In article ,
"Bob La Londe" wrote:

The HF mini lathe hasn't been used since I got the slightly bigger much
older, and much better HF lathe. I wanted to use it the other day though
because it has gear selectable forward and reverse carriage feed. The I
remembered I stripped those little nylon gears. I am sure I can get a hold
of HF customer service and get a part number for those gears if its not in
my manual for the machine, but I was wondering if somebody knew of a source
for metal replacements? I know Little Machine Shop was the threading gear
set in metal, but I didn't see the rest of the gears for the machine.

My next thought was maybe to try and make some metal gears, but I have never
done that before. Any suggestions on the approach for that? Best alloy for
reasonable wear?

I don't know in that particular case, but sometimes it's best to leave
the "weak link" weak, so it can protect all the other links, and buy a
few spares of it so you can get back running after you break it again.
Worth considering, anyway.

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