I have a SIEG C1 Micro Lathe
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, which Ibought from Axminster a year ago, although the lathe itself doesn't
see heavy use (perhaps, say, once a month?).
Recently, I've discovered 2 problems while turning. The first is that
my work is tapering, with the diameter being larger near the chuck.
I've run a clock along a test piece and have found that there is a
0.15mm deflection across a 55mm length, giving a 0.3mm change in
diameter. The second is that if I place the clock on the work near the
chuck and rotate the chuck, I find I'm getting deflections between
0.03 and 0.15mm, but they don't seem regular - the needle looks like
it's deflecting randomly.
To take these measurements, I put a 10mm diameter, 100mm long mild
steel rod in a 4-jaw chuck with about 60mm protruding and got it
running roughly true. Then I started taking light cuts across the
protruding length (touching on and feeding across). A clock was then
used to take the readings.
The lathe itself is just sat on a stand (seen here
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but is not fixed to it at all.I can't say for sure when these problems started to happen, because
it's only recently that I've started to actively watch out for them. I
have a hunch that the tapering started quite recently when I removed
the lathe's 3-jaw chuck to try out the 4-jaw chuck that I had just
bought. But as I said, I really couldn't say for sure.
As a novice, I'm not sure whether these defects are ones which I can
fix myself or if they're serious problems with the lathe. I was
wondering if I could get some advice regarding these issues?
Thanks
--Amr