Recently bought this lathe after owning the smaller Axminster craft lathe (which I loved:-))
Thought I’d completely lost my skills as everything I turned came out crooked, then realised that the swivelling headstock doesn’t return to its straight ahead position properly. Waiting for the alignment tool to come off back order but don’t feel I should have to have a special tool to get the damned thing straight. Any suggestions gratefully received:-)
Unfortunatly this is one of the penalties of owning a swivel headstock lathe. No you do not have to buy a special tool to align the headstock and tailstock, just put a drive centre in the headstock and a fixed or revolving centre in the tailstock slide the tailstock up to the headstock but not quite touching, slaken the headstock clamp and visualy line up the points. The “special” tool as you call it is just a double ended morse taper and it does make the alignement job a little easier.
OK, thanks for your help:-)
I had the same problem. The points were about 3mm off, with the headstock locked in its detent position - completely useless. This is not fixed by slackening the clamp and rotating and reclamping as the detent clicks in and you can’t safely lock the headstock on the detent edge. You could remove the detent mechanism completely but then what’s the point of it? Axminster tech help said “put a beermat under one leg”!!! No joking. Ridiculous and unprofessional comment. The problem is the detent position which is not operator-adjustable. I took it apart and the internal rotating disc is locked by three hex screws and a loose pin. The hex screws and their threads are not on the same centres - poor manufacturing - and the pin locks it into the inevitably wrong position. The pin has no function - I threw it away. Without it there was enough slop in the screw fixings to move it into line. If the hex screws were in slots this could be an easy adjustment. The hex screws were loose as received. This is because the two circular discs had been slathered with thick viscous oil then screwed together. Of course this then squeezed out over time leaving the screws loose. Why would you oil two plates thickly then screw them together face to face (without even a locking washer)? The supplied manual exploded diagram is wrong and inaccurate. It doesn’t show the actual parts and their fixings around the rotating disc. I hope as I use the lathe I don’t uncover more of this nonsense…Some basic quality control needed. I hope this helps other users to align their lathes.
