Thanks for your great videos.

again, awesome Mr Makes

Lathely you've been featuring this machine a lot. Great videos , can't complain

Use brass for 0,5 mm washer next time. Steel washer will slowly wear the casting of the steady rest. Brass washer will wear too, but thats a much easyer replacement than the casting.

At a former workshop I used two old Vdf Boehringer lathes with hydrocopters, the ones for copy threads. One of them was making a terrible noise from the gearing to the copy spindle, and i dropped in 120w gear oil in it. The noise disappeared. It had a much lighter grade in before. The noise in gearbox can sometimes be from the axle splines giving a play to the gears.

Ich hatte auch Langeweile und habe bis zum Ende gekuckt, tolle Maschine für einen Hobby Dreher. Daumen hoch.

Maybe get a slightly thicker oil, and tungsten disulphide additive for friction. Both should help with sound. And a magnet in contact with the oil so as it spins the magnet pics up metal from the oil (most automotive automatic gear boxes and some manual have magnets in the sump or the sump plug)

I hot-glue a couple of neodymium magnets to housings to hold my chuck keys. Of course, that's on a drill press where chips aren't always flying everywhere🤣

Thicker oil will help. Maybe with some zinc additives

Run thicker oil. It will help with sound. Pluses straight cut gears should have thick oil .like a 140w or higher. The gear boxes I work with oil is as thick if not thicker then honey

Sometimes I wonder. When I was still using a 1943 SouthBend 9A, the lathe was essentially silent as long as the backgear was not in use and the tumbler gears were in neutral. A virtually silent induction motor driving double reduction V belt drives and hydrodynamic journal bearings in the headstock, there was nothing to make much in the way of noise (the change from fibre to roller thrust bearings added a tiny amount of noise). The arrangement allowed the SB, 16 cutting speeds, neutral without turning off the electric motor, slack belt turning for very delicate work, very quick disengagement of the drive from the headstock, etc. It took very little time to change spindle speeds, insignificant compared to the total time to do most jobs. As to belt drive slip, that is just a sign that you are pushing the lathe too hard, and in my opinion, a good thing. Precision toolroom lathes such as the Monarch 10EE and Hardige HLV used belt drive to the headstock. Amongst other things, this provided compliant isolation of the headstock from sources of mechanical vibration. So, really, for a small hobbyist lathe, why a headstock gearbox with all its attendant complexity, problems, and noise?

I've said before, and saying again, LOVE your video's!

I can't wait for you to get into that gearbox. There are a lot of people out there with this lathe, or any lathe like this that needs the gear box sorted out. I will be an awesome series of videos.

There was a lot in it this week. Thanks.

Great video 🤩 especially the original "quality" of that steady Rest was quite appalling. Great to see how relatively easily you could improve it 👍

From the generous amount of backlash you demonstrated in the lathe gears I think that I would work hard to determine the cause before replacing any parts. While it is possible that the gears are not machined correctly it’s also possible that the center distance(s) between shafts might be a bit off. It doesn’t take much error in either or both to create a lot of play. This sounds like something to work on when your project list is depleted. Well done video.

I have the same machine. The spindle is not hardened. I drilled 3 additional holes for the four-cam chuck in the spindle. From Russia with love!

Nice job(s) ! You might consider using long, (40mm) M8 grub screws in place of your bolts to hold both your4 jaw back plate and your 3 jaw chuck. I've done that to the three chucks I have for my lathe and believe you me, it's a lot easier to get nuts onto the grubscrews than it is to get a bolt started into a hole with little clearance. If you don't like it you can always change it back again.

Good job on that back plate mate! In the future, you can find good cast iron fly wheels on old treadmill motors. They are normally around 6" so it's a good size.

Hi,thank you for the helpful Videos🖖

Looking at the open compartment a belt drive conversion would probably be quite simple. I'd use serpentine belts, two stage, and a brushless motor with VFD. The pulleys are easy to make and if you replace the spindle bearings, radial on the front and a pair of angular contact on the back you will probably get some decent high speeds, factoring in bearing quality. You might need to make a retaining / tensioning setup for the angular contact bearings. Belt drives when done well run smooth as silk, super quiet and with little vibration. Some people even belt drive the spindle to leadscrew gearbox connection too, or use an electronic leadscrew setup 😀

After seeing and hearing this I went down to the workshop and checked on my lookalike. At 710 rpm it increased noise level 20 dB.At max speed 30 dB. Smooth running. No risk of hearing damage.

That was a good Tim allen impression.

Thanks for the vid! I also found the "you need cast iron for a backing plate" mentions when looking on info to make my own. Hard to find any good arguments for it though. Only thing sounding reasonable was "cast iron dampens vibrations". But I'm thinking it's a "cargo cult" thing: nobody really knows, but just copies each other. Maybe in some applications you really need cast iron, but steel works fine in most. By the way, I would have just drilled a 3- hole pattern in that cheap chuck.

Nice job. If worse came to worse, you could put an oil treatment in to quiet the gears a bit; until you get ready to tear it down. I know a few guys that have done that.

Next step, solid tool post :D

There are lots of things you can look at in no particular order. Gear meshing issues (cast and not ground properly), slop in gearbox, unbalanced pulleys, unmatched belts, low viscosity gear oil (use heavier oil as others have recommended). Import lathes are a project, but you can fine tune them to be very quiet and precise with some work.

I have that lathe to and the sound problem on my lathe was the gearbox pulley. Try to unscrew it a little bit and the sound disappear. It is some failure in the construction so then you tighten the nut the ballbearing will suffer and that make noise.

I just now realized how slow lathe work is on your lathe. When I saw this 21:29 and the small amount of material the tool removed and then this 21:55. I commend you for doing all this. Not to mention this as well 22:41. It is extremely hard to drill the holes even if you have an DRO. Taking an accurate edge messurement from a inner circle is extremely hard. There's a lot of back and forth and even then you can't be sure if it's spot on or not. I have never even seen a metal lathe in real life but I can relate in some way cause of all the videos I've watched. How did you managed to messure the center of the grove you made for the spindle nose anyway? Home Improvement is just an awesome show :D

Creative video, thanks :)

Great vid as usual. One or two negative comments on here which is a shame. Definitely needs a magnet on that drain plug. Could you just slap a big old speaker magnet on the side of the gearbox to attract the metal particles? That's not going to help much if some of that is casting sand though. Good job on the steady rest, I love improving tools and making them my own.

To hold the chuck key in reach I just put a magnet in the place I want to store the key. Huge benefit: it's dead easy to relocate. I just can't make my brain to put the key in the same place twice in a row...so I still spend time looking for it, despite this very clever trick. Another trick for you : invest in an inverter so you can vary the speed continuously without stopping the lathe. Can be very handy for ultra low speed (taping) or variable diameters (facing)

Fantastic.👍

To solve the problem of lost keys for drill chucks, I glue a magnet to the machine in the ideal spot and then slap the key on that. And no drilling or tapping required.

That my friend was a spot on tim the toolman

Glad to see your emergency stop button wasn't marked with AZ-5 like the emergency stop button in Chernobyl.

I'm not sure if you've seen it but, I've seen the channel "We Can Do That Better" use a carbide cutting tool like you used to turn down that adapter plate to effectively cut indicator lines in to some of his hand cranks. Watching you tap alignment dots into that adapter plate made me think of this. If you haven't changed out your four jaw chuck yet you might want to do that to have the perfect alignment instead of the dots which aren't in a perfectly straight line.

I was told by Hare & Forbes Sydney, a few years ago, if the noise of the gear box is so annoying, put heavy gear oil in to to quieten it down. Which I did. I have the Al 760, the Hare & Forbes anniversary model.

Your tap wrench is certainly an artefact from warehouse 13!

The chuck adapter blank I used for my 4-jaw cost more than the chuck itself. I removed about a kilogram of iron fitting it up. I think some of that black "gold" still turns up in the shop occasionally, in the form of smudges and rust spots.

hey with your gearbox whot I did is put thicker oil in as that makes it much quiter to run and use I also put more than its supposed to have also helped

It seems like you need a lot more belt tension, normally your "upper" part of the belt (closer to the wall) Should be running without any jumping ect. And your lower (chuck side) belts can jump an wobble a bit (if I've seen the rotation correctly, if not vice versa

Beautiful thread insert! Thanks for sharing this idea!

I have never used a steady rest I always held wood turnings with my free hand so I really don't know how helpful they are but you did a cracking job of upgrading that one I hate the springs on chuck keys, theyre infuriating....I know why theyre there but they always annoy me so much I take the springs off. Great adapter for the four jaw Nice job Thanks for sharing

Ive got the same spindle and size , planning on getting an 8"chuck aswelll

Hi Have you considered changing the viscosity of the gearbox oil. It is probably a ISO 46 oil at present. Try a ISO68 and see what happens. Alternatively add a gearbox additive like STP. Nulon also make a non-Neutonian oil additive as well. Cheers.

Try adding a bit of Molyslip gearbox additive to the headstock first rather than a thicker oil.

Feel like you might have watched Clough42 for the chuck conversion.

I hope you'll talk a little more about that magnetic drain plug when it arrives. I'm just about to pull the trigger on an AL250G as well and would like to get a magnet in there from day one when I start flushing the crud out of the gearboxes.

Has similar issues with my Lathe. I found that increasing the viscosity of the oil and installing quality 'matched' drive belts reduced noise considerably.

With respect to the lathe noise, may I recommend one thing that may help. Try replacing the regular V-belts with a product called "Link Belt" by Fenner Drives (USA). This stuff, at least in Canada is sold by the foot (metre?) and as the name implies is made up of individual links that can easily be added or removed to get the ideal length. Also given this ability, if you have a headstock spindle that is belt driven, you can mount a Link Belt without having to remove the spindle to slip it on. Most importantly I have found my machine is much quieter than when running with regular V belts. Hope that may be of some use. Paul

That gearbox sounds like a real old clanker. I made my own 6 speed box for an old Zyto .With 2 speed belt from the motor I get 12 speeds. My box is quieter made on a home converted clarke pillar drill with Chinese cutters from RDG tools. Not perfect but better than a lot of lathes you hear about. I have also put a 8000rpm variable speed Ac Dc motor on it so I can have high speed for small parts and can reduce the speed and use the low ratios on the box for torque. Rev range 8600 down to 35 rpm

I had to make the exact same thing last year. Steel like yours seems fine to me but I did use cast iron as I happened to find an old cast pulley that I was able to turn down and it works perfectly. In the process I realised an other source of similar cast metal is gym weights so that might be an option should you ever need any more. By the way turning cast iron is messy as, I prefer free machining steel.

The chuck bolt on method you must find tedious surely? Keen to see your take on it. Also I highly recommend wood down on the ways when changing the chuck over as eventually your luck runs out. Ask me how I know

You can just drill the chuck, not an issue on a 4 jaws as there is plenty of material to drill. The register accuracy doesn't matter on a 4 chuck, since you need to adjust it anyway.

re the cast iron backplate: several others have addressed other reasons: however, cast iron being softer & more brittle than any other part of the assembly is likely intentional as well: better to damage a simple adapter plate than the spindle or the head:and it would be softer than the bolts. it also cracks & crumbles rather than shatter, bend or distort: limiting the risk of secondary damage during the failure. basically, its a designated failure point in a metal that provides ease of use advantages, too.

I’m not sure what oil they recommend in that gear box, but depending on your environment(I assume it’s warm year around?) you could increase the viscosity. While it does steal horse power, a higher viscosity straight cut gear lubricant may decrease gear noise significantly.

Nice bit of kit, your air coolant dispenser. Have you got a link or a video on this?

You know, noisy gearboxes are usually fixed with mixing liberal quantities of sawdust with the oil... 😁 Seriously, it will be interesting to se you tackle the problem! Perhaps get a noise meter into the footage, to add some visual suspence to the footage? (Camera recording tries to level soundlevel, just recording will not let you hear improvement all that well.)

Edcon Steel has a good range of metals including cast iron. They have an online store and cut to size. 140mm round cast iron 30mm length will set you back $18.79+gst plus $26 cutting fee.

Also pardon my dumb, but why not just drill the three-hole pattern into the chuck? No room past the slots for the jaws?

Hello, dear friend, the sooner you solve the problem of the gearbox sticking, the better for you and your ears, and for the possible damage of the gears. Next thing, pay attention to the table on which the machine is placed, and if the table is not firm and rigid, change it too, and if possible, remove the wooden sheet and connect the iron legs directly to the chassis of your machine so that the sound becomes less and less!!❤❤❤

I think you should use some higher weight oil. That thin oil looks like it's having issues making it's way to the top gears. Especially since not only the outsides of the gears, but also the gearing shafts need lubrication. I guess that the loose gear in the back right corner rattled pieces of itself and the shaft away. While thicker oil might not have mitigated that, it would have definetly made it last longer.

You might need to make some bronze bushings for the gearbox! I don't know if the company that made your lathe actually makes those for your lathe.

Having a small assortment of carbon steel shim stock and a punch is really, really handy for things like this. "Precision Brand" markets both for a reasonable price. You can get it at any of the usual suspects.

This thought come to me every time i see you do one of your bigger builds, but what do you do with all the chips you cut?

Not sure the weight oil it calls for or if you have ever tried heavier oil, but thats what I did for mine. Different model but basically the same. I put 75-90 syn gear oil and it is way way quieter. The gears rattle way less. Tho they all could use custom made shims for sure. But been running it for 6 years and no issues.

The oil look to be far too thin for a straight cut gearboxi would try some 40w straight hydraulic oil, there s metal in the oil you drained out, which means it is not doing its job! Love the mod on the steady rest! Phil

18:32 - I'm hoping you got power cross feed because that looks like it was gonna take forever!

Did you check the gear mesh? The detents for the selector can be way off.