Pictures would be helpful.

More oil the better and an induction hardened bed shouldn’t get damaged like that.

Tony

Also, if you wish to minimise the swarf on your bed you could make a swarf catcher.

I think the general idea is some sheet of rubber/plastic attatched to the headstock side of the saddle.(numerous examples out there on interweb(

Always look a bit "Blue Peter" to me but does it really matter if it's effective?

I wonder when 'Amateur' & 'Amateurish' started being a derogatory term?

Think the root meaning is " for the love of"

Surely if you love what you're doing,, potentially that makes you the best sort of person to be doing it ~

n'est-ce-pas?

Much depends on where the damage is. Under the chuck and at the extreme tail-stock end it won't matter at all. Might matter under the sliding surfaces. However, these lathes have prismatic beds in which quite large areas are never touched. The non-bearing areas of the bed can be mauled horribly without affecting the lathe at all. Even moderately scratched slides are unlikely to reduce accuracy, because the bearing area is large compared with the scratch.

Scratches and swarf aren't to be encouraged because they speed up wear and tear, and that eventually causes the bed to lose accuracy. Takes a lot of work to wear out a lathe bed, but many end up scrap because wear is often concentrated close to the chuck where most work is done. How prone a lathe is to bed wear depends on how it's used, what the bed is made of, and the design of the bed. All things being equal an induction hardened prismatic bed that's kept clean will last longer than a neglected flat bed. A lathe that cuts metal all day long needs more TLC than one that does half-an-hour every alternate Sunday.

I oil my bed as an anti-rust measure, but it's more important to remove swarf and protect it from abrasives. Best done at the end of each session. All oils tend to catch swarf, so wipe all the surfaces and re-oil. Slideway oil is good because it sticks where it needs to be under the slides, but it too should be cleaned off and replaced after a few hours cutting, more often if the job is dirty.

The saddle probably has small factory fitted brushes to stop swarf getting underneath. They work moderately well, but clean underneath occasionally.

Beds can look badly knocked about but still perform well. It's deep wear that matters, not superficial damage at the surface. Many a second-hand lathe has been bought because it has a shiny flat bed, the new owner blissfully unaware the flash good looks were achieved by aggressive abrasion. Grinding out cosmetic damage like scratches and rust pits causes severe wear to the bed, and it's unlikely to be flat after Bodger Bill has 'fixed' it.

My advice, don't worry about looks, what matters is how well the machine cuts metal. If it fails to cut with reasonable success, something is wrong. Might be due to a scratched bed, far more likely it's something else like loose gibs, difficult material or operator error. Most of the trouble in my workshop is operator error.

Dave

There's no specification, so I understand the notice to mean only that: 'this bed is somewhat harder than it would have been had we not bothered'.

I have a Warco lathe claiming an Induction hardened bed, and it's noticeably harder that my untreated Warco mill-table, which is rather soft. The lathe bed isn't hard in the sense a file bounces off!

Only way to find out what's what is with a hardness tester. Does a ding put into an unhardened part of the lathe bed go deeper than the same ding put into a red section?

I don't worry about it. Although neither are perfect, the mill and lathe both do what I want of them.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 14/03/2023 13:20:30

As Apprentices, we were expected to spend the last ten minutes of the day cleaning the machine.

"A clean machine is a safe machine" was drummed into us at every safety lesson.

A scratch, m,although unsightly, represents an absolutely mimute decreasevin surface narea, so operation will not be naffected.

The scratch might actually act as an oil reservoir, like the diamond honung on cylinder bores in an engine.

Far more dangerous would be a unscratched but highlyn polshed are of wear.

Howard

I would contact Warco, the bed in my opinion has missed a process in the manufacturer. My 920 lathe is about 7 years old ,it's been well used and the bed has a polished sheen on the most used parts of the bed . I've dropped chuck keys and other stuff on the bed by mistake over the year's but no marks. I'm not sure but older Myford lathes were not hardened, but I could be wrong.

Bob

Edited By BOB BLACKSHAW on 03/04/2023 07:54:36

Actually, dwarves do cause scratches … but they are quite small

[ Sorry, Martin … couldn’t resist it ]

MichaelG.

Hi, I believe no dwarf was injured or abused in the making of Martins post above.

Regards Nick.

When I bought my Warco 290V this ‘induction hardened bed’ issue did trouble me as I thought it was just shall we say, ‘not true’. Although my lathe has been OK over the last 3 years this thread reignited my curiosity and I had a further look at the bed, there is absolutely no sign of an induction hardening process being applied, no sign of heat discolouration even on the bed end where it hasn’t been ground and parts of the supposedly hardened bed are as soft as the unhardened parts. From nearly fifty years experience in engineering including performing hardening/induction hardening processes my conclusion is that my lathe bed has not been induction hardened at all. Disappointing I know but I’m not surprised at all.

Tony

I have a Chester Conquest 7 x 13" mini lathe that has the "hardened bed" sticker on the end of the bed, I also have a set of Tsubosan hardenss testing files – 6 files of varying hardness that are used to test surfaces for hardness between HRC40 and HRC65. If the file is softer than the surface, it doesn't "bite" and skates off without marking the surface. Working up through the files until one does mark the surface gives an indication of how hard it is.

On one of the vee surfaces on the lathe bed shown on the sticker as hardened, the HRC40 file easily marks the surface, suggesting it is less than HRC40. Not really that hard. Whether or not it is harder than any unhardened areas I don't have the facility to check.

How big a deal is a soft bed on a light hobby lathe ? Probably not much. Do you use it hard and often enough to risk localised wear (usually near the headstock) ?

Nigel B.

Edited By mgnbuk on 03/04/2023 13:39:29