So after saving up and looking for what seems like forever I finally decided to buy a 70's 13" southbend. The guy I bought it from runs a machinery supply company and he recommends a professional rigging company to move it for me. I decide a professional would be better so I call em up. The guy goes and picks it up and brings it to my house. He unloads it with a forklift and as he's coming up the driveway the machine slides down and crashes into the front of the fork lift effectively smashing the cross slide handle and bending the screw. As you can imagine I'm pretty bummed. So they send over a repair guy and he pulls the screw and takes it to go get "straightened". A couple days later he comes back with the screw and puts it back in the machine. Well,it's still not right. There is a pretty tight spot when turning the handle where there wasn't one before. I called the rigger and let him know it wasn't right and also let the people who "fixed" it know. That was 3 weeks ago..... machine is still not fixed and I'm getting increasingly pissed. Anyhow, to get to my question. There is another southbend lathe at the place I bought mine from. The machine isn't in as good of condition as mine but It's got a taper attachment on it and I'm wondering if I could just pull the screw and the taper attachment off that one and put it on mine and then they can deal with the bent screw they messed up however they want. As far as I can tell it should just bolt right on to my machine and should work fine but I'm being told that it won't fit because they are all fitted and scraped at the factory and blah blah blah. I'm thinking it's just the screw and the taper part. Not the whole crossslide and compound that needs to be switched so it should be fine? Any advise? I'd really like to get this machine right so I can start playing with it. Also, the machine with the taper on it has over 100thou backlash. I'm being told that "taper attachments won't be as tight because the nut floats"? Does that make any sense to anyone? Thanks in advance for any info and HI! I'm new here...
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