mini lathe mods

[Paul Jones]

I bought my Taiwan built 7x14 mini lathe new in 1996. I spent too much time trying to make it perfect and it now runs extremely well. I wish these minis originally
came with carriage locks as a basic feather rather than having to make them ourselves. However the mini lathe is now used only for second operations for small parts using an ER32 collet. All the old mini lathes 3 and 4 jaw chucks are now used as secondary chucks mounted on mandrels to be held in a 12" swing lathe six-jaw chuck.

A good friend and the president of a family company making some of the worlds largest water pumps (up to 200,000 gallons per minute made using 8 foot diameter lathe swings for the housings) decided to replace all of his "small" lathes in the company maintenance shop room with new lathes. He asked me if I would be interested in a free 12" swing x 37" gear head gap bed lathe. The lathe was totally depreciated and hence free to me. He said the only catch was I had to haul it away to my garage shop. I did and it now appears in many of my HMT articles.

Like you with your mini, I still made minor improvements to this larger lathe. It is very precise with a measured headstock bearings TIR of 0.0001" after very slightly adjusting the headstock taper front and rear bearings inside retaining nut/rings (it is a tricky op and if done wrong can ruin the bearings by over tightening). The 12" swing lathe is a joy to use and sometimes I think my mini lathe feels very neglected.