Thread: AL250G carriage movement

Since I took delivery of my lathe (AL250G), I noticed whenever I wound the carriage wheel quickly I could hear a knocking noise. I tried rocking the apron and slide side to side, but didn't notice any movement. It was also cutting fine, but the knocking noise was really annoying me, so today, I had a closer look. I found if I rocked the carriage up and down there was very slight movement, front to back, so I checked the carriage and bed. The slides that bolt up under the carriage and run on the ways under the bed were too high so I ground them down and refitted them a number of times: Sucess, or so I thought, when I tried moving the carriage all the way up to the chuck, no go, the problem, it seems, was the way under the bed was not flat, causing the carriage to stick at certain points in it's travel. So for most of the day I've been flatting the way, refitting the carriage, checking and so on, very tedious work. Finally, I got the way flat, It cuts slightly better (looking through a loupe), but more importantly, no more knocking and a nice smooth movement up and down the bed. Wouldn't it be nice if the people that import these lathes, actually checked them before selling them, too much to ask I guess.