Metal Gears for Mini Lathes

[Cedge]

After watching one of Jose Rodriguez teaching CD's and seeing his little Sieg built lathe outfitted with metal change gears, I tucked the idea of owning a set in the back of my mind and kept my eyes open. I stumbled onto a web site offering them recently and ordered them today. This guy also offers a range of metal gears for these little machines, including a full set of replacement drive gears with the change gears at a discounted price.

His products can be seen at https://thehobbyistmachinestore.com/catalog/products.php?cat=8 . I spoke with him when I placed the order and he seems to be pretty straight up. Said I'd even have them in time for the wife to find them in her Christmas stocking. I do love buying things for that woman.

Steve
Who will soon have a nice selection of plastic gears to use for indexing tools.

 

[Mcgyver]

Steve, I'm under the impression (couldn't swear to it but have heard it many times and it seems logical) that the plastic gears also play the part of shear pin in the design. if you are replacing them with steel gears, you might consider adding a shear pin somewhere in the drive train...or make sure i'm wrong and that there already is something to take care of this on your lathe

 

[Cedge]

McGyver
I long ago discovered the "weak link" in the drive setup. The belt pulley will fail before things go too badly awry. Mine has been replaced twice after crashing the cutter into the chuck. Those early days of the learning curve were tough on the equipment...LOL. The pulley was apparently designed as the shear point in the lathe, while the intermediate gear in the little mill is the weak point. Both have proven to fail first when heavy stress is applied.

Steve

 

[rake60]

I do know that the weak link on my 9 X 20 is the drive belt.
There's a spare belt hanging in the rafters above the lathe.

Not that I've ever been careless enough to ever break on......
OK I broke TWO one evening! LOL
Then I came up with a better way of doing that process while I waited
for the new belts to arrive.

Rick