MicroLux 7x16 4" chuck vibration

[Ed McDonnell]

Got a 4" 3-jaw chuck (Micro-Mark) when I got my MicroLux 7x16. Just tried it for the first time tonight. I'm getting quite a bit of vibration from the chuck. Everything is mounted tight.

There is no vibration at all with the 3" chuck that came standard with the lathe.

I'm going to go do some more trouble shooting, but I figured it can't hurt to ask if anyone here has had a similar experience. More importantly, if you did then how did you address it?

Thanks,

Ed

PS - If anyone has any tips on good ways to get those tiny little nuts installed on the studs in the tiny little gap between the chuck and the headstock, I would love to hear them.

 

[Dalecamino]

Ed, I suspect that since you're asking about the gap for tightening the nuts, you may not have all of them tight against the face plate evenly. When I mounted my 3" chuck, I didn't get one of the studs into the chuck far enough. So, I ran all of them in far enough, so they were a little bit longer than the thickness of the nuts. Try using a magnet told hold the nut inline with the stud, then use your finger to start threading the nut onto the stud. Run each nut up to the backing plate evenly, before you start wrenching them. Hope this helps. BTW, congratulations on the 7x16.

 

[Ed McDonnell]

Hi Chuck - Thanks for the response. I learned about the studs the first time I tried to remove the 3" standard chuck. Two of the studs unscrewed rather than the nuts when I was unscrewing. That was fun .

I've been using some forceps to hold the nut to get it started. A bar magnet might be easier, thanks for the tip. I can barely get my fingers in there to spin the nut to the face plate. I guess I'm a little larger than the average chinese machinist. :biggrin:

I made sure the studs were fully inserted and tight in the 4" chuck before installing it. All nuts were tight against the face plate. Each was as evenly torqued as I could do by hand.

While investingating, I took the jaws out and made sure the correct jaw was installed in the correct slot in the chuck. They were. I didn't try switching the jaws to different slots. Still had vibration without the jaws installed, so it's the chuck body / mechanism.

I took the chuck off tried mounting the chuck slightly rotated from where I intitially installed it. That would have offset the extra holes in the chuck and face plate a bit. That seemed to reduce the vibration. Didn't eliminate it, but it's almost tolerable at lower speeds. At higher speeds I can still use the lathe to vibrate bubbles out of resin.

I'm going to try rotating the chuck mount one more time and see if the third (final) mounting position is better or worse.

I found some suggestions on the yahoo 7x12 group about the scroll in these chinese boat (*1) chucks being out of balance. They claim to have solved the problem by drilling holes in the heavy side of the scroll to balance things out. Not sure I'm ready to head down that path just yet.

Wish the 3" chuck had a larger thru hole. I wouldn't even be messing with the 4" chuck if it did.

Ed

(*1) a chinese boat is a junk!

 

[Dalecamino]

Sounds like you're headed in the right direction. I will be interested to hear about the outcome, as I was considering that upgrade down the road. Keep us posted, please.

 

[Ed McDonnell]

The good news is that I'm getting really good installing and uninstalling chucks on the MicroLux. I never realized how good I had it on the wood lathe. There has to be a better way to mount a chuck on a metal lathe. But I'm getting off topic here.

Here's where I am. The 4" micromark chuck has an adapter plate bolted to the back of the chuck. I took the adapter plate off and mounted that on the lathe without the chuck. The adapter plate has 3 extra mounting holes that are not evenly spaced around the plate. Not surprisingly, it vibrated like crazy.

I thought maybe the extra holes were located to enable to mounting plate to counterbalance the chuck. The plate can be mounted to the chuck at thee different angles of rotation. I tried all three ways. The vibration seemed exactly the same each time. If the adapter was intended to counterbalance I would have expected more vibration in some orientations and less in others.

I put the 3" chuck back on the lathe. No vibration. Mounted a 1/2" steel rod in the 3" chuck. No vibration. Removed the adapter plate from the 4" chuck and clamped the 4" chuck (without the adapter) to the part of the steel rod sticking out of the 3" chuck. Turned on the lathe and there was only a tiny bit of vibration. Less than I would have expected with that big heavy 4" chuck hanging onto the 1/2" steel rod. So the chuck itself seems pretty well balanced. It's the adapter plate that seems to be the problem.

I'm going to call it a night and work on the adapter plate tomorrow.

Ed

 

[Ed McDonnell]

I couldn't sleep. As I lay there thinking about the adapter plate it seemed that there was one hole that wasn't counterbalanced by any other hole. So I got up, went down to the shop and turned a steel step plug to fit in the hole. I made it a tight fit and the lathe faceplate locks it into the chuck adapter so I don't have to worry about a bullet shooting out of the lathe at me.

The vibration is almost completely gone. The hole had three different diameters on it and I just eyeballed the length of each section. I bet if I take the time to measure and make it an exact fit I can get rid of all the vibration.

I was a little worried about using a plug and had thought about drilling a hole opposite the problem hole in the adapter to counterbalance. But once I confirmed that the plug would be locked in while the chuck was attached I found that a better approach than drilling the adapter. My drill press is barely ok with wood. I avoid drilling metal if at all possible.


Ed

 

[Dalecamino]

Ed, if you don't get this worked out to your satisfaction, consider calling MicroMark tech support. You may be able to send it back for another one. I don't think a guy should have to go thru all this. JMO I know these things can interfere with sleep. I've missed a lot of much deserved naps :biggrin:

 

[bitshird]

Ed, did you have to turn the mating area of the back plate on your 4 inch chuck?
I've had to do it a number of times, and it takes so little to either throw the chuck out of round with runout, or vibration, usually .0001 will make a good fit. But if the chuck came with the back plate that was supposed to be fitted to each other, I'd be on the phone to Tech Support. In reality a chuck should be specifically fitted to a lathe.

 

[Ed McDonnell]

Ed, did you have to turn the mating area of the back plate on your 4 inch chuck?
I've had to do it a number of times, and it takes so little to either throw the chuck out of round with runout, or vibration, usually .0001 will make a good fit. But if the chuck came with the back plate that was supposed to be fitted to each other, I'd be on the phone to Tech Support. In reality a chuck should be specifically fitted to a lathe.

The chuck came with an adapter installed so that it fit the lathe. The adapter looked like it was drilled for both 3 hole and 4 hole mounting. Unfortunately that left the adapter unbalanced.

I found a thread on the 7x12 yahoo group that talked about the exact same problem on the adapter that LMS sells to fit a 4" chuck to their version of the 7X lathe.

It just really seems strange that LMS and micromark would be selling these when they are going to cause problems. I can't see where I'm doing anything wrong and there was nothing else in the box with the chuck that could be used to counterbalance things.

I suppose on a bigger heavier lathe the vibration would not be as noticeable, but it would still have to be an issue with the bearings over time.

Here's a link to the 7x12 group thread that has pictures that show what I'm talking about with the unbalanced hole.

Yahoo! Groups

Ed

 

[Ed McDonnell]

Ed, if you don't get this worked out to your satisfaction, consider calling MicroMark tech support. You may be able to send it back for another one. I don't think a guy should have to go thru all this. JMO I know these things can interfere with sleep. I've missed a lot of much deserved naps :biggrin:

Hi Chuck - I'm going to call tech support tomorrow when they are open to see what they have to say. I've got it working acceptably now, but you are right in that nobody should have to go through this ordeal.

I'll report back on whatever response I get from them.

Ed

 

[Ed McDonnell]

Tech support isn't open until this afternoon. I played around with the chuck some more this morning. I've actually got the chuck pretty well balanced now. Here's the final solution.

I got the adapter balanced with a 13.9 gram steel counterweight in the unmatched hole in the adapter. With just the adapter on the lathe there was no significant vibration. With the chuck attached to the adapter I would get a noticeable vibration in a limited speed range (speed dial in the 9 o'clock position). Additionally, I wasn't comfortable running the lathe at half speed and higher. I was worried about the bearings with the amount of vibration I could feel at those speeds.

I tried slightly increasing and decreasing the balance weight but couldn't get rid of that last bit of vibration. Using some small strong rare earth magnets I tried adding extra weight at various spots on the chuck to try and balance. Just couldn't do it.

Suddenly a light came on and I remembered what bitshird had written. I got out my indicator and checked the flange on the adapter and sure enough it had a runout of 0.002". I didn't have anyway to check the recess on the chuck, but I am pretty sure that it is also not concentric.

I put the adapter back on the chuck offsetting it from where I had been installing it. In that position, the error in the adapter must balance out the error in the chuck recess because that last bit of vibration is now gone.

What an ordeal. That's it until I talk to Micro-mark and see what they have to say about this.

Ed

 

[Ed McDonnell]

Just got off the phone with micro-mark tech support. Here's my summary of the call based on the notes I took:

I explained the problem and the tech's reply was:

"....yeah...that's the way those chucks come....you just have to balance them out..."

I told him the vibration was so bad that the lathe would have walked off the workbench. the tech's reply was:

"....yeah...if you bolt the lathe to the bench it won't move around"

I expressed concern that the vibration would not be good for the bearings even if the lathe wasn't jumping around. The tech's reply was:

"............"

Moving on, I suggested that they might want to consider including some instructions with the chuck explaining how a customer might do the balancing (should have also suggested that they disclose this balancing requirement in the product description, but I didn't think of it at the time). The tech's reply was:

"....yeah...I'll pass that up the line...."


Okie Dokie. I've finally got the chuck balanced now so I'm just letting the issue drop. I wasn't looking to return my chuck so I'm not bothered that they didn't offer to exchange / return the chuck. I was looking for them to express surprise that the chuck was so badly out of balance, indicating that they at least thought they were selling quality products. Instead I got a "that's just the way things are, live with it as best you can" response (not their actual words, but the way I interpreted what I heard).

Micro-Mark has seen their last order from me.

Ed

 

[Dalecamino]

Ed, it's good you got the vibration out of the chuck. It's disappointing that MicroMark was of no help. I'm thinking being a Monday, you unfortunately, were connected with a tech that didn't want to put forth much effort in resolving your issue. But then, maybe they're all that way. Glad you got it worked out. Now, I envy you with having a chuck with the larger pass thru hole.:redface:

 

[SteveG]

My MicroLux 7 X 16 is due on my doorstep by FEDEX today. I know where NOT to get the chuck I will want for the larger pass thru. I do have a independent 4-jaw on b/o with Micro Mark. We will see how that goes...

 

[Ed McDonnell]

Hi Steve - I also had an independent 4-jaw chuck on b/o with micromark for over a month. My first call after I was done with tech support was to micromark customer service asking them to cancel my back ordered chuck.

I figure , why take a chance?

They cancelled the order with no questions asked.

The 7x16 lathe itself is fine. One thing about micro-mark is that they do a really nice job packaging the lathe for shipment. Everything goes together pretty quickly.

Good luck with the new lathe.

Ed

 

[SteveG]

Thanks for the input Ed. I think I will follow your line of thought and canx the B/O. I have some past metal lathe experience as taught by my machinist dad when I was adolescent/early teen. Just getting the bare lathe now, and ready to start rounding up all the other stuff needed. If you have any specific recommendations, pro or con, I am always listening.
Steve

 

[bluwolf]

Ed, I've been following your trials and tribulations, but since I had no intelligent advice to contribute I just watched. I'm glad you were able to work through it. Enjoyed reading the common sense way you went about it. I couldn't help but I can say congrats

Mike

 

[bitshird]

I think it's a shame they have such poor customer service, I've always thought of Micro Mark as being the best of the 7 X lathes, but I guess their accessories leave some room for improvement. Perhaps the little machine shop has back plates and chucks for the Micro Mark, BUT yiu will have to turn the back plate to the inside flange of the chuck.
This is critical, both the mating edge and the surface MUST be with in .0001 to a max of .00015. And since it has to be done on the lathe it will be used on, registration and fit, as well as accuracy will be guaranteed,.
The nice part of a 4 jaw independent is it can be off a little, since one jaw can compensate by shifting the center, I love 4 jaw chucks, I can get better accuracy with a 4 jaw independent chuck.
I would look at the little machine shop for chucks and back plates.

 

[bluwolf]

I've said all along that it's fine to buy the lathe from Micromark, but get all your accessories and tooling from LMS. MM does a great job specing the lathe out. But the lathe is just one of their product lines. The 7x machines are what LMS is all about. They know their stuff and you can call and talk to someone knowledgeable before buying something.

Mike

 

[Ed McDonnell]

I find it really eye opening that the world of metalworking is so much different than the world of woodworking. If a novice wood turner were to ask me for a recommendation on a chuck I would quickly say Oneway Talon or Oneway Stronghold (there are other good brands of chucks, but I like Oneway and it's what I would rec). Where to buy it would be less important than what you were buying.

As a novice in metalworking, I've been asking some "what should I buy" questions in various forums. Rather than "what" I should buy answers, I get a lot of "where" I should buy answers. LMS is a frequently recommended vendor. I wonder why (not why LMS, rather why recs on where to buy rather than what to buy)?

Who is the Oneway of the metalworking world? Is name brand high quaility metalworking gear so expensive that it never gets considered in the hobbyist metalworking community? Everybody just takes their chances with run of the mill stuff from China and India?

If all the meatalworking vendors selling to hobbyists are selling the same stuff then I guess the support they provide is at least as important (probably more) than what they are selling.

I like my Microlux lathe and I've done some good work with it so far. But I ran a Bridgeport Mill in a machine shop 40 years ago. I also had a chance to work on the big lathes. It's now clear to me that you can surprise yourself from time to time and produce high quality work on a chinese mini-lathe in spite of the limitations of the equipment. But it's a very different experience than working with industrial quality equipment where producing extremely high quality work is the norm and expected.

Ed

 

[bitshird]

Ed, Ain't that the truth, it is amazing what can be done on some of these "toy size" machines, I've been running everything from 36 inch Steinel Turret lathe with an 11 ft bed, to 25 inch Bullard verticals, and just about every make milling machine and a lot of surface and centerless grinders, around the US.
But I manage some fair parts with my old Jet 9-20 which now has just about as many Harbor freight and Grizzly parts as it does Jet.
I really do want a Micro Mark, but after hearing about their service dept. (or lack there of) I may just get the shorter Hi torque from LMS. I've dealt with their service, and it was great.

 

[Ed McDonnell]

Hi Ken - I want to be fair to micro-mark.

If I had it to do all over again I would still buy the 7x16 from micro-mark. I just wouldn't buy any lathe related accessories from them. I think the lathe is solid enough that tech support would never be needed. I was really impressed with how they packaged the lathe for shipping. A first class job.

For me, my final decision came down to the 7x16 microlux or the 7x12 hitorque from LMS. When I compared my total bottom line spend (including shipping and with summer sale prices), the microlux was a much much better value. It wasn't even close.

So, don't give up on the 7x16 because of the problems I reported with the chuck. I've already had many times where I'm glad I have the extra 4 inches and said to myself "how would I do this if the bed were shorter".

Ed

 

[bluwolf]

Ed, I've juggled your post around so that hopefully my reply will make a little more sense.

As a novice in metalworking, I've been asking some "what should I buy" questions in various forums. Rather than "what" I should buy answers, I get a lot of "where" I should buy answers. LMS is a frequently recommended vendor. I wonder why (not why LMS, rather why recs on where to buy rather than what to buy)?

If all the meatalworking vendors selling to hobbyists are selling the same stuff then I guess the support they provide is at least as important (probably more) than what they are selling.

I think that if you go in with your eyes open and realize that you're not buying Oneway quality, then the next best thing you can hope for is some decent customer service and a little peace of mind that if something should go wrong that they will do their best to make it right. Believing that they know their product and that they can actually help you make an informed decision on what to buy is a definite bonus.

In this "economy" level of tooling and equipment I think there are often a couple (few?) degrees of quality. Items that look identical may not be. If I can't be sure then I'm going to try to deal with someone, or some company that I believe is at least trying to do right. Judging from the response that you got, which was where to buy instead of what, it sounds like there are some people that agree with that theory. And if the same name keeps coming up then I'm gonna start assuming there's a reason for it.


Who is the Oneway of the metalworking world? Is name brand high quaility metalworking gear so expensive that it never gets considered in the hobbyist metalworking community? Everybody just takes their chances with run of the mill stuff from China and India?

I don't believe there is a Oneway in the metalworking world. If you're talking about the machines themselves, that would be like a Ford vs. Chevy argument, actually considering the money more like a Ferrari vs. Lamborghini argument. Lots of them don't come with things like chucks or toolposts. They know if you spent the money to buy one of their Ferrari machines, you're going to go out and get a Lamborghini chuck and QCTP for it.

There are a lot of high end companies making excellent (and expensive) tooling and accessories. But they tend to be more specific about what they make. You want a high end QCTP? Aloris or Dorian (yes, there are another one or two but I'm trying to make a point here). You want a quality chuck? How about a Buck (same disclaimer as the QCTP)?

You asked if the high end tooling is so expensive as to be prohibitve to the hobbyist. For this hobbyist and the others I know, yes. But I guess that depends on your budget. A 5 piece Phase II QCTP for my 12x36 lathe can be had for something like $165 on sale I think. A 5 piece from Aloris is $700. The stock chuck on my lathe can probably be had for around $300. A Buck chuck would be around $1175 + shipping. I'd love to have one but I'm not building space shuttle parts so for now mine works just peachy.

I like my Microlux lathe and I've done some good work with it so far. But I ran a Bridgeport Mill in a machine shop 40 years ago. I also had a chance to work on the big lathes. It's now clear to me that you can surprise yourself from time to time and produce high quality work on a chinese mini-lathe in spite of the limitations of the equipment. But it's a very different experience than working with industrial quality equipment where producing extremely high quality work is the norm and expected.

This goes back to the old saying," It's not the tool, it's the craftsman using it". Yes it is a different experience. Some will try it and say, "Oh this is a piece of crap" and give up. Others like yourself will say, "Hmm, well that didn't come out like I expected, but if I re-do it like this..." and get good results. I had a 7x14, I liked it a lot. Then the projects got too big. So I bought a Taiwanese 12x36. I think it's it's the coolest thing since sliced bread and I think I've done some neat stuff on it. But then, as I said I'm not building space shuttle parts with .000000001 tolerances.

Wow. Sorry for the long ramblings. But you asked some age old questions and I thought I'd give you my 2 cents worth.

Mike