Aussie stews workshop 1

[rodw]

Awesome Stew, thanks for the advice and links. I won't hijack our thread any further

 

[gus]

HI,
I must have missed Your post, My apologies. Yes Mallacoota is certainly is beautiful and a Nice place to live. Sorry to hear about Your Bad Dining out experience. I know Myself when we have eaten out as a family that there has been the odd time that they forgot to kill the Cow.
Good to hear that You still come back. If You've got a Boat I have probably seen You as I work at Mallacoota Outboards.

Hi Stew,

Heard about the good fishing at Mallacoota.

Gus Teng

 

[geo]

Stew
Thinking of buying a 960 b what do you think of it
I bought a 2 nd 320 g and it's not much chop. Couldn't possibly be the operator

 

[TinyTool]

Reminds me why it's important to never throw things out.

But I myself might go with a recirculating grit style - where all the worn out stuff exits the cabinet at ultrafine dust - and it goes through a slightly soapy water scrubber.....

And the only thing it needs is new sand from time to time.

 

[stew]

HI Geo,
Overall I am very happy with my AL960B lathe. It's a good all round lathe where it can be used to turn big and small diameters. The only setback with small diameters is the 1400rpm but it is manageable. In saying that if you were going to be doing a lot of small diameter turning I would be looking at the AL-336 or something like it. It is rigid enough to do some heavy cutting to rough out bar stock.

The headstock gearbox changes gears easily and they stay locked in. All the other controls are easy to use and function well. Headstock re-alignment is quite easy to do, but it can be time consuming (as with any lathe). It has quite a good range of threads not that I've used the thread cutting feature much - basically just had a play here and there.

Hare and Forbes advertise them as a Tool Room quality lathe personally I don't believe that. Don't get me wrong though, the AL960B is quite well made. Don't expect it to built like a german or English lathe though. The Hand wheels on the Carriage, Cross & Compound slide and Tailstock all work smoothly not like the AL-335 that I first looked at . The paintwork and finish on the ways is good.

I crashed mine last year, but it survived with needing some quick change feed gearbox parts. I accidently jammed the Compound slide into the Tailstock (it had been a long day. I mentioned the crash for the reason that whilst I was doing the repairs I found some dry bearings in the Quick change gearbox. The Bearings were actually Nachi and this surprised me because I have never had a problem with Nachi bearings before. If you decide to buy the AL960B you might want to check them fairly quick.

Whilst I was at it although the Headstock bearings are in oil they got a name change as well to SKF. I had been led to believe that Metal Lathe headstock spindles run matched bearings and they are normally P2 or P4 class. When I changed the Headstock spindle bearings
I found two different size bearings so definitely not a matched pair. In saying that they are taper bearings and are a class bearing just not P2 or P4. Don't let the spindle bearings worry you, they hold their tolerance well.

If there is something in particular that You want to know about the 960 just ask.
All the best
Stew

 

[geo]

Stew
i purchased the 960 is it tool room lathe sitting in a shed in my back yard it’s not to shabby