or just to fix whats broken with mine before I thrust myself further into depression over an investment that isnt working out just yet. That tends to make me believe that either I need prozac to calm down or better equipment. I see or hear of example of this being made and that being made, yet very few failures. Am I asking too much of my machine here? I am a machinist and this is just one small obsticle to overcome, but I would expect that my equipment is better then what Ive been seeing maybe it isnt and I am in fact asking too much from it. 050 depth of cut in 4140ht while in the backgear with slow feed without the spiindle stopping. I have no idea as to what point of judgement I should take reguarding this lathe. How do you guys approach your machinery? as in are you pleased with what you have, does it do what you ask of it, can it perform to the level you expect it to? any aditional options are welcome, I am aware that clausing is selling replacement parts, but I would like to avoid that route if possiable. Would It be possiable to replace the babit in my headstock with some angular contact bearings? I know I would have to do some aditional maching but Other then a direct rescrapping of the babbit I think I have too few options? my lack of experience reguarding older tooling may be hurting me here.

Most of those lathes like that just make me funky feeling some times i guess, they give me a sence of being robust but they arn't. I have a friend with a nice Enco 12x30 or something along those lines, its a nice machine, I just dont feel comfortable with it. I have yet to invest in an aloris type tool post and I have not invested in indexable carbide tooling so I know I have some learning to do with the hand grinding bits im using now. Am I the only one out there with issues? or Is it possiable that because Ive ran larger machines up to this point that I may be far to abusive for small home type equipment and I should work towards heavier duity stuff? or is the condition of the machine limiting my ability to use it properly?

Ive already replaced the half nuts, the remaining brass nuts need to be replaced along with the lead screws but that can wait a bit.

the 3 jaw chuck is a safety hazard it scares me big time, the 4 jaw is decent.

With a few exceptions: spindle babit hasnt had any care in the life of the machine so its lose, but only in the side to side motion, if I remove any of the shims its too tight almost as if it was far too lose in the get go. Okay, I got the lathe and the matching horizontal mill on ebay, drove the distance to pick it up and for all intensive reasons its a good machine. Is going to either finish up the work I have to complete or it needs to hurry up and die.

Small atlas lathe