FILENAMES: Smithymods1.gif Smithymods2.gif DESCRIPTION: These are parts drawings made by Ted Edwards of enhancements he did to his Smithy 3-in-one machine. Ted provided the following description: ====================================================================== My machine is the previous one to the CB-1220XL. They made some significant improvements. On my recomendation, a friend got a CB- 1220XL. As usual with Asian machine tools, especially Chinese ones, you must regard the Smithy as a work in progress but in my opinion, after owning mine for several years, it is a lot of machine for the money and I'm glad I bought it. The first thing to do is align the headstock to the lathe axis. There are screws accessable behind the plate that the switch is mounted on and, if I recall correctly, you need to use some shims. Next tram the mill using shims in one or more corners where the mill head bolts to the headstock. The depth scale on the mill head is a joke - 0.040/div! Try working to 1/2 thou with that. I mounted a Mitutoyo quill kit that reads to 0.0005" on mine. The surface in front of the shaft of the fine down feed on my machine is flat. I made a bracket (see Smithymods1.gif) and mounted it by replacing the two Allen head cap screws that hold the vertical drive assembly with longer ones. On the new machines, they decided to curve this surface. (If something is right you just gotta find a way to screw it up.) My friend discovered this and brought the part to my place where we milled it flat. This is the only mod that isn't easily done on your own machine. I think (I haven't tried this) that you could mount it on the face plate and do it on the lathe. The new machines come with the left hand threading setup which I added as an accessory. They also use half nuts on the long. feed now which I think is an advantage. My lead screws are metric, my friends are inch. Mine aren't all that accurate (0.3% error on the long. feed) so I wrote a program to compute gear combinations to give accurate inch and metric threads. I don't know how close the new ones are. There was a thread on the news group about "quick change" tool posts. People were complaining about always having to shim up tools on the style of tool post Smithy uses. Get yourself a roll of 1/2" wide shim stock in each of 5, 10 and 20 thou thickness and some 1/2" wide aluminum strips 1/16 and 1/8" thick. Cut yourself a whole bunch of 2" long shims of each of these. Vist your friendly neighbouhood pharmacist and get a bunch of plastic pill bottles about 7/8" I.D. These should be just under 1" O.D. Now get a piece of 2x8 about 9 or 10" long and drill a pattern of 1" holes with a Forstner bit. Each time you get a tool set up to just the right height, put it and its shims in one of bottles. Next time you need that tool just grab and install. See the next paragraph. One problem we both had is the tool post - the tool mounting surface was not parralel to the table. This means that a tool correctly shimed for one location is not correct in another. Even worse, if you mount the tool sticking out more or less than previously, the point height will shift a bit. I fixed mine by dismantling the compound and mounting the tool holder block upside down on the table and cleaning it up with the mill. I then turned it over and mounted it on 1-2-3 blocks right side up. I then used a 3" carbide toothed saw blade that I got surplus as a milling cutter to go around the mounting surfaces and take off just enough to make them flat and parallel to the table. I made a handle for the longditudinal feed screw as, on my machine, the handle did not spin on the wheel and would raise blisters after an hour or so of work. I don't remember whether they fixed this on the new one. Since I was feeling energetic and hadn't done much with stainless, that's what I made my handle from. The drawing for it is Smithymods2.gif I built a power feed for the long. axis which makes life much more pleasant. There is a description of mine on the NG recently. One of these days I'll dismantle it and get some pictures for a post to the drop box or MWN. I found that for cutoff and machining very hard materials, even the slowest speed of 160 rpm is too fast. Smithy offer a 2:1 planetary redution pulley to replace the intermediate pulley. I found this a VERY worthwhile addition to my machine. Do yourself a favour and use indexable carbide inserts wherever possible for machining. See my posts toolhold.txt and toolhold.gif in the drop box. That's all I can think of for now. Any suggestions, comments or questions to the NG or mailto:Ted_E@bc.sympatico.ca. Don't take all this to suggest that the machine is junk. It is definitely not. I sometimes work to less than 1 thou tollerance on mine. Before I got my Smithy, I had had relatively little lathe and no mill experience. It has been used hard for several years now and is still going strong. All work on the machine itself has been lubing, adjusting, the above mods and making accesories - no repairs due to failures. I have not as yet seen any machine for the same dollar cost that beats it when all things are considered. Note that I have nothing to do with Smithy except as a satisfied customer.