Need Help!- Mini lathe leadscrew alignment problem

[dirtmover]

Hi,

I have a generic (SIEG) mini lathe from Priincess Auto. The carriage starts to get stiff as it approaches the headstock. I've lived with this for a while but I've just started to use the feed for thread turning and it is causing problems with the direction selector kicking out especially with coarse threads due to extreme friction.

After some experimenting I realised that the cause of this is the backing support for the half nut pushing down hard on the leadscrew at the head end, it's fine at the tail end. This leads me to believe that the screw is not parallel to the ways and needs to be lowered at the headstock end.

Now, simply lowering the pillow block at the head end introduces other issues with the gear adjuster which would also need to be lowered. The other option would be to raise half nut but I'm not sure if this is even possible? Of course this would also require raising the pillow block at the tail end which should be much easier to achieve.

Has anyone else experienced this issue with these lathes and if so what is the solution?

[dirtmover]

To answer my own question and for the record I resolved this yesterday. There is no adjustment possible for the half nut. I elongated the holes in the pillow block at the head end to allow it to move down about 1.25mm and shimmed out the blocks at both ends so that the gear adjuster is not impacted. The apron was also moved out by the same amount so that the half nut is properly centered. The lead screw turns better than ever now with minimal friction regardless of the carriage position.

[Crevice Reamer]

Well done dirtmover! Good Job!

CR.