Hello, Group!
New guy, here. My name is Wade and I live in Mississippi, in the US. I am a professional symphony orchestra musician and I run a small brass instrument customization and repair shop.
I have used lathes on and off for decades, but never often enough to learn how to do so at a high level. (Former employers owned lathes and mills that I figured out over time well enough to make what I needed, but I am a new lathe owner.?
I have had an incomplete Prazi SD300 for a few years but cannot use it due to the scarcity of parts. I love it and learned a ton about adjustments and care by cleaning it up, but without a tailstock, it has extremely limited use. I will keep trying to get this machine up and running.
Until then, I just purchased a Unimat with an unknown provenance and some confusing clues. Firstly, it was supposedly bought by a US watchmaker. However, it has an Austrian market nameplate. It has the US-spec Ug7550 motor with the US two-prong, non-polarized plug. (I guess that is what you call the old style where both blades are the same size and shape.) It has those unattractive-to-me US-market plastic handwheels. It is sort of a mixed bag.
Perhaps this watchmaker guy bought this in the US and later purchased a used Austrian-market headstock? Hmm… No, it is not important to me to know this stuff, but it is interesting. Of course, the seller knew zilch about the machine's story.
It came to me with a crushed (?) carriage casting. It is fractured all over the place, even crumbling in spots, with pieces flaking off. Further, the casting is bent along two planes, with one of the four "ears" for the way bars sitting higher than the other three.
Oddly, NOTHING ELSE IS BENT OR DAMAGED. It is complete, and the screw and bars are just great. All the screws and parts are present. I bought another casting and installed my parts to it and alles ist gut!
I tore down the little guy and cleaned up everything, and with careful handwheel adjustment, all three screws function very smoothly, with the exception being the tailstock, which binds on the last few turns at either end. I will try to refine this as I learn to use this lathe.
I was missing some accessories that I wanted but have now purchased most of them.?
I am, however, missing one part, and I have repeatedly stuck out on eBay searching for one. I do not want to order it from McMaster-Carr because it is a single grub screw, and it would cost me like $17 to ship a $1 item. So, CAN ANYONE HERE HELP ME?
What I am missing is the M6x6 cone point slotted grub screw that holds the tailstock "guide pin" (as it is called in the illustration in my manual). One eBay seller suggested that I make one, which I could do, but I would like to have one that matches the other end in look/age. Silly? Probably. But having that exact screw would make me a happy camper.?
So — does anyone here have a spare for sale or trade?
And it was I who bought one of those two steady rests that went on eBay this past week. I probably overpaid, but I know to snap up stuff like this if I feel I need or want it because eventually, these things start to disappear. I have been burned like that many times in the past, so I am snapping up everything I can now before the already high prices inflate even more or the parts dry up.
Another question: Has anyone thought to point the internal ends of the screws in the 4-jaw chuck to allow the jaws to close all the way? Mine cannot be closed fully as the inner edges of the four screws/bolts come into contact with one another. Will pointing them on the first thread (or maybe the first two) cause them to run inaccurately or otherwise not work as designed? I was quite disappointed to see that I could not use anything smaller than a 5 mm rod in the 4-jaw. I guess I need to figure out a collet chuck and a set of collets… Luckily, my 3-jaw has excellent concentricity for such a device. But it is not *really* excellent, so that will bug me until I sort the 4-jaw issue.
I purchased one of the very expensive (at least for a broke musician!) TryAlly quick-change tool posts and I love the thing. It is like a really nice tool post for a large, industrial lathe. It just works very well and is beautifully made. I probably overspent to get it, but I have a thing for nicely made gear like this thing. I would recommend it to anyone who has the need and a bunch of $$$ to toss away. Luiz Ally makes them down in Brazil and he got me mine very quickly via FedEx. It fits the Unimat perfectly. However, it does not quite fit the Unimat's BOX, preventing it from closing by about 0.25". It really is a shame that it is so close but it comes in a very nice wooden box of its own with all TEN of its tool holders and eight cutting tools (small, for modelers). So taking it off and putting it to bed in its own box each time I box the Unimat up is only a minor inconvenience.
Finally: Is there any functional difference between the two styles of way bars? (I mean the threaded style versus the "clearanced" ones.) I have the newer, "light" bed casting — I think — with the cheese-headed screws on top with nuts under the casting. These are a PITA to install or remove with my fat, five-thumbed paws. I greatly prefer the idea of cap head hex bolts being threaded in from underneath. I went so far as to buy a set of new way bars as I suspected that mine were slightly bent. (They were not.) What I received was a set of the threaded style, very straight, and micced out as being very uniform in thickness. (Meaning that no one has whaled on them with a polisher/buffer. I believe the term is "dimensionally true".) I have not yet measured the centers of the holes to see if they even fit my bed. My question is whether these are safe to use in my "light" bed?casting, or should I stick with the ones that came with the lathe?
I am about ready to start making some (itty-bitty) chips with this thing. Hopefully, I won't pull a Ralphie and shoot my eye out.
I'm glad to have found this group.
Later,
Wade
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Pachyderm