The halfnut lever is just pressed lightly onto the shaft: pull it off. It is fairly easy to remove the halfnut carrier assembly from the carriage (remove tailstock and rear leadscrew bearing, slide carriage off bed, remove bolts on either side of the halfnut lever. A suitable Acme Stub thread cutting tool is available from Wholesale Tool, among other places, although used leadscrews are commonly available on ebay. The leadscrew is a 1/2" x 16 tpi Acme Stub Thread. Boston Gear makes gears that will work with the lathe, but they have to be faced to the right hub thickness (about 0.378") and broached with a double keyway pattern. The original gearset that came with the lathe included 20, 24, two 32, 36, 40, 44, 46, 48, 52, 54, 56, and two 64 tooth gears. None of the other Atlas/Clausing lathes use these gears. These are identical to the Sears 109 metal lathe gearing, the only parts that are shared with the 109. The gearing that originally came with the lathe are 1/2" wide Zamak gears, 14 1/2 pressure angle, 24 pitch, with 1/2" bores with dual keyways.
Atlas lathe parts list mods#
More aftermarket mods are available from Bower Machine including a replacement cross-slide with t-slots.Įbay seller Metal Magic apparently makes custom parts for the 618, including such difficult-to-replace parts as the 16/32 stud gear. Some aftermarket mods are available from, including quick-change toolposts. The 'buy it now' parts are often comparable in price with the parts bought directly from Clausing. Some new old stock parts for the lathe are still available from both the Sears parts department and Clausing Lathe. The best supplier I've found is Little Machine Shop, who provide parts specifically for the 618, including a lathe chuck adapter plates. There are very few commercially available chucks with the 1x10 threading, but there are places that provide chuck adapter plates with this threading, including ebay, for a reasonable price. There are a lot of woodworking chucks available in the 8tpi size, few of which seem to be hefty enough for metalworking. Very early versions of the lathe had a 1" x 8 tpi spindle nose, while most later versions had a 1" x 10tpi spindle nose. Resist the urge to replace the bearings: it's a difficult job and spending the time to try and salvage your current bearing set is probably a better idea. The Timkin bearing numbers are: two 07196 cups, one 07079 bearing and one 07100 bearing.
Both bearings are still commercially available. The bronze bearing version seems to have a better finish cut, while the Timkin version can run at higher speeds. The bronze version was known as 101.07301, and the Timkin version as 101.21400 both were also available under other Sears numbers but those are the ones most commonly seen and referred to. The 618 was built with plain bronze bearings in earlier versions, or Timkin roller bearings from the 1950's onwards. There is also a wealth of information on the Yahoo! Craftsman 618 Users Group, which is active with maybe an average of a message a day and all the old messages saved in an archive, which serves as the basis for the sorted-by-topic janellestudio collection. I am going to attempt to summarize some of this in a short form, on this page. Details about the history can be found at Tony's UK Lathe web page.Īn enormous trove of material focussing on the 618 exists at. The 618 was made by the Atlas Lathe company, and rebadged and sold by Sears as the Craftsman 101-series lathe from roughly 1930 to the 1980's, in various versions. Atlas/Craftsman 618 information 618 modifications