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Steve Walkom
18th July 2002, 02:02 PM
I have a problem with my Woodfast C1000 and just wanted to know if others have had the same problem.
I cannot seem to stop vibrations in my lathe. I have bolted it to the floor, but it still seems to vibrate - not greatly, but enough so that bowl walls end up with slightly different thicknesses and pens become slightly oval, instead of totally round.
It seems as though the drive shaft coming out of the motor may be bent, or else the pulleys that are mounted to the shaft are out of round. The top pulleys run true, but the bottom ones do not, which creates vibration through the lathe.
Has anyone had this experience and might be able to suggest a remedy. The bummer is that I will possibly be without a lathe while the problem is fixed. http://www.ubeaut.biz/crying.gif

ubeaut
18th July 2002, 03:25 PM
Steve - Why don't you ask Woodfast to fix the problem for you it is most likely of their making in the first place.

I have found many of their lathes that I have worked on to be like that especially the Cobra of which yours is just an upmarket version.

Make em pay for their sins. Hound them until it no longer vibrates.

Hope this helps a bit.

BrianR
18th July 2002, 04:52 PM
A friend of mine has one of them and it did the same. He solved it by unbolting it from the floor. It seems bolting it down has misaligned the bed.

Tim the Timber Turner
18th July 2002, 07:06 PM
I tried heaps of thinge to fix the same problem when I owned one. Stiffened the motor mount and motor lockdown bracket.
I went to the factory and lined up 6 motors on the bench, ran them and picked the one that ran the smoothest. It didn't make much difference and I never got the lathe to run very smooth.

If you are going to bolt the lathe down I would suggest the following. First position the stand without the lathe and shim between the floor and the stand. Then bolt the stand down.
Then fit the lathe and shim to the stand before bolting down.
This should take out any tension in the lathe and stand.

Just on the point of bolting down lathes I always used to do this, but don't with my Vicmarcs. Now I just level them with the built in jacking screws and the just seem to sit there. The electronic speed control helps with this as the don't tend to rock around as much as fixed speed lathes. (you just turn the knob to eliminate and tendancy to go walkabout).

I think the vibration problem happens when you hang a motor off the back of the lathe with a short belt, it seems to set up a resonance that is hard to eliminate. The problem is not as bad in the same model lathe fitted with the variable speed motor which indicates that some of the problem is from the motor.

If you look at the design of the C1000 headstock you will see that while it has 3 bearings they are all fitted to one side of the headstock casting. Now I'm no engineer but it just don't look right.

The one thing I found that helped most was to reduce the belt tension. Play around with this and you will see what I mean.

Hope this is of help

Cheers Tim

Tim the Timber Turner
18th July 2002, 07:16 PM
Steve one thing to check is the motor pully locking screws on both sides as I did have mine come loose a couple of times. Loctite fixed it. The problem was the pulley was not keyed to the shaft but relied on only the grub screws. They may have changed this in later versions.

Cheers

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Some days I turns thisaway, somedays I turns thataway and other days I don't turn at all.

[This message has been edited by Tim the Timber Turner (edited 18 July 2002).]

Steve Walkom
29th July 2002, 01:27 PM
For those of you that might be interested....

I gave my C1000 motor and pulleys to my Father-in-Law who is a Fitter & turner/engineer type. He took the pulleys off and found that the hole for the motor shaft was considerably larger ("at least a few thou") than the motor shaft. He is going to drill it out and insert a sleev which should fit the shaft exactly. This will hopefully fix the problem. I will keep you informed.....

Steve

Steve Walkom
8th August 2002, 01:53 PM
For those that may be interested....it seems fixed. Yaaay.

Just as well, too. My wife was getting sore arms spinning it manually for me....

Jean Michel
11th August 2002, 04:31 PM
Steve,

You are not going to escape and turn on that lathe before you tell us what was the problem are you?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Jean.