New lathe arrived today : The ongoing saga

[Brian JohnParticipant @brianjohn93961]

Thank you Peter

Would you buy one for yourself ?

[Peter HallParticipant @peterhall61789]

Why, Brian! Surely you're not thinking of selling up?

Pete

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Maybe 'Optimum' would like to buy it

… could be handy for 'Type Approval' testing

MichaelG.

[Brian JohnParticipant @brianjohn93961]

No, this lathe is mine. I will not be selling it. Rarely do you see second hand lathes for sale in Australia… not sure why that is ?

But I am wondering if it would be worth sending a full report regarding this lathe to the head office in Germany. I have their email address and I am curious as to what they might have to say about it.

[Brian GroomeParticipant @briangroome43093]

Brian, I can't believe that you even need to think about whether or not to send them a report. If it was me I would send them a report and an invoice for the time spent getting it to the condition it should have been in when they sold it. Cheers, Brian

[VicParticipant @vic]

From past experience I doubt the Germans would even reply to your email Brian.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

ROTFL. I found out why Brian had so much trouble with the lead screw bushing popping out at one end and the leadscrew dog clutch exploding at the other.

The flamin' leadscrew is only up to 1/4" (6mm) out of alignment with the bed ways in the horizontal plane. No wonder the poor little things kept flying apart! To get it assembled, the leadscrew had to be bowed under pressure by 1/4". The lathe arrived at my workshop dismantled so I only discovered this on the final reassembly after I set up the carriage shims and got it gliding back and forth beeeyoutifully without the leadscrew installed. Then when I installed it and wound it back to the tailstock end, things became obvious. (Maybe the bed was ground slack at this end to make up for the binding lead screw?) Then when removing the dog clutch at the headstock end, the preloaded leadscrew went off like a Number 1 rabbit trap!

Check out the visible gap between the leadscrew and bed in the picture.

YOu can see it goes from a 1/4" gap at the carriage at the right, down to zero where it touches the bed at the other end. LOL! Tolerance for leadscrew alignment on a normal sized tool room lathe is to be within .004" (.01mm) of parallel to the bed ways. Only out by a matter of, ohh, let's say .246". Woeful.

But the solution is not too hard. The problem appears to be that pesky bushing at the right hand end is located about .060" (1.5mm) too far out away from the bed. The dog clutch and the threaded hole in the carriage the leadscrew (loosely) meshes with are in alignment. So I reckon the solution will be to turn up a brass bushing with the hole in the middle offset by the right amount, position it just right and drill the grub screw hole to locate it. Of course the grub screw hole is drilled a few mm off centre so that makes it a bit harder to do, but not impossible.

You can see the mess here: Note the large gap where the end of the leadscrew is sitting NEXT TO the hole in the bushing.

I gotta say, in 45 years or more of working on machinery ranging from sewing machines to submarines and a bit of just about everything in between, I don't remember working on such a shoddily built POS before. The ways being a bit out, well you can understand that on a machine built to a price, maybe. But this? This is pure BS.

Speaking of BS. I notice Optimum's website and catalogue claim the beds are induction hardened and precision ground. First time I have ever been able to easily file hardened steel or iron with a regular file, and very easily at then. About as hardened as your granny's derriere it is.

No I wouldn't buy one. My mate bought a 7×14 standard mini lathe off alibaba.com straight from a Chinese machine tool manufacturing company for about half of the price of the Optimum and it so far is working without a hitch. I'd take a punt on one of them before going for an Optimum. I think the German supervised quality control claims by Optimum are on par with their claims of hardened and precision ground bedways. Simply not worth paying the extra money for non-existent advantages.

I did notice too that the carriage on the Optimum still had the scriber marks on it where all the holes were marked out before drilling and tapping. No factory I ever worked in individually marked out and drilled mass production parts. Small workshops doing contract parts in small batches maybe. But a "proper factory" as Optimum claims to have would surely use CNC these days or at least have a drill jig that you just put the part in and drill all the holes in the right places without time consuming mark up.

Edited By Hopper on 03/11/2015 12:21:26

[Brian JohnParticipant @brianjohn93961]

I am speechless at the moment Peter. Far too much time effort and money has been invested in this lathe to even think about sending it back but I will have something to say to both the Australian company who sold it and to Optimum in Germany. My main anger is directed towards the Optimum head office in Germany : so much for precision German engineering !

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Brian, precision German engineering ain't what it used to be. I have a mate up the road who makes a good living rebuilding BMW motorcycle gearboxes and bevel drives because they implode on an alarmingly regular basis. As do the ABS systems – at $5,000 a pop for a new "black box".

Just think Volkswagen smog tests.

But fear not. Once the Aussie shade tree mechanics have sorted out the German precision engineering you will have a ripper little machine.

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Hypothesis:

Equipment build standard is inversely proportional to the delivery distance and in consequence the goods returned distance. (or send your junk as far away as possible)

Hopper seems to have proved that it's not that difficult to get this lathe to operate as it should so why could Optimum not achieve the same. I don't think this episode has done them any good whatsoever.

regards Martin

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

PS, I was thinking too that we can use some of the leftover steel shim to make some little covers for the cross slide ways and feedscrew and for the bed ways in front of the carriage. The more you can keep the swarf out of those moving parts, the longer they will last.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Martin I think you're probably right.

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I know I have mentioned that people shouldn't get sucked in by the superior quality associated with .de. Like any country there are the good the bad and the ugly. Actually much of the reputation in this respect is a fiction that has been actively encouraged for a long time.

However people will continue to believe it no matter what they come across during life and it's true to some extent in some cases but oddly maybe I wouldn't include BMW in that area.

John

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[David ColwillParticipant @davidcolwill19261]

Would it be possible to rename this thread to include "Optimum Lathe" in the title. Often when looking for information on machines this site comes fairly near the top in searches. If the title indicates the make and model of lathe, others looking for info are likely to read it. This may save some other poor sod who hasn't got help from someone as kind and skilled as Hopper.

I am a great supporter of imported machines and have said so on many occasions. I always expect to do some work to improve them but this seems to be well past that point. Hopper has highlighted a number of faults any one of which would have justified a return with full refund and while I expect that the odd fault could slip by quality control, it is hard to imagine how this one got by unless there is none at all.

What makes this worse to me is that this is exactly the sort of lathe to be bought by a complete beginner. I wonder how many people have simply given up thinking that they are doing something wrong.

Rant over.

Regards

David

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

They might have the same problem with any of them David and as they get bigger they may be better – who knows, Odd ones might be duff, most might be duff. There is no way of knowing until it's bought.

The problem for a beginner is spotting what is actually wrong and often having no idea at all what to expect generally. I'd guess no one on here thought that the lead screw was running out that much. They might have if they had been there and turned the handle but still wouldn't expect that sort of problem and initially put it down to something else.

John

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[David ColwillParticipant @davidcolwill19261]

I suppose what bothers me most is that they probably sell quite a few of these in this condition and get away with it. They certainly have on this occasion.

Making new handles, spending a few hours adjusting and general fettling, I think we all expect that but this…..

David

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

People do what you inspect not what you expect which is particularly true regarding China. Some western firms impose an extremely good quality departments on their Chinese manufacturers who can be capable of exceptional work, but if you don't insist on it you won't get it. As many have said the fault lies with the German side of the operation. This is taken from their website.

"Since 2003 OPTIMUM produces a large part of its metal processing machines in its proper factory at the Chinese Yangzhou with a German production manager and quality management representative.

Development, design and quality management mainly take place in Germany."

Martin

[MadMikeParticipant @madmike]

Thirty six pages, a veritable marathon, to discuss a very poor quality machine. Like I said the other day you should have simply rejected it and got some form of satisfaction out of whoever supplied the thing.

If you now try and involve somebody in Germany or Austria they are likely to express some token sorrow but then insist that you should have returned it so that they could arrange a replacement, or suggest that the issue is between you and the selling agent in the Antipodes.

Whilst I admire your patience and tenacity, coupled with the kind works done by Hopper, I still believe that you have taken and followed the wrong route to solving the problem.

I don't know how much you paid for this ornament but I do know that if you had bought a UK£250 washing machine/dish washer etc, and it had been this bad, then your wife would have made you take it back and get a replacement or your money back. I do not understand why on earth Model Engineers do not apply the washing machine test to buying a new machine. Don't tell me it's because they like to sort out "the problem" because that is nonsense. What they want to do is cut metal and make their models and all of this extra effort merely prevents them from doing this. Sorry if this offends but really chaps real engineers simply would not put up with this.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Mike,

I do have some sympathy with your attitude, but I think one of the biggest problems in the 'hobbyist' market is that people actually seem to be pleased when a supplier 'does the decent thing' [sic] and replaces a defective item without quibble. …. This ammounts to 'Quality Inspection by the Customer' and is not, to my mind, acceptable.

Many of us will be old enough to remember Clive Sinclair's audio amplifier modules, which were "tested" on much the same basis.

MichaelG.

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 03/11/2015 18:01:39:

Mike,

I do have some sympathy with your attitude, but I think one of the biggest problems in the 'hobbyist' market is that people actually seem to be pleased when a supplier 'does the decent thing' [sic] and replaces a defective item without quibble. …. This ammounts to 'Quality Inspection by the Customer' and is not, to my mind, acceptable.

Many of us will be old enough to remember Clive Sinclair's audio amplifier modules, which were "tested" on much the same basis.

MichaelG.

His scientific calculator kit was pretty special too, It used rather poor approximations for trig functions. Miles out.

I did manage to make a decent guitar amplifier out of one of his high powered modules but had incredible problems getting round transformer regulation under low loads. The volts had to be rather high to get the power out.

John

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[HopperParticipant @hopper]

The trouble with returning machines here is that they will rather send you another machine than refund the money. So you end up with another one much like the first, or maybe even worse. Living, as Brian and I do, 1,100 miles from the state capital city, returns take time and money so we tend rather to fix than return. Brian will end up with a nice machine out of it and I have spent a few enjoyable hours fiddling with an interesting project.

But yes, I don't know why Chinese made tools and machinery are such poor quality due to easily rectified issues. As you say, if 'er indoors purchased a new fridge, which costs about the same as the Optimum, has more moving parts, and the compressor unit is precision built, one would never have to strip it down and rebuild it before use. If they can build a fridge compressor that works, why not a lathe?

[julian atkinsParticipant @julianatkins58923]

i agree with Hopper, who i still think deserves a Model Engineering 'Oscar' for his efforts with Brian's machine.

i must say that in many years this has been the most interesting thread.

i dont know what ME pay per page these days (£45 per page?) but a write up of Hopper's work on this lathe if spread out ad nauseam such as the 'Emma Victoria' build would earn him a tidy sum!

Hopper, you are a Star and a real Gent and a credit to this hobby for helping out Brian!

cheers,

julian

[Brian JohnParticipant @brianjohn93961]

The fact that there are scribing marks would explain why nobody else is having problems with this model lathe. According the Australian company who sold it to me ''They are flying off the shelves'' . If each machine is drilled/machined separately rather than using CNC than what you get depends on the skill level of whoever is working on your lathe. I obviously got the new guy…first day on the job !

Peter (Hopper) : would it be possible to blank off the bushing hole and weld it up completely then drill a new hole ? Or is this undesirable…impossible…a plain silly idea….all of the fore mentioned ?

Edited By Brian John on 04/11/2015 06:55:42

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

All fixed mate. I spent a little time in the shed this morning and turned up an eccentric bushing and fitted it. Works like a beauty. Welding would distort the whole show and cause major headaches.

I also checked the spindle bearings while I had the chuck off. All good there. Pretty much zero movement, a couple tenths of a thou. Spindle and flange are running true to about the same amount both radially and axially.

The chuck was a poor fit on the flange register and moving around a bit I think. Cleaned the burr off the register on the flange and it settled down. Chuck has runout of about .002" (about .05mm) which is par for the course on a three jaw chuck unless you spend hundreds of dollars on one.

So I will give the wee beastie a test run in the morning and make some swarf, turn a couple of test bars and see how it performs now. Spindle alignment is now within .001" of carriage movement so I reckon it should do pretty good.

Without the "spring" pressure of the misaligned leadscrew pushing the carriage crossways and making it ride up the angled surface of the inverted V way, and with the properly aligned ways, the carriage no longer has that "wobble" it had before. So it's all looking pretty good.

Will post some pics shortly.

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

It would be interesting to see how you get on turning steel on it Hopper. It should be capable of taking some sort of cut.

Saddle lifting as it's moved along the bed by the lead screw is a new one for me. One to tuck away and remember.

John

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