Thread: New Metal Lathe

I have heard that some of these machines not only come with casting sand not having been cleaned out in the assembly stages, but sometimes the oil has been added before the internal paint has hardened. Just looking at the colour of your "gorilla snot" and comparing it with the internal paintwork, the colours seem close, and it may be semi dissolved paint which you discovered and not sealant. Either way a good clean is in order, as well as some fettling in. There are any number of posts here on refurbishing new Asian machine tools, and the scraping of dovetails, gibs and other close tolerance parts, filing of burrs and replacing of cheap poor quality bearings is often done. Some say these machines should be considered a collection of parts from which to build a machine after some hand finishing and fitting. Once the work has been done they are certainly capable of excellent quality work. Dave J, a frequent contributor here, has done a lot of this work and written it up on this forum. His posts will be very useful should you consider doing something similar. Good luck and be sure to keep us posted,
Rob

Rob,
Thanks, I think your right about the "collection of parts" It does seem to be potential, just a fair bit of tweeking necessary, and if your short on dosh (as I am) and have a bit of time, I think it will shape up OK. The goo definitely is something they have tried to seal the cover with, and has overflowed over the gears. On close inspection it was even worse than I thought, as the machine has been run and the gorilla snot imbedded in several of the gears. It is a fair coot to remove, and after numerous attempts with every solvent imaginable, I found liberal doses of Inox loosened its grip from the metal and enabled it's removal. Once I can get it all clean (including foundary grit) It's going to get a couple flushes with new oil.

The rubber seal (on top of the goo) is also made from material not compatible with the oil in use, and once removed from being restained by the cover, grew like Topsy the dog to sizable proportions over night.

Cheers and thanks to all contributors
George