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BaitMaster’s (Work) Bench

@Jswain common industry practice is “special order part, no returns, refunds, or exchanges if the item arrives in good condition.”

Car dealerships, electrical, plumbing, mechanical and industrial distributors sell special order parts on those terms day in and day out.

Order about any part that has to be sourced from the factory of anything and those are the terms.

Any business is susceptible to malevolent clawbacks of funds by malevolent dishonest people.

That policy is clearly protectionist and designed to obscure identity of the OEM’s they source their imported products from.

I’m not saying I would never buy a machine from them or anything, I believe they sell good machine tools. I bought my Liang dei because I believe it is a quality lathe. They sell rebranded Liang dei lathes, which are great tools.

However, I do take note when companies are less than helpful and honest. They were dishonest and unhelpful, those are objective facts. I’m not trashing them, I’m just recording what happened.
 
"customer service"

They owe you nothing if you didn't buy the lathe from them, as you were not their customer.

If they simply supported, sold parts, helped customers fix xyz lathe because it looks similar why would anyone but Precision Mathews to begin with?

When you buy PM you get their support, warranty, parts, quality assurance etc.

Maybe their spare parts come from other complete kits and they don't want to seperate a complete kit for someone who wasn't their customer to begin with, but would in a heartbeat for someone who purchased that equipment.

They weren't dishonest, their policy is they don't supply parts to anything other than PM equipment and they are holding up to it.

And you could probably find any parts you need on AliExpress or similar, perhaps from Craftex as they sell a similar model.
 
@Jswain they told me the follow rest wouldn’t fit. That’s dishonest. The truthful answer would be: the follow rest absolutely would fit, however, the lathe is not one we sold so we will not be selling it to you.

I’m not saying they owe me anything.

I would have been their customer to the tune of a couple grand of parts.

They can do whatever they want, and I can comment on it.

People would buy PM because they “are” helpful and sell quality tools.

Selling parts doesn’t take away from a business, from what I’ve seen in my life.

I’m not heated about it at all. Don’t really care. I’ll find my parts one way or another.
 
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BaitMaster said:
I’m really unappreciative that they LIED to me straight up about the parts being able to fit.
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Having known the owner for over 15 years, Matt and I have had several discussions about their parts pipeline.

Something you might not know: if you buy a Modern 0636 lathe, the parts have changed enormously over the years, One sold 2 years ago is not interchangeable with one sold 5 years ago. The distributor (modern or PM has no control over this. George Sindecal (Modern Tool) and I had a very long talk about this.

This is especially true for lathes that have gone through different acquisition channels. A King 12X36 leade screw doesn't fit ANY other 36" lathe unless you modify it heavily. Ask me how I know. They seem to have used a different bearing block and a different connection to the QCGB. It wouldn't have stopped me, but my friend was in the cold.

PM only stocks parts in quantities appropriate for the odd repair. One person bought a brand new PM lathe, dropped it, and needed a bunch of parts for the apron and cross slide. Even for a 'no matter what the cost' situation, it took 8 months of delay and weeks of effort on the part of PM to get all the parts. On 2800 usd parts order they lost a bunch of money.

In case you believe you were singled out, Matt gets similar requests from people dozens of times per month. Especially from Grizzly mill owners (for some reason). Matt is my friend. I cannot order parts from him either.
 
@Dabbler its a company, they have their policies. I don’t feel singled out.
It’s a corporate thing. I’m not targeted. I get that.

I’ve been lied to by companies a million times. Now a million and one.

I don’t know Matt, never talked to him. Again I believe they sell quality machines. He’s probably a nice guy.

Schneider electric has lied to me a million times and I still use them.

If they provide me with a PM1236T follow rest, and it does not fit on my Liang dei LD1236GH lathe, I will admit that I was wrong about them lying to me.

It is reported that people have been given Liang Dei manuals inside the unopened crates of PM machines. So naturally, I’m 10/10 skeptical.

I’m not making generalized statements about all Asian manufactured machine tools and their parts being interchangeable either. Just my specific machine.

All I said was:

1) they were unhelpful to me. (True)
2) they lied to me. (True)

Im not mad. It’s just what happened.
 
I did find an issue with my lathe fellas. Not sure what to do about it.

I’ve noticed that the half nut, when threading, and under load, is REALLY hard to disengage.

If the half nut is not under load it’s easy peasy.

I did crash it barely, and snapped my shear pin in the lead screw.

I managed to hit the Estop but it crashed on its way to slowing down…..

I made another shear pin, and simulated a load with my hand on the carriage feed handle.

Just by dragging my hand on the dial so I could hear the gear train load up, it made it almost un-doable to disengage the half nut lever. Nothing else was wrecked in the process, after a good inspection, so I am lucky.

Wondering where I go from here? I need to be able to disengage my half nut under load…..
 
BaitMaster said:
Wondering where I go from here? I need to be able to disengage my half nut under load…..
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I assume you are threading when this happens. Threading really shouldn't generate a lot of load. Might be another reason to thread using the 29.5 degree method which generates less load than a plunge cut does.

Might be some wear on a shoulder at the half nut or on the lever that engages it.

If you setup to thread on a longer shaft, you should be able watch it from the right side of the saddle to see what is causing the load to latch without risking a crash.

Have you asked the seller about it?
 
Have not asked the seller. I’m thinking about it now and realize I may have had my hand on the carriage feed wheel. I was trying to remember the incident while I was laying in bed.

I should have had one hand on the half nut and one on the cross slide handle.

I think I had one on the half nut and one on the carriage handle.

Doh!!!!

Idiot.
 
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BaitMaster said:
I think I had one on the half nut and one on the carriage handle.

Doh!!!!

Idiot.
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Don't be so hard on yourself. These are all what I would call familiarity issues.

You have to make love with that machine till you know all its sweet spots and how to make her purr before you can truly relax and enjoy it. It's all part of the experience. Just go slow and don't be so quick to find fault with the lathe.
 
BaitMaster said:
Have not asked the seller. I’m thinking about it now and realize I may have had my hand on the carriage feed wheel. I was trying to remember the incident while I was laying in bed.

I should have had one hand on the half nut and one on the cross slide handle.

I think I had one on the half nut and one on the carriage handle.

Doh!!!!

Idiot.
Click to expand...
I'm sure your lathe is not the same as my little Asian 10x22 lathe but "Iightly" crashed my lathe once and ever since that time my half nut would not engage or disengage quite the same. Sometimes it didn't seem to bad and other times it was really hard. After a long while of using it like that I finally got the nerve to take off apron and investigate. It turns out I had slightly bent a gear shaft in the carriage feed drive train. It was just bent enough that it still allowed things to work okayish but at a certain point the gears bound together that made engaging and disengaging half nut feed very difficult. I made a new shaft and gears were OK and it's been all good ever since. And that was at a time when I had two working lathes....you gotta have one to fix another!
 
BaitMaster said:
Made of some brass I had on hand.

Definately want to make it soft.

I was not about to machine the shear pin out of car axle shaft
Click to expand...

I was mainly wanting to make sure you replaced what was there with the same material and shear strength as was there originally.

I see guys use something else all the time on farm equipment. Then they break some REALLY EXPENSIVE PARTS. It makes me wanna cry.
 
Susquatch said:
I was mainly wanting to make sure you replaced what was there with the same material and shear strength as was there originally.

I see guys use something else all the time on farm equipment. Then they break some REALLY EXPENSIVE PARTS. It makes me wanna cry.
Click to expand...
It was aluminum in there originally. The manual says to use brass to replace or another suitably soft material.

I had 5” of some 5/16 brass stock I had on hand that I used to make some pins for a friend. Used the collet chuck, the pin was 5mm on the small end and 5.65mm on the large.

Collet chucks are pretty flippin cool. That was the first time I used it.

Why didn’t anyone tell me how great collet chucks were!

Lol

I also checked it out and the half nuts ride on a dovetail with a gib. I lubed up the dovetails and tightened the gibs a bit and now the half nuts don’t seem to be binding as much.

Although if I load it down by hand it gets more difficult still.

I definately think my hand was riding on it.

I was like 3 thou from finishing the internal threads I was doing.

Had to re-chuck the part and chase the threads again, so no dramas this time, but I was extra cognizant not to touch the carriage hand wheel.

Might order a motor this week in other news.
 
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