Leveling in 5 minutes or less

[Burt Alcantara]

In a previous thread I discussed the problem of my lathe walking across the shop so I decided to do something about it. I move my lathe a lot. Mostly because I've not found the perfect location. Sort of a Carlos Castenada thing.

Most of the suggestions in the thread had to do with adding ballast or sticky mats. I wanted to avoid that as I felt it didn't address the underlying problem.

In this exercise, you need 2 tools:
A small car jack or one that will fit under the cross piece. The jack came from Harbor Freight. (http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=36119) I got it on sale for $25.
A stick, about 1/2". Size unimportant but keep it small.
Put the jack under the cross piece and make sure it's centered, more or less. Lift the lathe so there is about 2-3" of clearance between the floor and the feet. If your leveling feet are screwed far out, screw them back in so they are stick out of the leg about 1" or so.

Gently, and I mean gently, lower the jack so the feet are about 1/2" above the stick. Screw the feet down so they are barely touching the stick. You should be able to move the stick back and forth but just barely. Do this on both sides.

Once you are satisfied that the feet are adjusted, removed the stick and carefully lower the jack. Repeat on the other side.

Since leveling this way, I run the lathe at 1000 to 1200 rpm with all blanks. I get some vibration on larger out of round blanks but no walking and no ballast.

YMMV,
Burt

[robert hainstock]

Nice design, and reasonbly priced. :):)
Bob

[Bernie Weishapl]

Sounds like a plan and that the plan worked for ya Burt. I will remember that for down the road. Thanks for sharing.

[Dan Forman]

Sounds like a good strategy if your floor is level, but not much help for me, as my basement floor has some serious slope to it. I might keep an eye out for one of those jacks though, I have to use the one from my truck.

Dan

[Burt Alcantara]

Dan,
The whole purpose of this thread was to level on an uneven floor. I don't have 2 spots on the floor that are even.

[Scott Hubl]

I bought one of the Hydraulic Lift Tables from HF and LOVE it !

I can easily lift the whole lathe(3520B) and move it around like it was only 25 pounds.
Also Great for lifting large chunks of wood up to the lathe bed from the floor.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/photos/94800-94899/94822.gif

HF used to carry 3 models of this table but I now only see the 500Lb. model is available. $139.00

I bought the heavier duty model 1000Lbs. that was around $239.99 but bought it with a 15% off coupon at the time.

I lifted mine fully loaded with the 18" bed and about 9 chucks sitting on the bed plus both oneway steady rests,bowl and spindle without effort.
I chose the 239.99 1000lbs one over the 500lbs one because I wasn't sure if the seals would hold up over time picking up the 3520B and anything else around the shop/house.


With my bummed up arm/hand there was no other way I could move/drag it around this helps ALOT.

I use it all around the shop and house for moving/lifting stuff.:cool:

[Dan Forman]

Dan,
The whole purpose of this thread was to level on an uneven floor. I don't have 2 spots on the floor that are even.

Well, some days the mind is not the boss. :o Don't know what I was thinking, or wasn't thinking, but I get it now. Thanks for the reminder.

Dan

[Ryan Baker]

I've been using my floor jack to do the foot levelling on mine too. Works great doesn't it?

[Dan Forman]

I tried this tonight, and while it worked for Burt, it didn't level my lathe in any dimension, so I'll have to recant my earlier recantation. :)Theoretically, it should work in the short dimension (back to front), although I didn't find that it would hold up to being measured with a level. I guess it has to do with deflection of the cast iron when the weight is either taken off or replaced. The problematic dimension is the long one, right to left, which was seriously off for me, being significantly lower on the right side of the lathe.

Now, my basement is pretty close to a worse case scenario. It has a floor drain, so it slopes down from all of the walls, and drains not in the middle, but more or less in the middle of shall we say the right front quadrant. My lathe sits parallel to one wall in the left front quadrant, so the floor slopes from the back to front somewhat, and from left to right even more. By leveling the ends as suggested, there is no way of addressing the left to right slope, it can only address the back to front. To level left to right, you would then have to repeat the above procedure from the front as well as the back, and that might compromise the first settings, not to mention that there is no convenient cast iron stretcher connecting the right and left leg pairs for the jack to lift.

What was successful for me this time was to get the two left legs level with each other, then the two right legs level with each other, then the two right legs level with the two left legs. After doing this, I only needed one slight adjustment to get the whole thing to measure out, whereas in the past, it seemed like everything I did to level one leg would mess up another, and it seemed to take forever. In order to have the lathe as close to the ground as I could (I'm short), wherever possible I would lower rather one leg rather than raise another to adjust. This is about the fourth time I have leveled the lathe, and by far the quickest (not counting the dowel method, which is indeed quick).

I may have been chasing a red herring however, in that I was reasonably satisfied with my setup before, but was having problems with an acrylic pen blank, which may in fact have been due to a sharpening issue (too acute angle on the skew blade), and thought that I would try the dowel method of leveling to see if that would help. I'm just passing on my findings in the interest of science, would be curious to hear if anyone else has been able to replicate Burt's results. I confess I haven't had time to try an unbalanced load, and it may be that being level and low vibration are not that well related. I'll report back when I get a chance to test out a heavier load. I should also point out that I have a sand ballast chamber in the usual place on my 3520B, and a couple of concrete blocks perched on the head, for vibration reduction, so I don't know what part that plays in my results. Is there a physicist in the house?

Dan

[Ryan Baker]

I also have the floor drain situation, and I want to keep the lathe as low down as possible. In my case, it is the right rear that is the high corner, so I start with that foot screwed all the way in. Then level the right front to get that end level. Then move to the left side back and front to get them level with the right end. (Jack the left end up till it's level, then screw down the feet to touch the floor.) At that point, you should be very close -- make whatever tweaks are necessary. I am pretty careful about not moving the position of the lathe though. With a floor this uneven, any movement of the feet positions will require re-levelling.

I've never had vibration problems with my lathe, unless I am trying to swing a 16", off-balance hunk of wood at too high of a speed. It does an impressive job of spinning some big blanks without moving around. I don't have any ballast weight added to it either -- never felt the need and don't want it in the way.

[Dan Forman]

Follow up:

Well, I got a chance to test out last nights leveling, and the results were disappointing. Using a dry but not returned bowl as a test unbalanced load, with the very level lathe, there was a significant vibration at a wide range of speeds, starting at about 500 RPM. Not hopping about, but maybe enough to interfere with a smooth cut, or at least bug the heck out of me.

By this time Ryan's solution to the left/right dimension had occurred to me, so I tried that, and though not exactly level front to back, the vibration was reduced. I had noticed that every time I jacked up the head end, the rear leg would move out toward the wall just a bit. Thinking that probably wasn't a good thing, I played with the leveler foot until that no longer happened when it was raised, and the vibration was reduced still more.

In order to get the lathe as low as possible, I then removed the levelers and used the bandsaw to make my own feet (shoes?) out of some scrap 2 x 4 for three legs and let one leg sit right on the floor, padded by a bit of non-slip foam material to hopefully distribute the weight more evenly on the uneven floor. With a few shims, I was able to pretty much duplicate the Burt/Ryan method. The use of the dowel is not really necessary, as the floor can serve the same function as a reference.

The end result is pretty good. The lathe is not exactly level front to back, but it behaves better this way. There is significantly less vibration with the wooden feet compared to the screw levelers. With the same unbalanced load, there is no vibration until about 1200 RPM, and then it is barely discernible by a hand on the bed, and probably would not impact the quality of cut.

Well, you may have surmised by now that I'm bit on the anal side as far as machine setup goes, but I like to take as much of the mechanical error out of the equation, as it leaves a little more margin for operator error, before things get out of hand - and I need all the help I can get. :)

Dan

[Dick Strauss]

Maybe a water level could help. You could set it up so that you have four open ends (marked at 1" below the ends) connected at the center. You could tape the tube ends even with the lathe bed and work against the 1" marks from there...

[Dan Forman]

I think that on a sloping floor, level may not be the optimal arrangement. It must distribute the weight unequally and causes vibration. I may keep tweaking it to fine tune and see if I can get it any better vibration wise, but it's pretty good now. It's not that far off from level as it is, just off a bit front to back.

Dan

[charlie knighton]

thanks for sharing