The 12" x 37" gear head and gap bed (can swing almost 18" in the 6" gap) was made in 1987 in Taiwan by the Dar Sin Machinery Works (DARSIN). It uses very high tolerance Japanese taper roller bearings good (to less than 0.0001" TIR verified with an Interapid 0.0001" test indicator). The spindle is more accurate the longer the lathe runs. The lathe weighs approximately 1,200 pounds and is well built with lots of cross ribbing in the way bed. It uses D1-4 mountings for the chucks. It came with a 3-jaw chuck and faceplate in pretty good shape. Later for the not free part I bought an 8" 4-jaw chuck and finally a 6" 6-jaw set-tru chuck (can be easily set to less than 0.0005" TIR). The 6-jaw chuck is used the most and also can hold another CNC ER32 collet chuck for diameters less than 0.5" (the 6-jaw can't collapse down to these small diameters). The part I like the best is the cross slide and compound ways/gibs are hand scrapped but do have a little wear.

These are the TPI and Metric threads the lathe can cut using the quick change gear selections (except for those with a 30T gear that still requires modifications like I presented in this posting).

Click image for larger version.  Name: 12x37 lathe Threading Options.jpg  Views: 169  Size: 102.1 KB  ID: 35750

Regards, Paul