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Tom, new user with King 7x12 mini-lathe review

V

va2fsq

Active Member
Hi,
New user here. Thought it would be nice to join a Canadian forum. Where I ever found the time to start a new hobby I will never know. Between my software - hobby - company (icom dot va2fsq dot com), my astrophotography, and now this, I sure am busy.
Anyways, I started looking for a mini-lathe mainly for telescope making. I already had a Shapeoko 3 CNC router but I needed something to work on round parts. So I started looking. The lathes from little machine shop looked really nice but once you put in the shipping, the taxes, the brokerage, the risks from shipping damage, it did not look too reasonable. So I decided to get something local, and settled in the King Lathe. It had to be small due to space issues.
The lathe was available locally in Montreal and I brought it home. It was not very dirty or oily but I decided to strip it all down, and clean and adjust it all. Everything was pretty good except for the tail stock. That was a disaster.
First of all, it required grinding the opening to allow adjustment of front to back movement since the slot was too small. Next, there was no way to adjust the angle of the tail stock other than two screws. This of course assumed that the base was machined at right angles to the spindle. It was not.
So I had to drill and tap two additional holes for adjustment. Now , how to adjust?
Well I bought an MT2 alignment bar from India. Its about 12" long and goes into the tail stock. Wow, absolutely beautiful and precise, cheap ($38 with $12 sipping from India. arrived in two days!!!) I then put an MT3 dead center into the spindle and mounted a dial indicator on the carriage.
If the dial indicator was on the top of the bar, moving from the left to the right of the lathe, showed that I needed to shim one side of the tail stock up 0.02". Repeating this measurement from the side of the bar, I fiddled with the adjust for a few hours until I got the bar perfectly aligned with the spindle and parallel to the ways. Overall it's pretty tricky and time consuming.
It's now set up pretty accurately, and it's pretty rigid. I can part 2" diameter brass and aluminum with no issues.
The only thing I am not too pleased with is the sound of the motor. It is very,very loud, sounding like something is really wrong whirling like crazy.. But it works fine. Not having heard another in person I can only assume that this is correct. Only time will tell.
Anyways, I'm pretty happy with my purchase and I'll now post my questions and peeves in another section of this forum.
Looking forward to lots of great posts.
Tom
 
Janger said:
Where did you find the mt2 align bar? Ebay?
Click to expand...
Yes. I also bought a mt3 alignment bar and a knuring tool from tools4you2015.
The shipping is with DHL and it costs $12. The knurling tool was slow....it took 4 days! The other came in 2 days. No customs, no taxes. Really top notch quality too.
He sells the same items at a higher cost with free shipping, but for $12 and 2 day delivery wow.
 
Welcome to the forum Tom. What size is your King lathe?
I went through similar gyrations tuning in the tail stock on my King 14x40. It has a lateral adjustment capability but I learned the locking screws in the rear can actually drift the setting a bit & I was chasing my tail.

For setting or checking the tailstock I kind of like the speed & accuracy of the Edge bar. A person could probably make one accurately enough but it wasn't too bad on sale & its well made. The nice thing is you are just translating the collar position from the headstock to the tailstock in 2 quadrant positions - 9:00 for lateral & 12:00 position for vertical. The centers and identical collar diameters take care of the rest. So TS can be dialed in very accurately with a test indicator, even a tenths reading if you have one. And (as I found out) keep the indicator on the collar as you are making the adjustment so you can keep an eye on the needle position. I thought I posted a picture of mine somewhere but cant find it at the moment.
https://www.edgetechnologyproducts.com/tailstock-alignment-bar/

This assumes nothing funky like a a quill which extends at some non-planar angle because the reading assumes the dead center point is in the middle of the quill.

I also have an MT3 ended cylindrical test bar from India, they are great value. They are also good for verifying any inclination or yaw of the headstock. This is another bugaboo with Asian lathes that have jackscrews to tweak alignment to the bedways. When people realize their machine is cutting a slight taper (in a non-tailstock supported stock ie. cantilevered) the common 'wisdom' is to start jacking up a leg to correct bed twist. This also could be the case & should be checked. It was the only fix available to integral cast head stocks, but on most Asian lathes where the HS is bolted on, I'd first look to yaw (rotational) drift. The test bar will show that deviation.
 

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It's a 7x12. That alignment tool looks easier to use than the MT2 test bar. With the MT2 bar, you not only have to adjust it to be parallel to the ways, you also need to adjust it to be centered at the spindle MT3 dead center. This looks like the adjustments are all done at once. Much easier.
Tom
 
A tailstock that is a bit high or low (talking < 0.001" here) is less problematic than left & right which will make a larger proportionate taper in center turning. Some people claim a high TS is to allow for wear. I'm a bit dubious, that's a slot of sliding. I'll take zero & build it up one day LOL. Depending on the TS it might be easier to adjust the split line surface rather than under the TS where it slides, especially if a bed Vee is involved which it usually is. My underside looked like crap, I was shocked it was within a thou & looked like it was attacked with a dull file. I touched it up with a stone but didn't want to create new problems. That's what scraping is all about.

One thing to watch out for is rotating an indicator around the TS when mounted to something like a magnetic arm. Even the good ones can react to gravity & give you a false reading. A dial is worse than test indicator because its heavier. The 3 & 6 o'clock positions are OK (or at least better) in this regard because the arm is loaded the same in those orientations. Anyways, that's one nice thing about the Edge tools, you set DTI on the HS collar, zero, slide it over to TS collar & directly read any discrepancy. No rotational component.
 
Welcome aboard.
I have an 8 x 16 lathe I had sent over from China. LOTS of tweaking and adjusting before I was able to turn any chips. Still finding weak spots as I go. But it was what I could afford and it has been fun.
 
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