Hello Hacklordsniper.
Thanks for the photos, the lathe looks great and I am oozing with envy. A nice sturdy, heavily built and well made machine. Its Colchester heritage is obvious.
It's also good to see the proper efforts some Chinese manufacturers make to clean out gearbox castings before assembly, as they usually always have done on their industrial rated lathes. A far cry from the staggeringly appalling new Warco 1330 that I bought.
Your bandsaw is just about identical to mine. As I mentioned a couple of months ago, the ones with a diagonally mounted hydraulic ram have a rather badly mounted backstop guide bar. The guide bar was intended to be mounted in the place that they have put the bottom of the ram.
I plan to extend the ram mounting to include the backstop guide bar. So that lengths of steal can be quickly pushed up to the backstop without the risk of bending or loosening the guide bar, or possibly breaking the thinner casting through which it is currently fitted, like yours.
I am sure you will, but it is also worth removing the worm and wheel gearbox cover to check the cleanliness of the internals and the lubricant. Mine was pretty bad and was thoroughly cleaned and refilled with EP90 gear oil.
I also extended the slot in the casting of the adjustable blade guide, the longer one furthest away from the motor. This was so the distance between the blade guides could be reduced when cutting smaller bar. Some versions of these saws do have a longer slot allowing closer adjustment.
Although the blade on my saw is pulled slightly off square when the guide is moved through its full travel, it doesn't appear to cause much of a problem on the cut metal. I also have the smaller version of this bandsaw which does the same, but I used it for years before I finally checked and noticed it.
As Swifty says, hydraulic oil is widely used in lathe headstocks, and without problems. I did however, once try hydraulic oil in my lathes headstock but then quickly removed it when I noticed it just frothed up excessively almost instantly. It was ISO 68 I used though, so it may have not been the most suitable grade. I refilled with light gear oil of 75-80 weight which has worked fine.
All the best.
Thanks for the photos, the lathe looks great and I am oozing with envy. A nice sturdy, heavily built and well made machine. Its Colchester heritage is obvious.
It's also good to see the proper efforts some Chinese manufacturers make to clean out gearbox castings before assembly, as they usually always have done on their industrial rated lathes. A far cry from the staggeringly appalling new Warco 1330 that I bought.
Your bandsaw is just about identical to mine. As I mentioned a couple of months ago, the ones with a diagonally mounted hydraulic ram have a rather badly mounted backstop guide bar. The guide bar was intended to be mounted in the place that they have put the bottom of the ram.
I plan to extend the ram mounting to include the backstop guide bar. So that lengths of steal can be quickly pushed up to the backstop without the risk of bending or loosening the guide bar, or possibly breaking the thinner casting through which it is currently fitted, like yours.
I am sure you will, but it is also worth removing the worm and wheel gearbox cover to check the cleanliness of the internals and the lubricant. Mine was pretty bad and was thoroughly cleaned and refilled with EP90 gear oil.
I also extended the slot in the casting of the adjustable blade guide, the longer one furthest away from the motor. This was so the distance between the blade guides could be reduced when cutting smaller bar. Some versions of these saws do have a longer slot allowing closer adjustment.
Although the blade on my saw is pulled slightly off square when the guide is moved through its full travel, it doesn't appear to cause much of a problem on the cut metal. I also have the smaller version of this bandsaw which does the same, but I used it for years before I finally checked and noticed it.
As Swifty says, hydraulic oil is widely used in lathe headstocks, and without problems. I did however, once try hydraulic oil in my lathes headstock but then quickly removed it when I noticed it just frothed up excessively almost instantly. It was ISO 68 I used though, so it may have not been the most suitable grade. I refilled with light gear oil of 75-80 weight which has worked fine.
All the best.
