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Bad bearings in newly acquired Schaublin 102?

Nice Guy

Aluminum
Joined
Mar 14, 2020
Location
Mom's basement
I recently had a table mount Schaublin 102 shipped that was supposed to be a working lathe. There was an obvious problem when I opened the box with the carriage. It was rusted when the lathe in the pics was not. The cross-slide binds and won't travel the last inch. When I contacted the seller he said it happened after he sent it and that I should just "wipe off" the rust. I messaged back that it's not going to wipe off and that I was going to start the return process. I never heard back from him after that.
51237168716_c4a0a2abce_c.jpg
Schaublin 102 carriage.jpg
I think the headstock may be crap too. When I initially turned the spindle by hand it felt a little gritty then it had a periodic change in resistance when it turned for a few turns. It feels like it turns harder than I would expect for something with ball or roller bearings. If I give it a spin by hand as fast as I can it stops in less than a second. There is nothing touching it, belt etc. Do you think the bearings are bad? I'm thinking they are but I have no first hand experience.
 
It looks like it got exposed to some moisture in its trip to alaska. Not sure I would be to worried about it, just scrape it off ASAP so it does not get any worse. All looks like superficial surface rust to me. Spindle bearings might have dry grease in them or just set to have some pre load, in which case they would probably spin as you describe.
 
How long was it in transit? How was it transported? Packaging? I agree, its looks superficial and should not be too hard to cleanup.

Your spindle test of spinning it is meaningless, between grease and preload I would expect it to stop in under a second. Crunchiness is another story, might be related to how it was packed/transported? Might need to remove/clean/regrease. If its an ebay purchase, and it was listed as "used", it should be fully functional, you have a limited time to contest, decide what is best and right.
 
Gritty might be a better description than crunchy.
The seller already disappeared. I opened a return dialog which has no comment on it.
It sat 2 weeks at his house waiting for the truck to come, 1 week to get to Seattle, 2 weeks in the warehouse waiting for the seller to get the booking number from the broker and it came up here over a long weekend on the barge. Might be off a few days here or there.
It was in cardboard boxes wrapped in bubble wrap, except the headstock was in foam, all on a pallet. Metal surfaces were dry of both water and oil when it came. No water damage on the boxes and the foam in the boxes was dry.
I've gotten the data pack on the lathe from the lathe.uk site. It says never use grease in the bearings because it can break the rolling elements to such an extent that they will only skid on the tracks. I looked on youtube and only found a guy who said he ruined his bearings taking the spindle out. If I were to take it apart my expectation would be that I would ruin it so I would only do that if it had no value which may be the case.
If you all think that stiffness might be normal I will add a little oil and give it a spin up. I thought with that much resistance it would overheat at a couple 1000 RPM.
 
That machine was not prepped correctly for a long transit. I'm not convinced you should do anything other than try to return it or seek redress from Ebay.

Unless you give up on the idea of a return, I would not power up the spindle.
 
If you are truly not happy, and feel seller misrepresented the machine, go to your ebay purchase history and click on button for "Return this item". If you paid seller for item and the shipping, it should proceed fairly quickly, if you arranged shipping and paid them separately, I'm honestly not sure how that works. Take pics and describe problems, be polite, do not let emotions show, I'm pretty sure you have 30 days from receiving to contest, so don't delay.
 
I would be tempted to flush the bearing with clean oil before doing much else. I got an old grinder once I was sure the bearings were all ruined as they felt similar to what you are describing. A little oil flush and then inspection made everything like brand new.
How long before you will be able to get another one up there to replace this one?
If flushing with oil does not smooth it out, then for sure it needs to be returned, and on his dime.
 
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I started a return last week through Ebay. The seller started communicating again today but did not answer the return request. I'll see if he wants me to fire it up or to send it back as is. It would be interesting to see if he relisted it with the old pictures or new rusty ones. The lathe was 2800 and shipping from the East coast to Seattle was 1500. They didn't charge extra to water the lathe though. I paid for freight and the seller picked a broker he knew to set it up. It was UPS freight aka TFreight in case you want to know who to stay away from.
I don't know how long it would take to find another. I thought about trying to get one from Europe. I wanted one that wasn't mounted to a metal desk so that I could get it in the house.
 
When I sold a ~63 Monarch 10EE to a forum member, I made a custom 3/4" (2x layered bottom) plywood box, with a "pallet-like" base and plenty of additional 2x4 corner reinforcements. The lathe was cleaned, all mechanical surfaces (precision or unpainted) wiped with a heavy oil, and a couple of large desiccant containers resting on the lathe prior to a heavy plastic tarp being stapled down around the perimeter of the base before adding the sides and top.

In other words, the machine was properly prepped for being shipped, and this was only going about 2/3 cross country, not going to AK. I feel bad for you for the extra work you've got to do, but I don't feel bad for the seller, he was negligent on properly packing the machine.
 
Follow up

I checked with two Schaublin 102 owners and the spindle should be free spinning without applied load. I tried to check the bearings to see if they were greased to explain the resistance to spindle rotation. One of the three bolts that holds the plate near the spindle is frozen so I was unable to see the bearings. I added oil to the bearings and they turned with significantly less resistance. I then measured the runout at two sites inside the spindle and mounted at MT adapter and measured it on the surface of that and got about 0.35 thousandths or about 0.009 mm.
I emailed these results to the Swiss gentleman who is helping sort this and the cross slide out. This was his response:
"Nine microns is not great and this without having applied any radial cutting pressure. I assume the bearings are gone and would need to be replaced if you want something accurate. Mine has a runout of less than 0.001 mm. That’s why you get a Schaublin because they are extremely accurate. I have unfortunately some more bad news for you. The Swiss company wrote back about the overhaul of the cross slide. The top slide is not a Schaublin made but an old Habegger. The bottom slide plus the base is Schaublin but overall it’s a fixup and not something you will likely ever appreciate. Schaublin and Habegger are very similar machines but they are still not the same. The company wrote me twice and first assumed the entire cross slide is Habegger and informed me they cannot overhaul it and then they wrote again informing only the top slide is Habegger and because the rest is Schaublin they can do an overhaul for CHF 1’700."
So with shipping it would cost over 2000$ to rehab the cross slide which isn't worth it seeing that it's just part Schaublin. I note that this was not disclosed in the listing. At this point with the bad cross slide and bearings I will put it in pieces on a back shelf somewhere.
I left a negative review before time ran out on Ebay. The seller offered 400$ on a purchase of 2800$ and 1500$ shipping, which I have no interest in.
 
There is a member on here that lives in Alaska who has taken 2 of my scraping classes and has scraped in his SAG lathe. Give him a message and email him. I will pm you his email. His name is Ron Oman and his PM name is RC5A.

Did you pay for it through Pay Pal business or as a friend? If it was via friend I think your screwed. Rich
 
Yeah reverse the transaction via PayPal if possible.
You started a return but didn’t go though with it?

The first shipping you should get back but you’ll have to pay to ship it back
 
I requested a return through ebay but he didn't answer it and ebay hasn't done anything yet. I think he has until sometime in July to do something about it. Not holding my breath. I sent him the money for shipping through Paypal as a "friend" so that's gone. I doubt they would do much about it anyway since he did ship it.

The kind Swiss gentleman who is giving me a hand with this has been discussing the options with a company in Switzerland that has all the components for these older round head lathes. Today he emailed that they will sell the individual components and send them to Schaublin to be redone so they are like-new at our option. It will cost a bit but I should end up with a lathe that is like new. I haven't added up the cost of all the pieces yet to see what it would cost but I suspect this is the direction I will go.

Thanks to Rich for Ron's email. I will shoot him an email and say Hi. Ketchikan, where I live, is closer to Seattle than to the Anchorage area where most people are.
 
Eek, I would cancel the return.

If the return went through you would be responsible for shipping cost to get it back to him.

All you can do a this point is leave bad feedback and comment
 
The lathe was 2800 Not 8000
For that money do not expect a perfect machine with 0.00000001 runout Perfect bearings Still preloaded No endplay (did not hear about that btw) No wear on the bed and perfect paint
How good is your indicator I like to know then when splitting measurents to 0.001mm

Peter
 
The lathe was 2800 Not 8000
For that money do not expect a perfect machine with 0.00000001 runout Perfect bearings Still preloaded No endplay (did not hear about that btw) No wear on the bed and perfect paint
How good is your indicator I like to know then when splitting measurents to 0.001mm

Peter

Who pissed in your cornflakes?
The price is irrelevant, it’s either

“as advertised”
Or
“not as advertised”

If someone wants to sell a brand new 10EE for 1000$ it won’t automatically make it a Terrible machine.

Relax bud
 
Who pissed in your cornflakes?
The price is irrelevant, it’s either

“as advertised”
Or
“not as advertised”

If someone wants to sell a brand new 10EE for 1000$ it won’t automatically make it a Terrible machine.

Relax bud

Working lathe was all I read as being advertized And it works
Only thing you can blame the seller is that he did not pack it propperly perhaps
Peter
 
If not as described make an eBay claim to cancel sale.

Assuming you paid with plastic your last resort is cancel via the bank.

Rust is slower than shipping so if rust on places that were not visible on listing then funny stuff...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 








 
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