Setting up the AL250g

[Briangoldcoast]

Well all the planning seemed to have payed off, and the lathe got lifted off the back of the toyota and uncrated and lifted on to the stand and secured with high tensile set screws. Of course one of the base plates wasn't properly tapped to 12ml but since I'd been promising myself some metric taps and dies I put this down to teething problems. Fortunately I discovered this a week ago. The paint job seems to have been done by simians with scrubbing brushes, but ohh well there's worse things happen.
I spent the afternoon with a big plastic bowl and plenty of kero and WD40 washing anything I could remove. I was too gutless to remove the transverse slides since i have no idea yet how it drives, but with diligent squirting and brushing and things seem to be moving fairly smoothly.

I'm sure I will be back and forwards asking really dumb questions, The first is that I can only engage 3 gears. 180 230 360 or thereabouts (Forgot to write down the numbers but the '100's' are right. I guess there is a simple way how to engage the others, but I didn't want to force anything.
The 'interesting' booklet that came with the lathe has very little useable info in it the way I read it, other than safety guidelines.
So I will be grateful for any suggestions please.
regards Brian

[Stustoys]

Hi Brain,
Did you turn the chuck with your hand while trying to change gears?

Stuart

[th62]

Yes you have to rock the chuck back and forth while changing gears. I also pulled the geared head apart, cleaned it all and filed the top of a couple of keys, it changed easy after that. Just be sure you don't overfill it. You also have to rock the chuck to move gears in the QC box as well. I also had to pull the the QC gearbox apart and file a tiny amount of the top of one of the keys to get the gears changing.

[Briangoldcoast]

Thank you both.
No I didn't do that, which is a good indication of just how little I know.
Good tips th62 I will be alert to those sort of things, Ive already found some razor sharp edges on a few things and honed them off and I think I will drain out the gear box oil and clean out the bottom of the box and refil with 'aussie' oil before I get too excited too.
Any other tips I will appreciate.
warm regards Brian
I'm off to the 'horsepiddle' for a hernia op this Thursday (25) so I'm trying to get the outstanding welding and stuff done before I go, as well as at least making some swarf.

[th62]

Couple of things to think about: The oil sight glasses on both headstock and QC box on my AL-250 were gunked up with silastic. I removed both and cleaned the silicon out but when replacing (using just fingers I might add) the headstock sight glass broke so I replaced it with a car sump plug and drilled the top of the headstock to take a dipstick. After cleaning, I still couldn’t see where the level was in the QC box but sold the lathe before I had a chance to fit a dipstick. Make an MT3 tapered rod to clamp in the chuck for chuck removal – invaluable. Oh, and machine your fingers down to half size so you can get them behind the chuck to remove the bolts.
These are some of the things that were less than ok on my AL-250 and the reason I sold it:
The t/stock barrel flopped around in the tailstock, The machining on all the axles in the apron was abysmal, causing a lot of wear in a short period of time and of course I had to pull it apart and touch it up a little to make everything work as it should. The compound and cross slide machinings were off making the slides tight at one end and loose at the other. I had to file down keys in both headstock and QC box to make both work properly. The bed had a drop off at the rear on the last 200-300 mm
I sincerely hope your lathe is better than mine, it really soured me on Hafco machines so I sold it after about 12months and bought a non Hafco lathe, couldn't be happier - so far?
As this is your first lathe, the wealth of information available from some of the chaps on this forum should prove invaluable.

[Briangoldcoast]

Thanks th62,
I don't know whether to be delighted or terrified with your reply!
regards Brian

[th62]

I wouldn't worry too much, clearly I got a lemon. However it's always good to know what to look out for...