Translucent lathe way liner??? No oil channels?? Not what I was expecting.

Profanity in a title did not seem right, so I went with "not what I was expecting".

5 or 6 years ago I bought a 1980's era Tiawan made 14 x 40 Lagun/Republic lathe at an auction. I knew it had some wear and needed a footbrake fabricated. Life got busy, and I am just now starting to get it operational- or so I thought. I keep finding things that are not right and am starting to think someone tried to "fix" it and made some strange decisions.

Tonight I lifted up the carriage to see what I could tell about the wear on the Rulon, and found the carriage front V and rear flat had a transparent substance glued on. There were holes in it for oil to come through- but not channels cut to distribute the oil. The plastic was coming lose on one of the V surfaces. I have never heard of a transparent way material. Is there such a thing?

Hardinge use PTFE on the HLV-H carriage. Could it be similar to that?

The PTFE I have seen is white. What I found is transparent- as in you could read print through it though it is about .06 in thick. It is not very slick when not lubricated. It does not feel like Teflon (PTFE) or Delrin (acetal)

I went back and changed "translucent to "transparent" in my first post- but I have not found a way to change the title

Kel F?

it is a similar flourocarbon and is as you describe, translucent
Have a square foot of it I bought 25 years ago for one job

doesn't creep like teflon was the reason it was used for the part I made

expensive as I recall

not just plain old hdpe ?

Here are some pictures. One shows section peeling off of front V way. It is about .061 thick. You can see the uneven glue application.

The other picture is of the rear flat way, with red arrows showing the edges of the way liner. Being attached it is harder to measure other than at the ends. There it measures about .067 for material plus glue. You can see the track left when oil channels were cut in the past. You can see there are no oil channels now.

If I were you I would call Dave Beiring at Tri Star plastics. Tstar.com. he has been selling bearing material to Captain Scientific for dozens of years. Capt. Is the supply house that sells to Asia. No guessing that way. Dave is the VP of sales.

Richard, thanks for the information.

I was able to talk with the previous owner, and now believe that what is there is not a "way" material at all. I will need to replace it, regardless of what it is. #6 below explains why.

The PO bought a number of machines from the mother of an old friend who died of brain cancer after buying and starting to work on some machine tools. The PO was starting his own shop, and bought the machines without fully inspecting them- then discovered they "needed work". The PO was running out of money as he was working on the machines, then went bankrupt, and the machines went to auction. This was 11 years ago.

Here is what I have found so far:
1)The PO disassembled the lathe to paint it, and powder coated the cross slide and compound so they would "look better" as the lathe had been crashed. This covered the degree marks and surface the compound mounted to.

2) He used bronze brazing to fill in the gouges. This introduced some warp into both the cross slide and the compound.

3) He used an end mill on the sides and T slot area of the compound to clean it up after brazing. The ways on the base of the compound are not the same height, and have an identical slope. (I do not know how this happened.) I believe the PO knew of this and tried to compensate for it by having the compound on the base when he milled it. He had it in backwards when he milled it, and so doubled the error where the tool post mounted.

3) He obtained new gibs and installed them as received (no scraping) this was obvious on the compound and top slide. Not so obvious was having shimmed down the brackets for the carriage gibs so they did not stick out.

4) Drilled and tapped the rear gib bracket to add a metal retainer to hold the gib in. You only need this if you put the gib in upside down...

5) Added a nice handle to the carriage clamp replacing the factory bolt system. Brazed the threaded rod in the bottom clamp so it could not turn when handle turned. To adjust or remove front gib, this bottom clamp has to be removed- and with the shaft brazed in, the only way to do this is by removing the leadscrew...

6) Carriage would get stiff and bind when moved towards tail stock. I assumed lathe worn and gibs needed adjusting. After I had the lead screw out and gib removed it was unchanged. I loosed bolts holding gear rack and it improved. Removed the roll pins from the rack and it improved further. (Tried installing taper pins parts diagram specified, and they do not fit.) I now believe he added some 1/16 plastic from ??? just to get lathe back together enough to be usable and to a better repair later. The thicker liner raised the carriage enough to put the carriage gear rack and its mate into an interference fit in the unworn portion of the way at the rear.

Oh fuck!...