My lathe, of late, is driving me crazy. I spent several months turning big heavy green bowls, and have recently gotten back to between-centers work and boxes and such. I think I've either knocked something out of whack or hosed my bearings. (They have never been replaced)
The lathe is a Conover from 1990.
The symptoms are constant vibration, increased chatter, and inability to re-mount anything and have it run true. I use a dead center as a small ring drive (like what Oneway describes as a "safety drive") and on other lathes as recently as last week re-mounting is nearly flawless. It was very good on this lathe in the past, now I'm off center by 1-2 mm every time I put the piece back on. If I rotate the workpiece on the ring it goes off center.
I measured runout on the spindle with a dial indicator. At the front end it is zero to my ability to measure. At the handwheel end of the headstock the spindle is eccentric by about 0.4 mm when rotating the spindle by hand. The points on two different centers describe a small circle as they rotate at speed.
There is no perceptible motion in the headstock, other than the expected rotation. I can't move the spindle in any direction. It does make a new whirring noise under load when the bearings are loaded.
Replacing the bearings is something of a project in this machine, so I don't want to overlook some other obvious problem/solution.
The ultimate solution is arriving from Wisconsin in about 8 weeks
, but I'll need this one to be in salable shape then, plus I was planning on making a run of pepper mills for Christmas gifts and I'll go crazy trying to do it with the lathe in its current condition.
Anything else I should check or try?
Pictures show how I measured-- I'm no machinist, so please tell me what I'm doing wrong!
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