Sieg C2 mini-lathe mods

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spuddevans:
So after too long a break from posting up anything, I've decided to chart my progress as I try and improve my little mini-lathe.

Let me introduce the patient.

It is a Sieg C2A mini-lathe, badged by Axminster (I doubt if that makes any difference) I bought it about 5 or 6 years ago (I think :scratch: ) and up to now the only mods I have made to/for it is to chisel off the majority of the anti-rust "dragon fat" and to install a QC toolpost.

I have been quite happy with the lathe, it has done most of what I wanted from it. However, parting anything harder than warm moist butter has always been a little "Buttock-Pucker" inducing. Also the carriage has always been a little stiff, and the gears are constantly jammed up with swarf. The topslide (compound :scratch: I'm useless with proper terms) DRO has stopped working and the action has always been so poor I have just kept the gibs fully tightened up to lock it solid.

So what's the plan? Here's the list in no order of importance.

Tapered gibs on the carriage,
Carriage lock
Replace gibs on cross-slide and topslide with brass gibs (or learn how to scrape the existing gibs to fit properly)
Build a replacement QC mounting block to replace the Top-slide (I don't use the Top-slide/compound except on rare occasions, when I will re-mount the top-slide)
Convert the tailstock to a cam-lock.
Maybe change the headstock bearings to Angular Contact.

So I've made a start on the 1st item, the Tapered gibs.

Because I have only one lathe I made a start by making the gib-adjustment screws (it's pretty hard to turn them when the lathe is in bits)

The screws are M4 threaded, with a 11mm diameter head. Rather than wastefully turning down a long section of 12mm brass, I decided to follow (of a fashion) C.Fellows and make it out of a socket cap screw. Not having any M4 cap screws I used the next best thing I had, a couple of M4 Pozi screws, and a couple of 12mm "washers" I turned up and tapped M4.

Then I fluxed them up and set them up to silver solder in my little hearth.

In the interests of honesty, only one actually "took", I think that the screws may have been Zinc plated, which caused one not to stick, funny as the other one seems fine. So I had to redo one, but this time I turned the end of the screw down to 3mm, then drilled another brass "washer" to fit and then silver soldered it.

Then I chucked them back into the lathe and cleaned up the faces and turned them down to 11mm.

Then it was over to the mill to mill a screwdriver slot.

Resulting with this,

Having a little more time before the call to dinner, I started on cleaning up the hunk-o-rust that will become the gib brackets.

That's as far as I got, stay tuned for (ir)regular updates.

Tim

Stilldrillin:
Nice to see a useful project underway Tim! :thumbup:

I'm in. Looking forward to watching your progress....... :)

David D

Brass_Machine:
Nice! I will be watching closely as I have some of these mods lined up for mine.

Eric

S. Heslop:
I'm interested in this. I did a little 'tuning up' on my own Axminster SC2 lathe, shimming the carriage gibs and convincing the cross slide gibs to sit flat (they were a wider angle than the dovetail, so I filed them to a narrower angle (kind of over-did it!) and it seemed to do the trick), and it really made the world of difference. I can take a bit over a 1mm cut on steel now without any problems, which is huge to me!

I've also been tempted to replace the compound slide with a block too. I'm thinking about getting a bigger lathe in the near future and adapting the mini lathe for rapid turning of small parts. So i'll be interested to see how you do it.

Stilldrillin:
Anyone tempted to replace the compound, with a block.

Don't forget to offset the toolpost pivot stud, outward, and to the right......... http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=2464.0

Gives much improved stability, and greater diameter capacity. :thumbup:

David D

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