Of all the laws Brandolini's may be the most universally true.
Deep thought for the day:
Your bandsaw weighs more when you leave the spring compressed instead of relieving the tension.
I thought the information Roger supplied on the Grizzly lathe that is a sibling of my lathe, so to speak; was tremendous. I have heard of Grizzly, but as I do not know of anyone importing them into Australia, I haven't sourced material on them and until this post, I was pretty much in the dark on them.
One thing I would like to know, who designed these lathes?
They really are a bit different to anything I have seen around, the ideas incorporated in my Laguna 24-36, compared to Vicmarc lathes or the Jet range of larger lathes, are like chalk and cheese.
Anyone?
Mick.
Well all has been revealed, even though there wasn't that much to reveal.
The technician turned up carrying a set of Allen keys, he then proceeded to pull the hand wheel off to reveal a collar that when undone, didn't turn easily and required an Allen key inserted to give leverage to loosen. It was then a case of screw the collar up by hand and re-tighten the Allen key bolt.
It was as I expected and really not a big deal.
I turned a bowl after, which was a bit over an hour and the front bearing and spindle stayed cool, so all is well.
As a bonus, I now know how to replace the belt and when required the bearings as well. It is a pretty simple system.
Mick.
Laguna_Spindle_Bearing_Adjustment_002_IMG_20181203_111234.jpg Laguna_Spindle_Bearing_Adjustment_001_IMG_20181203_111247.jpg
I'm up and running with the new head-stock. My bottle stopper arbor still feels a little warm but there's no noise. Whether there's a bad bearing, or it's an adjustment that's needed, the folks at Laguna will make that determination once they get the original head-stock back. Glad to hear your issue has been resolved.
So, does this mean that the Laguna uses tapered bearings? Maybe I'm incorrect, but I thought that regular ball bearings did not need a pre-load.
The laguna runs standard caged ball bearings, not tapered bearings.
The spindle shaft runs through from the rear to the front, there is an adjustment, for end play, which is controlled by a collar on the hand wheel side. This was so tight it required the shaft to be locked and the Allen key used as a lever to undo it. Once undone, the collar was re-tightened by hand to a firm finger tightening, then the collar was locked. There was no axial play on the spindle shaft from the factory. There is still no axial play on the adjusted spindle shaft. Excessive tightening of the locking collar caused things to run hot, that has now been eliminated.
This morning I did a wet bowl, turning from rough stock. Worked perfectly, no noise, no movement, just beautiful curling pieces of timber coming off. Once I had finished the outer of the rough turning I felt the spindle shaft, cool as a cucumber. Got too warm in the shed by then, so I'll finish the inside tomorrow morning before the heat of the day.
I really like this lathe....
Mick.
I keep forgetting about the global location of you and others here! We woke up in Tennessee to our first dusting of snow and frozen animals waterers. It took me 10 minutes to put on enough layers to brave the trek across the arctic tundra. Time to break out the stock heaters.
JKJ
As a 2 yr owner of a Laguna 18-36, I found this to be an informative discussion. I haven't had a problem in this area, but was glad to learn something new about this series of lathes.
JKJ, yep, when you lot up there are running around freezing, we down here are sometimes melting. Today I carried some Ubeaut EEE Cut 'n' Polish Paste Wax in the vehicle, arriving home I slipped inside completely forgetting about the wax. Had lunch then remembered it, dashed outside to retrieve it, opened it up for a look and found it was a liquid. Temperature in the shade was around 38ºC (100 F) far hotter in the cabin of the parked ute.
Joe Porter, I'm glad you found out something about your 18-36 unit, basically the larger 24-36 is very similar to yours. If you look closely at the first picture, you can see where one of the grub screws has left a circular indentation on the spindle. The hand wheel is sitting on top of the VFD housing, there you can see one of the two grub screws. A 3mm Allen key is required to loosen both retaining grub screws, then the handle just slides off.
When putting the handle back on, ensure you don't push it all the way. Doing that will mean it has a reasonable chance of abrading the indexing chart. Just align the outside of the hand wheel with the outside of the pulley cabinet, then tighten.
Mick.
Addendum:- a look at the inside of my hand wheel turned up a couple of bits of material stuck in two places, they looked very much like weights to balance the hand wheel. As this lathe can do 3,500 rpm, I wonder whether in fact they are balance weights, or just stuff hanging around from the manufacturing process?
Last edited by Mick Fagan; 12-06-2018 at 3:25 AM.