A Tetley ashtray full of stubbed out rollies, you don't get that from This Old Tony! Technical knowledge, nice clear camera work and a lovely no nonsense presentation. Spot on chief.
you have more patients and commitment than me my friend, couple of years back i made a massive mistake in buying a 12" lathe from a UK company, i wanted a smaller lathe to compliment my big old Colchester, it was an asian import but i thought its new how bad can it be..... HA HA HA. casting sand in the gearbox, headstock misaligned, bed twisted, tailstock 5 degrees off center and 2mm too low. gears in the apron rusty. when i complained i got no response then they said i had to expect problems at the price. i spent months trying to rectify problems, finally gave up, stripped the 2.5 hp motor out and scrapped the rest a complete waste of over 2k. My old Colchester was made during WW2 and will outlive me
I am really looking forward to seeing how you plan to connect a stepper to drive the lead screw. I have a similar lathe and I installed a 1hp motor, changed the timing belt and timing gears with something more substantial. I changed out the plastic gears with metal. I am currently making adjustable gibs for the carriage and I installed Timken bearings. You opened my eyes to a couple great ideas for my mini lathe. The teeth comment was comical, I take my teeth out every day, so, it’s all good 😊.Keep up the great work.
looking forward to this, lots of us looking for ways to stiffen up our mini lathes . keep up the good work, you one of the best channels on youtube! 👍👍👍👍👍👍
All I've seen on these mini-lathes tells me if you want them to work you have to put the work in. Looking forward to seeing how far you take this. Blessings from South Africa.
Regarding the 'gib strips' for the saddle I used a thick steel strip with a thin brass layer super glued onto the steel for a bearing surface. The whole lot is shimmed and bolted solid to the carriage so nothing will part. It is an idea if still want bronze bearing surfaces but not the cost of thick bronze bar. I look forward to how the lathe progresses.
Hi John . Fortunately I have the mill so I am going to make them from solid brass and machine the step to suit. Good Idea though to use a thin strip and shims . Cheers Ade.
Hey Ades, Keith from Michigan. Good luck on updating this Lathe. It sounds like you have a good general idea to get it running again. My new Lathe has been giving me work out, too much 🙃 to explain. I haven't even turned anything on it yet. I wanted to say Hi 👋. Okay now, take care 🙂...
Gday Ade, congratulations on11k subs, the channel is growing very well, once you get this mini lathe all sorted and you do your magic it’ll be a very handy machine to have, perfect for very small parts, Cheers
I have heavily modified 2 of these type of lathes One slightly larger than the other. I changed the bearings for sealed angular contact bearings, as i could not be bothered trying to re-grease taper roller bearings on a regular basis. I changed for all metal gears. and used a 3/4 HP 3 phase motor and VFD to drive it. I also sorted out my own variable feed screw drive and it all works well. I got a lot of my motivation from Steve Jordan's earlier videos on you tube. None of these mini lathes are any use straight out of the box. But with patience they can be good machines. It does help though if you have access to another lathe to make your own parts and for that i have used an old clarke cl300 which is the same size as your machine and that to has had its fair share of modifying. Look forward to seeing your approach to modifying this machine take care and good luck. lets hope 2022 is a better year than 2021.
Just starting the same project with a small CJ18A lathe with a 3/4 HP 3 phase motor and VFD, if you want Warco green search for RAl 6011, looking forward to seeing your progress
Alright Ade, love your stuff mate. I have the largest version of that lathe, bolted it to a thick wooden bench and kept altering clamping until it started turning parallel. Spent alot of time setting it up really sweet and i am over the moon with it. Cannot believe how accurate i can turn on it. I run mine with leadscrew disengaged and its really quite quiet. Yours looks an early version. I would say newer ones are much better. All the best and happy new year to you and yours.
Going to watch this with Interest, i have a 7 x 14 Mini Lathe that i have had for about 4 years and only used it for maybe 1/2 an hour, I recently purchased a 10 x 30 Gear Head Bench top Lathe which is my goto now, also have a 100 mm ER32 Coll chuck and a ER 32 MT 2 Tailstock chuck for it, i also plan to use it for mainly small Rigid jobs... and i Treadmill Motor i plan to fit to it.. Already picking up on some ideas from you. Keep up the Good Work. :)
Hello Ade, A nice little project... for some reason I have always want a similar machine to mess around with... I am sure one will arrive in my workshop at some time in the future... See you on the next one. Take care. Paul,,
Got a mini lathe 750w brushlles motor partner with a myford ml7 very good for small work but ready for a similar job as your so looking forward to this series
Hi Ade. If I remember correctly, Warco green is RAL6011 Reseda Green. Painted mine with Rust-Oleum Hard Hat worked out great and a fantastic match too.
Hi Ade, when it comes to painting the lathe if you want a proper match to the Warco green use RAL 6011 Reseda Green. I've used when touching up my WM180 and the match appears spot on.
Nice one Ade, I recently bought one of these with the intent of converting to CNC eventually. Found out the headstock is misaligned causing about a 1mm in 150mm taper, also doesn't have the layshaft for the Hi-Low selector so I'll need to modify the headstock casting to make one of those. Interested to see how you get on with this thing.
I look forward to seeing how you make the aluminum cover plates for the bearing housing. As well as what you do for bearing seals. I am soon to replace the bearings in my mini lathe and replace the covers with aluminum as well maybe even put an alemite (grease fitting) fitting into the top of the head stock for the bearings.
How will you direct the grease into the bearings? I could only visualise this working if you have well fitting end plates with lip seals running on the spindle, and you put the grease fitting in the plates.
Hi Charles . I am thinking of fitting an oil seal to the front cover and grease points in the covers by cross drilling and plugging . All will be revealed when I work it out myself . lol. making it up as I go along again . Cheers Ade.
I had no interest in getting another small lathe until a few small tasks proved to be quite difficult on my very large Mueller. Very easy to turn a length of small material into a pretzel shape. Watching Joe Pie did nothing to help that. Finding a mini and making improvements now sounds like a challenge. I do have a no-name 4" x 16" that might fill that task, but bringing it up to some reliable condition may be more of a challenge than I was looking for, and I have, more or less, promised it to a nephew that says he is interested in that sort of thing. I'll wait until he's no longer concerned with surviving his first year of middle school, and see how he feels then.
Nice project. The mini’s have their place. I would also take a look at a reverse mounted parting arrangement like Sherline uses. Just added one for my Harrison M250 and it works well. The smaller lathes benefit from changing the parting tool physics (at least in my mind). They just aren’t rigid enough on their own to overcome my lack of skill when parting off. All the best!
Parting on small benchtops lathes is difficult at the best of times, but these mini lathes have the rigidity of a wet noodle as supplied and it becomes almost impossible. Getting rid of the top slide and sorting out the horrible carriage retaining strips makes a big difference. A rear parting tool doesn't help that much with deflection, but it doesn't dig in and ruin everything when the lathe starts flexing. Not that that's ever happened to me dozens of times...
You said the stock 2500 rpm is not high enough for small jobs, it will be interesting to see what pulley gearing you go for with the new VFD setup and what usable rpm range you end up with. I have one of these same mini lathes and the only place it really sucks is trying to drill steel with drill bit in the tailstock. It needs low rpm and just stalls the tiny motor. Hopefully with a 1hp VFD you can get decent top end rpm and still get good low rpm torque for drilling,..
Great stuff Ade, I was thinking collet lathe after your last video, something tells me eventually it will be doing more than just collet work lol. Cheers, Jon
Very interesting Ade. The cross slide leadscrew on those is shocking. Perhaps you could make a new one? Also how about zero backlash leadscrew nuts from acetal?
I've got more teeth lol, you and me both Ade. I have the clarke version of that lathe at the moment but moving to Yorkshire soon and will be getting a better lathe then, probably the Chester DV10VS, did look at the Warco's but the Chester comes with the stand too.
Ade, please find time to clean that ashtray out at 8:00 as I am not sure it is the right 'look' for this day and age. If you are thinking about making a driven lead screw why no go the whole hog and convert it to CNC?
You're not going to do the tapered gib mod on the carriage then? I did on my Sieg SC2 years ago and it improved things no end, plus you can tighten them up to act as a carriage lock.
I also have an unused mini lathe languishing in my workshop. Do I ditch it or do I wait to see what you do? 🤔 No brainier, I’m looking forward to seeing this series through to the end. 👏👏👍😀
I’m curious. Do you have a real use for this thing, or is it purely a fun project with no real use for you, with your much better lathe you’d modified, something like the steam engine you made? Among my other projects, I recently installed a three phase 3/4 horse inverter motor and VFD on one of my presses. These are fairly large and heavy motors. New, they’re not cheap. For a press, one can get away with a standard three phase, because drilling is a fairly quick process, though I don’t trust doing that. But for a mill or lathe, that’s not true, and a regular motor will heat up if you run it at any frequency other than the one it’s rated at. It could easily get damaged. So an inverter ready motor is really needed, even for a small lathe.
I have done a few upgrades to my mini lathe, including replacing the bearings, but rather than taper roller I used angular contact ball bearings as they are supposed to be better for combined loads... simultaneously acting radial and axial loads. Although anything would be an improvement on the standard ones! 👍
Taper rollers will have quite a bit higher axial and radial load ratings, but the advantages of using angular contact bearings is they can be had in the same thickness as the originals, they can be had with integrated seals and they don't require as much preload. The downside is they tend to be more expensive than taper rollers, especially for the premium brands. For this application angular contact bearings are the right choice IMO.
This looks like an enjoyable series so I’ve just given you a like and subscribed. I like your style. I think you’ll make a more limited but more fit machine out of this bit of Chineseium. Keep up the good work. 🥸👍✅
A Tetley ashtray full of stubbed out rollies, you don't get that from This Old Tony! Technical knowledge, nice clear camera work and a lovely no nonsense presentation. Spot on chief.
I think you’ll have a lot of viewers watching this series! Tons of mini lathe owners out there, and they’re fairly easy to “upgrade”!
you have more patients and commitment than me my friend, couple of years back i made a massive mistake in buying a 12" lathe from a UK company, i wanted a smaller lathe to compliment my big old Colchester, it was an asian import but i thought its new how bad can it be..... HA HA HA. casting sand in the gearbox, headstock misaligned, bed twisted, tailstock 5 degrees off center and 2mm too low. gears in the apron rusty. when i complained i got no response then they said i had to expect problems at the price. i spent months trying to rectify problems, finally gave up, stripped the 2.5 hp motor out and scrapped the rest a complete waste of over 2k. My old Colchester was made during WW2 and will outlive me
Absolute star...informative, knowledgeable and entertaining = Mechanical Engineer !
Thanks Ade, glad you decided to tackle this. Upgrades are kind of irresistible.
Keep them coming Ade, I enjoy watching your videos. 73
I am really looking forward to seeing how you plan to connect a stepper to drive the lead screw. I have a similar lathe and I installed a 1hp motor, changed the timing belt and timing gears with something more substantial. I changed out the plastic gears with metal. I am currently making adjustable gibs for the carriage and I installed Timken bearings. You opened my eyes to a couple great ideas for my mini lathe. The teeth comment was comical, I take my teeth out every day, so, it’s all good 😊.Keep up the great work.
looking forward to this, lots of us looking for ways to stiffen up our mini lathes . keep up the good work, you one of the best channels on youtube! 👍👍👍👍👍👍
Looking forward to the rest of the series
All I've seen on these mini-lathes tells me if you want them to work you have to put the work in. Looking forward to seeing how far you take this.
Blessings from South Africa.
I've always wondered about the quality of those Mini Lathes, so I'll be watching with interest. Thanks Ade.
I think they should be considered a Kit . all the good bits are missing . Cheers Ade.
Well done Ade, and congratulations on the subs and cheers!
I didn't want it to end , Sunday evenings are made of this
Thanks so much
Looking forward to this series of a fixin and rebuilding, great video ADE,keep'um coming.
Occam's Razor !
The simplest solution is usually the best. You've got the same mindset as me. Enjoyed that Ade !
Yes indeed . It is polishing a turd though . Cheers Ade.
@@ade63dug Hey Ade, you are a taff like me. You might not make it shine but I know you'll make it smooth 🧐🧐
Nice tasty project Ade.
Looking forward to seeing it rise from the ashes.
Regarding the 'gib strips' for the saddle I used a thick steel strip with a thin brass layer super glued onto the steel for a bearing surface. The whole lot is shimmed and bolted solid to the carriage so nothing will part. It is an idea if still want bronze bearing surfaces but not the cost of thick bronze bar. I look forward to how the lathe progresses.
Hi John . Fortunately I have the mill so I am going to make them from solid brass and machine the step to suit. Good Idea though to use a thin strip and shims . Cheers Ade.
Very interested in the mini lathe project, looking forward to seeing more.
Looking forward to this series, especially the collet chuck mounting. Great work Ade👍
Hey Ades, Keith from Michigan. Good luck on updating this Lathe. It sounds like you have a good general idea to get it running again. My new Lathe has been giving me work out, too much 🙃 to explain. I haven't even turned anything on it yet. I wanted to say Hi 👋. Okay now, take care 🙂...
I had the Clarke one a few years ago. There was so much slop in everything.
Interesting plans Ade.
Best wishes, Dean in Oxfordshire.
Gday Ade, congratulations on11k subs, the channel is growing very well, once you get this mini lathe all sorted and you do your magic it’ll be a very handy machine to have, perfect for very small parts, Cheers
I have heavily modified 2 of these type of lathes One slightly larger than the other. I changed the bearings for sealed angular contact bearings, as i could not be bothered trying to re-grease taper roller bearings on a regular basis. I changed for all metal gears. and used a 3/4 HP 3 phase motor and VFD to drive it. I also sorted out my own variable feed screw drive and it all works well. I got a lot of my motivation from Steve Jordan's earlier videos on you tube. None of these mini lathes are any use straight out of the box. But with patience they can be good machines. It does help though if you have access to another lathe to make your own parts and for that i have used an old clarke cl300 which is the same size as your machine and that to has had its fair share of modifying. Look forward to seeing your approach to modifying this machine take care and good luck. lets hope 2022 is a better year than 2021.
Hello Ade. Looking forward to this series. I like a good rags to riches story.
Nicely done Ade, looking forward to the end result. 👍
Good start 👍
Just starting the same project with a small CJ18A lathe with a 3/4 HP 3 phase motor and VFD, if you want Warco green search for RAl 6011, looking forward to seeing your progress
Alright Ade, love your stuff mate. I have the largest version of that lathe, bolted it to a thick wooden bench and kept altering clamping until it started turning parallel. Spent alot of time setting it up really sweet and i am over the moon with it. Cannot believe how accurate i can turn on it. I run mine with leadscrew disengaged and its really quite quiet. Yours looks an early version. I would say newer ones are much better. All the best and happy new year to you and yours.
I love seeing you do restoration videos! Great video.
Happy new year, Ade, Nice interesting project, I'll be watching with interest to see the finished product. 👍
Going to a great machine Ade !
Got one just like it can't wait to see what all you do
Going to watch this with Interest, i have a 7 x 14 Mini Lathe that i have had for about 4 years and only used it for maybe 1/2 an hour, I recently purchased a 10 x 30 Gear Head Bench top Lathe which is my goto now, also have a 100 mm ER32 Coll chuck and a ER 32 MT 2 Tailstock chuck for it, i also plan to use it for mainly small Rigid jobs... and i Treadmill Motor i plan to fit to it.. Already picking up on some ideas from you. Keep up the Good Work. :)
Hello Ade,
A nice little project... for some reason I have always want a similar machine to mess around with... I am sure one will arrive in my workshop at some time in the future... See you on the next one.
Take care.
Paul,,
Got a mini lathe 750w brushlles motor partner with a myford ml7 very good for small work but ready for a similar job as your so looking forward to this series
Looking forward to this series, i got one of this mini lathe 👍👍👍
Hi Ade.
If I remember correctly, Warco green is RAL6011 Reseda Green.
Painted mine with Rust-Oleum Hard Hat worked out great and a fantastic match too.
Good interesting project Ade. The inverter sounds a good way to go. Tony
Hi Ade, when it comes to painting the lathe if you want a proper match to the Warco green use RAL 6011 Reseda Green. I've used when touching up my WM180 and the match appears spot on.
All of it sounds like nothing but fun!
Nice one Ade, I recently bought one of these with the intent of converting to CNC eventually. Found out the headstock is misaligned causing about a 1mm in 150mm taper, also doesn't have the layshaft for the Hi-Low selector so I'll need to modify the headstock casting to make one of those. Interested to see how you get on with this thing.
I look forward to seeing how you make the aluminum cover plates for the bearing housing. As well as what you do for bearing seals. I am soon to replace the bearings in my mini lathe and replace the covers with aluminum as well maybe even put an alemite (grease fitting) fitting into the top of the head stock for the bearings.
How will you direct the grease into the bearings? I could only visualise this working if you have well fitting end plates with lip seals running on the spindle, and you put the grease fitting in the plates.
Hi Charles . I am thinking of fitting an oil seal to the front cover and grease points in the covers by cross drilling and plugging . All will be revealed when I work it out myself . lol. making it up as I go along again . Cheers Ade.
I had no interest in getting another small lathe until a few small tasks proved to be quite difficult on my very large Mueller. Very easy to turn a length of small material into a pretzel shape. Watching Joe Pie did nothing to help that. Finding a mini and making improvements now sounds like a challenge.
I do have a no-name 4" x 16" that might fill that task, but bringing it up to some reliable condition may be more of a challenge than I was looking for, and I have, more or less, promised it to a nephew that says he is interested in that sort of thing. I'll wait until he's no longer concerned with surviving his first year of middle school, and see how he feels then.
Mine is awaiting a decision on whether I convert it to a dedicated toolpost /camshaft / crankshaft grinder .
Nice project. The mini’s have their place. I would also take a look at a reverse mounted parting arrangement like Sherline uses. Just added one for my Harrison M250 and it works well. The smaller lathes benefit from changing the parting tool physics (at least in my mind). They just aren’t rigid enough on their own to overcome my lack of skill when parting off. All the best!
Parting on small benchtops lathes is difficult at the best of times, but these mini lathes have the rigidity of a wet noodle as supplied and it becomes almost impossible. Getting rid of the top slide and sorting out the horrible carriage retaining strips makes a big difference. A rear parting tool doesn't help that much with deflection, but it doesn't dig in and ruin everything when the lathe starts flexing. Not that that's ever happened to me dozens of times...
That's not a bad project. I shall look forward to that. Are you going to replace the plastic gears with metal ones?
You said the stock 2500 rpm is not high enough for small jobs, it will be interesting to see what pulley gearing you go for with the new VFD setup and what usable rpm range you end up with.
I have one of these same mini lathes and the only place it really sucks is trying to drill steel with drill bit in the tailstock. It needs low rpm and just stalls the tiny motor.
Hopefully with a 1hp VFD you can get decent top end rpm and still get good low rpm torque for drilling,..
It's a good idea to pimp these mini lathes. And it's fun to do.
Thanks Ade
I'm looking forward to seeing how you revive this Thing.
Hello Ade. It looks like you will be able to make a useful machine out of it. I was wondering.. Are you tempted to add a 4th headstock bolt?
Great stuff Ade, I was thinking collet lathe after your last video, something tells me eventually it will be doing more than just collet work lol. Cheers, Jon
Very interesting Ade. The cross slide leadscrew on those is shocking. Perhaps you could make a new one? Also how about zero backlash leadscrew nuts from acetal?
I've got more teeth lol, you and me both Ade. I have the clarke version of that lathe at the moment but moving to Yorkshire soon and will be getting a better lathe then, probably the Chester DV10VS, did look at the Warco's but the Chester comes with the stand too.
Ade, where did you get the clamps for your screwless toolmakers vice?
Made them , Cheers Ade.
Ade, please find time to clean that ashtray out at 8:00 as I am not sure it is the right 'look' for this day and age. If you are thinking about making a driven lead screw why no go the whole hog and convert it to CNC?
You're not going to do the tapered gib mod on the carriage then? I did on my Sieg SC2 years ago and it improved things no end, plus you can tighten them up to act as a carriage lock.
I also have an unused mini lathe languishing in my workshop. Do I ditch it or do I wait to see what you do? 🤔
No brainier, I’m looking forward to seeing this series through to the end. 👏👏👍😀
good video ades
I’m curious. Do you have a real use for this thing, or is it purely a fun project with no real use for you, with your much better lathe you’d modified, something like the steam engine you made?
Among my other projects, I recently installed a three phase 3/4 horse inverter motor and VFD on one of my presses. These are fairly large and heavy motors. New, they’re not cheap. For a press, one can get away with a standard three phase, because drilling is a fairly quick process, though I don’t trust doing that. But for a mill or lathe, that’s not true, and a regular motor will heat up if you run it at any frequency other than the one it’s rated at. It could easily get damaged. So an inverter ready motor is really needed, even for a small lathe.
👍
Interesting project, Ade. Don't know if you saw my solution for a sub-base? Well worth doing!
My video: ruclips.net/video/Tm0Il5Hq6lo/видео.html
I'm intrigued by the flag - my google skills fail me, what is it please?
One is Wales and the other is Pembrokeshire county flag. Cheers Ade.
10/10
Well you gain about 2 inches of travel if you remove the thread dial
Do bore them out otherwise there is an annoying dependency between the slightly odd flat and the 3 screws holding the aluminium plates
I have done a few upgrades to my mini lathe, including replacing the bearings, but rather than taper roller I used angular contact ball bearings as they are supposed to be better for combined loads... simultaneously acting radial and axial loads. Although anything would be an improvement on the standard ones! 👍
Taper rollers will have quite a bit higher axial and radial load ratings, but the advantages of using angular contact bearings is they can be had in the same thickness as the originals, they can be had with integrated seals and they don't require as much preload. The downside is they tend to be more expensive than taper rollers, especially for the premium brands. For this application angular contact bearings are the right choice IMO.
When you are finished with the mini lathe and need some room on the bench, you can ship it to me
This looks like an enjoyable series so I’ve just given you a like and subscribed. I like your style. I think you’ll make a more limited but more fit machine out of this bit of Chineseium. Keep up the good work. 🥸👍✅
I'd have to get you to measure the length of the bed to be sure but I'm pretty sure that's the aftermarket 7x16 bed. It surely is not a 7x12.
🤣🤣🤣 I'v got more teeth then that gear.
The most enjoyment you'll get out of that MINI lathe is throwing it in the bin. Just a 5 minute project
You are probably right but I am a glutton for punishment. Cheers Ade.
Thanks Ade