Shamus I think that your problem is that you have sheared off this key circled in the pic. It will be pretty obvious when you get the box apart, just slide the lever to the left to the 'screwcutting' position and you can turn the shaft to see if the key is sheared.
Pete.

Shamus, This is what your gearbox will look like inside. gearbox.JPG That small gear on the far left is the tumbler quadrant gear. If you just remove the lever to pull the front off the quadrant will fall to the bottom and dis-engage with that gear. You need to avoid that at all costs or you'll have...

I don't *know* the answer and I can't find a specific drawing but if you look at my post further up "Stud gears A-G for metric gearbox lathes" you'll see that the 24 tooth "D" letter gear is annotated differently to the rest of the set of 7. It doesn't specifically say 'metric' like the other 6 and ...

Actually I've found what I think is an error in one of the drawings. In ML100/512C FEED NUT ENGLISH the thread form is given as 1/2" x 10tpi modified square thread (LH). This is obviously the cross slide nut but in the drawing for the cross slide screw ML100/514 the thread form is given as 1/2" dia ...

Thanks Andy especially for that last one.

Ah, you'll have to disregard everything I've written above Steve, I just did a search for the PCS and it doesn't have the full screw cutting gearbox that I'm describing. Yours has 2 round dials for coarse/fine and threading/feeding. It should be a simple matter to discover what's wrong.

If you're going to take the front off the gearbox beware that getting the tumbler rack gear back on correctly is a bit of a trial because the gear and the spline have odd numbers of teeth so there are a lot of possible iterations to put it back together and you can't see to do it because the front p...

You can't do metric-inch or inch-metric by just changing the stud gears a-g, you need compound gears like 127/100 or 127/130 in the train. There's a lot of info about on it but basically the answer to your question is no.

Walid for Metric sizes just multiply by 25.4

So, for example, for 0.625" ---- 0.625 x 25.4 = 15.875mm
For 9/16" ---- 9/16 x 25.4 = 14.2875mm

Original gears are just normal mild steel. You'd have to be careful with plastic gears but they might get you out of trouble. You could keep the steel D gear on there most of the time.

Do you have gear cutting equipment?

All the info is there in the PDF Walid. I guess you were typing your reply when I was posting it.

Just in case you really don't have them, here is the full drawing set for getting new ones made. This is for the metric lathe.

Hi Walid.

The spare gears should be stored on a bolt inside the gear change cover. Are you sure that they are not there?

Hi MrKev,

Put up a good photo of the front of the lathe, showing all the controls.

Gear D doesn't do reversing, except that it sits on the tumbler reverse pivot. The tumbler itself does the reversing. What the lettered gears do is allow you to cut the full range of threads as shown on the front of the gearbox. Look at the gear cutting chart. You'll see letters in the boxes along t...

You might indeed be able to run a sharpedge directly off single phase using a capacitor for the spare leg if the motor can be wired for delta configuration. It doesn't need a lot of startup torque. Might take a shove to get it turning.

Hi Drew, Sorry to hear about your grandad, it sounds like he meant a lot to you. Your lathe has a gearbox on the front? With a round dial and a lever that you can set to N at the top or one of 5 positions? If so then the A-G gears are usually held on a stud under the end gear cover. If they are miss...

I came across one of these on Ebay the other day. I'd never seen a combined wood and metal lathe before. cant find it now so I think it must have sold Indeed it did - £412 BUT it was already converted to single phase, came with two nice wood turning steadies , some timber dog drives and a set of ch...

TDS3 CWML. Combination plain-turning wood/metal lathe. £2-300 seems reasonable IMHO.

Hi Lauren,

You should be able to add photos by using the browse button when you're typing a post, just scroll down and look for it. You might have to re-size the photos first.

What area are you in? Someone might be able to come and take a look/give you advice.

Pete.