Anybody here ever taken apart a large lathe

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olsonsview

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I want to get my 12 x 36 gearhead Chinese lathe down into my basement. It is not a straight path. There is a 90 degree turn about half way down so i have decided to dissasemble the lathe. I was curious if others have done so, and know how much weight is in the gearhead , and how much in the bed of the lathe? The total weight is over 900 lbs I think. I hope that taking off the carriage, motor, and other smaller items will help with the task as well. I have a large, very dry basement and want to work in heated/aircond comfort year round. Should I have any concerns with reassembly? Any chance that I will lose a lot of accuracy at this step? Right now this lathe is dead nuts accurate. I almost hate to mess with it.
Part two: I will have a ceiling mounted air filter running as well as a floor model 1 micron dust collector. Anyone still have dust problems with that kind of setup? I will keep my table saw and bandsaw in my garage workshop for those dusty tasks. But turning will be downstairs in the new shop. Any ideas would be appreciated.
 
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Over the years there have been many threads about moving lathes into basements on the rec.crafts.metalworking (rcm) newsgroup. Go to google groups and do an advanced search. I just tried searching on "move lathe basement disassemble" in only rcm and got a bunch of hits. There is a ton of experience on that group, I highly recommend using it as a resource.

Dave
 
Can you share the link Dave?

I have tried searches for RCM and keep running up against error messages and dead links. I would love to get involved with that group, thanks for the help !
 
I took apart my Logan lathe.

Suggestion, TAKE PICTURES of each step if you can.
Store them in a folder in your computer.
The lathe weighs 1200 lbs..
I had almost every major part steamed washed at my local mechanic's shop then heat dried right away.
You won't believe how dirty it was and how clean after.
 
olsonsview said:
I have tried searches for RCM and keep running up against error messages and dead links. I would love to get involved with that group, thanks for the help !
Click to expand...


http://groups.google.com/advanced_search?q=&

Enter "rec.crafts.metalworking" in the "Group" box, and the search phrase "move lathe basement disassemble" in the "find messages ... with all of the words" box, then click Google Search button.

I got 6 pages of hits on this search ... lots of experiences in disassembling lathes, moving lathes, and most importantly, re-assembling lathes ;)

For general new group reading I use Outlook Express (hey, it's better than rn !). You'll need an NNTP server to connect to, ask your ISP what theirs is called. Note that not all news servers are configured equally, some are behind, some have little disk and time-out messages within a few days.

Many many moons ago I was first exposed to cuemakers using metal lathes from posts by Sherm (Adamson ???) in rcm. He was a great participant there years ago. It is still a good group, even with the plague of spam and OT posts that seem to have infected every corner of the Internet. Get on there and ask questions, there are some very helpful and smart folks in rcm.

Dave
 
Yeah Joey, pics are great

I took apart my Jet lathe awhile back and took digital pics on every major step. It was a belt lathe so more simple than geared but still helped a lot, esp since it was a couple weeks before i got the parts to complete the job.
This post is more to see if anyone knew roughly how heavy the individual assemblies are. I am hoping the bed and gearhead are close to equal? I figure on putting a pole through the gearhead and clamping on with the chuck to make it easier to carry. Use the pole to carry the head down the stairs like the old jungle movies with natives carrying the prize lion!
Thanks Dave for the link and info! I am sure it will help both now and in the future.
 
I am guessing that the geared head will be heavier than the bed. Is this a bench lathe or an engine lathe?

On my chinese 12x36 bench lathe, I took it apart to improve its accuracy instead of for moving reasons. My headstock sits on a flat surface of the bed. The "V" part of the ways stop before the head. So upon reassembling it, you have to be sure the spindle is parallel to the bed of the lathe. My lathe had two adjusment screws for this to rock the head back and forth to help get it parallel to the bed, before locking the head down. I came up with 2 ways to check the alignment, I'm sure there are more:

1. One way was to put a dial test indicator (last word) on the cross slide and sweep across the flat surface of the spindle nose where the chuck back plate seats against. My lathe has camlock spindle so this flat surface was rather large and easy to sweep against. If you have a threaded spindle nose it might be harder to do this because you might not have as large of a flat area to sweep against.

2. The other way I checked the alignment was to snug the head down when I had it close, reinstall the chuck, and then turn a piece held in the chuck only a couple inches long and mike it to check if it is tapered. If it is, the head is out of alignment. Of course, the bed must be level before doing this, as a non-level bed will also cause a tapered cut, and is the first thing that should be corrected on any lathe.

Once you get the bed level and headstock aligned to the bed, you will have to re-center the tailstock to the headstock spindle. I like doing this by putting a last word indicator in the headstock chuck, and sweeping the inside of the morse taper in the tailstock. Agian, if your bed is not level for this step, this centering process will not work. You can get an import master precision level on ebay for $100, or a Starret for $600 to level all your stationary machine tools.
 
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