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I recently thought about buying a Sheraton 9" lathe with 1" riser blocks, effectively giving it 11" of swing.
It sold but my main concern was do these have and adverse effect on Lathe rigidity or other areas I am not aware of.
In order to better educate myself in case another comes up for sale I thought I would ask the question.
As you can probably guess I am looking to update my current lathe and realised I have a lot of research to do.
Thanks all
Steve
It must effect rigidity. The other area of concern is will the cross-slide retract enough to allow you to turn an 11" diameter workpiece? The cross-slide would have been designed for turning 9" workpieces. It will need to come back another inch with an 11" workpiece. If I want to turn near the outer edge of my Hercus 260 face plate, I need to rotate the topslide parallel to the cross-slide, then wind the topslide out to give me the extra distance. That reduces rigidity too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reidy41
It also means you need a taller tool post and tailstock to reach centre. This then adds to rigidity issues as it adds leverage, especially to the compound/cross slides. This is why bigger lathes have wider slides.
I had a Hercus with the 1" riser blocks on it and to be honest I wouldn't waste my time with them, the set up looks cool but they seem to make the machine a bit more unstable at that diameter and tend to have a bit of vibration, I spoke with another guy that set his lathe up with them and he said they really did not work for him and had issues trying to machine anything that diameter as well, you would be better off getting a 260 if you wanted a bit more swing without compromising the rigidity of the machine plus the 260 has a better bore size over the 9" machines. Also found the extended cross slide to really stiffen up the machine, theres is a lot more surface area on the dovetail and it just seems to do everything better.
Steve