I'm going to use this space to document the various modifications I make to my 7" Asian lathes. There are a lot of things that can be done to improve the accuracy and the versatility of these great little machines.

A cover for the gears in the apron was the very first mod that I did to my lathes. It was just a matter of cutting a piece of Plexiglas to fit the contour of the apron. I drilled and tapped three 6-32 holes for the machine screws and drilled a clearance hole for the gear shaft. The gears were lubricated with a generous amount of white lithium grease and a small amount of silicone was used to seal the cover to the casting.

As you can see there's a fair amount of grease for excellent lubrication. This was the first thing I did when I got the lathe and it's been virtually maintenance free since then. No swarf had gotten in there at all and none of the grease has leached out. It's a quick and easy modification to do and I'd recommend it to anyone who has one of these lathes regardless of whether it's brand new or 10 years old.

I made a 3C collet closer for my 7" lathes and really love using it. The 3C is a great size for the mini-lathes and the adapters can be made at home or adapted from another machine.

I powder coated the drawtube more for appearance sake than anything else <G> after all, why have a powdercoating rig if you're not going to use it. I'm planning to do something soon showing how I powder coat at home.

I noticed early on that I wasn't able to bring the carriage in right up against the spindle flange. Normally this wouldn't be a problem with a chuck mounted on the lathe but when using a faceplate or even worse, the collets I wanted to be able to get the carriage in close to avoid extending the toolbit and inviting chatter. The fix was very simple and took all of 20 min. from start to finish. The problem here is that the carriage hits the motor housing on the back of the lathe and stops right there. The solution was to take a small  1.5" notch out of the housing to allow for full travel of the carriage. Here, take a look and see what I mean.

I chose to take the motor controller off of the lathe a mount it remotely. The lathe's design allows the leadscrew to bring swarf right into the controller housing and a machine mounted controller see a great deal more vibration and impact than an independently mounted controller. Additionally, I have 2 Asian 7" lathes, one from Grizzly and another from Homier. While both lathes share a number of commonalities, there are also striking differences between them. Probably the biggest diffrence between the machines is the motor controller. The Grizzly controller provides a much lower minimum RPM and also has much more torque at that speed. When I relocated the controller on the the Grizzly I used an automotive trailer connector to re-wire it. This allows me to easily plug & unplug the controller from the lathe and it also allows me to swap the controller to whichever lathe I'm using at the moment. This has been a usefull modification, I now use the Grizzly controller exclusively and keep the Homier unit on the shelf as a spare.

When the 7x20 conversion is finished and the lathe is running I'll update this page, for a more detailed look at what was involved in stretching this machine by 12" then please take a look at that page and feel free to contact me with any questions.

I've been blessed with a good friend who lives nearby and has been willing to teach me an awful lot about machine work. Mert is a retired Shop Instructor who's been teaching for so long that he just can't stop <G>. Mert was busy making chips a good 20 years before I was even born and he's always willing to share what he knows. Everyone getting into this hobby should be so lucky.

Mert make a number of lathe accessories for his own machines and for sale to others. I have a couple and thought I'd take up some space showing them to you. The first is Mert's Quick Change Tool Post which is simplicity itself. I powder coated mine blue to match the Homier lathe but most folks less compulsive than me just leave them plain.

When I finish with it I'll write up another page and add it to the website. This is exactly the kind of accessory that I love to play with. I have complete control to finish it the way I want to and it's a nice simple project. I'm using a ½" carbide bit in the photo to break through the "skin" of the casting.

I've needed several Morse Taper sleeves in the course of the many projects that I've started. I've purchased several import MT adapters to use as raw material for my projects but Hey, I *own* four lathes, I should be able to make these on my own. There are several ways to turn a taper on the lathe. One methos is to set the tailstock over and cut it that way, and while it does work you're faced with aligning the tailstock back to center when you're done. Another method that is more effective and was another of Mert's lessons was to offset the compound so that it turns a taper. Mert taught me to do this with nothing more than a sheet of white paper and a lamp. There is also another method which involves offsetting the center that holds the workpiece to achieve the taper. This is probably the most preferred method because you make no adjustments to the machine that will have to be reversed when done. The easy way to do this is by using a boring head in the tailstock to hold the center. By putting the center in the boring head and then offsetting that you can make a very wide range of tapers. I actually attacked this problem from 2 separate directions and made 2 different tools.

The first taper tool I made was from an old boring head that sat in the bottom of the tool chest unused. It has a ½" straight shank on it that was frozen there by time. I took an import MT2-MT1 adapter and bored the ID out to accept the ½" shank. When I had a good fit I placed the shank into the adapter and silver soldered it in place. When I was done this is what I had.