For those of you following the gloat thread, you probably saw that we got a new Schaublin 125C lathe at work. I had to clean up a tight collet thread last week so it was a perfect opportunity to to get familiar with the controls and it's not like any other lathe I've come across. Sorry for no pics, I was under the pump to get it done so I could set up a job, but I'll try to get some this week.

First off, there is no thread chasing dial. So how do you pick up the thread for each pass? You don't. Instead of releasing the half-nuts, there is a tab that folds down off the carriage to engage an adjustable stop on the bar that holds the spindle direction lever; when the stop is reached, the e-brake is tripped and the lathe stops dead. Then you retract the top slide with a quick release lever (you don't have to keep track of your zero and depth on the dial because the whole thing moves including the handwheel), reverse the lathe to run back to the start position (which also has an auto stop in the other direction), flip the top slide back and set the next depth.

It's definitely more complicated than it needs to be and probably slower than a traditional chasing dial setup as well, but it does make crashing effectively impossible, which is quite useful if you're threading to a shoulder or close to the chuck.


Read the full thread at metalworkforums.com...