plastic gears??

Frank Fusco

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Mountain Home, Arkansas
:eek: A friend of mine who is a gunsmith recently acquired a bench top machine lathe and a mill. Neither has a brand name on it. They are (Grizzly?) green but, to me, look cheaply assembled. Again, to me, they scream 'Harbor Freight'. But, in fact, I dunno.
While using a few days ago the lathe made loud noises and wouldn't turn despite the motor running. He opened up the gear box and found the plastic gears had stripped.
He claims these units are the same as those sold by Grizzly. Again, I dunno. But, I do have a gut feeling Grizzly would not sell something so prone to failure as a machine lathe with plastic gears.
I am really surprised something would be made like this. The gears that failed were of a soft, not particularly hard, plastic. There may be super-durable high density plastics avaiable but these were sure not.
Is this unusual or common?
 
We have all found diamonds-in-the-rough at HF and they're great. Some folks think because their F-clamps work okay that their vertical mills or router bits must be great too. Your friend may fall into the category that some of my friends do. They swear that the HF version of something is "the same as" so-and-so's version. I tend to remain mute when these declarations are made. When an entire machine coasts less than a decent chuck for another machine, you have to expect some shortcuts. There are some amazingly tough plastics available today. I'm pretty sure those gears weren't made from them. Hopefully there are some inexpensive metal replacements available. ;-)
 
Well I am sure this is one of the 7x10 12 or 14 metal lathes. And yes the Griz is the same as the HF. The lathes and mills both have plastic gears from the factory. The idea is when you do something stupid the cheap plastic gear is the weak link. There are metal replacements available but some(many) that go that route end up breaking something more expensive to replace. Most of these are made by Seig but there is another very similar one that is/was sold by the traveling tool trucks.

For more than you ever wanted to know about these:
http://www.mini-lathe.com/
http://www.varmintal.com/alath.htm

and replacement parts are readily available from:
http://www.littlemachineshop.com
 
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Darren I am pretty sure that set is plastic..

They have a set of metal change gears for 100.00 and a set of all metal gears for somewhere around 200.00
Garry
 
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