Pete, glad to hear you are making progress. It's real learning
experience, isn't it?

Rex


spaco wrote:
Finally got the correct parts to convert my Atlas 10F lathe to a quick
change gear box. By now I have learned a lot more than I ever wanted
to know about it. I suppose I could have saved myself a lot of time,
effort and money if I had subscribed to the atlas-craftsman listserver,
but when I did do that some years ago, I was pestered with about 20
extra emails a day from it.
Anyhow, if you are interested in converting a standard-change-gears
Atlas 10 or 12 inch swing lathe to a quick change gear box, email me off
list a I will fill you in on any details you may need.

The biggest problem I had was that the machine I have is one with the
lead screw reverser down just to the left of the leadscrew. It is nice
because the system also acts as a clutch, so you don't have to stop the
lathe to change lead screw directions. Unless you want to do a whole
lot of extra work, you need a QC gearbox that:
1) mounts where the old reverser mounted. It's bolt pattern is a
LOT different from most of the ones you see on EBay.
2) has an adapter plate for mounting the CORRECT reverser onto the left
side of the headstock, because you can't use the stock reverser (the one
mounted down by the leadscrew).

Early on when I was asking for help on this newsgroup, a really nice guy
sent me his "how-to" for converting to an "EBay" used QC gearbox.
Niether of us realized that my lathe didn't have that heatstock-mounted
reverser. So I went out on EBAy and bought the first QC gearbox that I
found. THEN I discovered the "disconnect".

After discussing this new (to me) problem with this newgroup, a couple
of other guys chimed in with some good ideas, culminating in a call to
Clausing and the buying of a couple of related drawing of the missing
reverser bracket and the reverser lever itself.

A big "AHHA" at this time was that Atlas used to sell upgrade kits to
move your lathe from standard to QC gears. That IS the set of parts
that I needed for mine.

By this time I have:
-the Clausing drawings for the headstock-mounted reverser parts,
-complete QC Upgrade Kit installation instructions,
-some other Atlas intructions for something related,
-and a how-to on converting some other Atlas 10-12 lathes that don't
have the reverser that I do.

Finally---- A few months ago, after learning all this, another nice
guy emailed me to say something like this:
"---Hey Pete, looks like the QC gearbox parts WE need are up to auction
on E-Bay right now---"
Well, I was already bidding on those parts and I replied to him
telling him so and addressing whatever else was in his email.
But I never heard from him again. I'll bet that he was also bidding
on the same auction, and probably won it over me. He probably felt bad
about beating me out and stopped the dialoque. I meant to email him
and tell him that "the highest bidder won, congratulations", but I
haven't yet done that.
Well, now I've got (hopefully) all my parts, so as soon as I get
caught up in the shop, I will go out and install them.
One of the things I STILL have to do is to install the complete 12"
Atlas with QC gearbox that a friend loaned me on a "permanent loan"
basis, as reported previously.
The other thing is to sell the extra QC gearbox that I recently bought.


Pete Stanaitis
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