Many lathes and mills have plastic drive gears (a lathe only needs to drive the feed screw/shaft, mind). Most(?) small gear driven mini-mills use low cost acetal gears (which only fail once, but often need replacement – many fit the noisier metal gears for better longevity, but there may be lubrication issues).

My Raglan (lathe) has tufnol tumblers and they were never a problem… If they wore out or got broken, I would likely replace with aluminium ones.

I expect Warco will have a good stash of spares – they are a real money spinner on the ‘after sales’’ spares market!

Plastic gears good enough for Denford…

… but they have to make a profit & cover overheads; I have a spare belt for my WM250V-F that I bought as soon as I received it; IIRC it was in the region of £18 + vat & that would be about 6 year ago, plus I have a spare half nut on hand, bought 2 yr. ago & that was in the same price range so…

George.

Nearly forty quid for a plastic gear? I did say it was a money spinner for them!

You are prolly in the unfortunate position of not having an operational mill to make one (or more) so very easily.

With a mill and rotary table (preferably with dividing plates) – a simple task of cutting the teeth, onto a blank, using an approx £20 cutter (or even a home ground flycutter?). Keyway could be broached, cut on a mill or lathe or drilled and filed to shape manually.

Can be done on a lathe quite effectively with a milling slide.

Loads of u-toob vids on the subject. Xynudu is one of many practical u-toobers with examples on-line.

If you have a comprehensive dro, one can easily make an indexing plate on a mill. A spin indexer may suffice, as an alternative to a rotary table, dependent on the number of teeth to be cut.

If you know the dimensions and mod number etc, HPC gears (or others) could probably supply.

I quite like gear cutting, although infuriating if something goes wrong near the end. BTDT!

Like most things, once you have done one, it is easy to knock out new gears.

HPC supply gears in both plasic and steel as standard. Their plastic is usually delrin. I buy in acetal I need (in sheet or disc form) or cut it off bar stock.

Are you certain your gear is nylon? Delrin is a much stronger plastic than nylon, but most mishaps reported seem to break acetal gears rather than the machine. I thought it looked a bit like tufnol.

Further,Warco state:

• As with all Warco milling machines, this machine has metal gears.

Perhaps only the later machines have all metal gears? Or maybe they actually mean that there are some metal gears involved. Curious, nevertheless.

I had a fault a few weeks ago with mine and i have to say Warco was very responsive and helpful.

Just buy the part and fit it, never mind making one.

Brian

If you have, a suitable Dividing Head or Rotary table, or have access to one..

At almost £40, I would inclined to buy Warco's replacement, to get me going and then to invest in a gear cutter from someone like RDG (probably about £22 ) and then make a spare "plastic" gear, in case of any any repeats.

If you measure the new gear and count the teeth, you will able to calculate the Module, (probably 1.25? ) to determine which cutter you need.

There may enough of the original left to count the teeth, and a little measurement (centre distance ? ) should allow you to work out the module, and the diameter of the blank.

If have the misfortune to repeat the calamity, as soon as you are up and running again, cut another spare, but don't forget where you have put it!

Howard

I had a similar thing happen to my Weiss mill. I bought 2 replacement gears, never had a problem since.

Take the hit in the pocket and know its the right item.

Jim

Here's the mower gears, old and new, ordered Monday evening, fitted Friday. £4.65 including postage and bronze bush.