Unless the lathe has had a bearing upgrade, it comes with deep groove ball bearings, not tapered roller bearings. In either case, bearing preload does have to be set. Here's the SKF document, a Google search will turn up others that (to me) are less lucid.
?
?< >
?
Replacing the original bearings with tapered roller bearings simultaneously replaces sealed bearings with open (unsealed or shielded) bearings, requiring some type of external shield to be added to keep foreign matter out of the bearings. Replacing the original bearings with angular contact ball bearings lets you stay with sealed bearings that are a little less rigid than tapered roller bearings, but, still an upgrade from original. I did mine years ago & have been happy with the improvement.
?
?< >
?
Roy
