Ecnerwal wrote:
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.

Is anything made with plastic gears worth protecting in the first place?

no.