Still not sure it it's one of my better moves, but I've just picked up a second hand Warco 720 – Super 7B copy/lookalike, at about 1/3 of the cost of the real thing.
Does anyone have any experience of these, or even better an owners manual? Warco can't help.
Superficially very similar to its better engineered Myford counterpart, it does sport a few differences, like a roller bearing headstock.
I'm familiar with the Myford Super 7 as I already have an ageing, rather worn, non power crossfeed model without gearbox.
It does seem reasonably made, but not a patch on a real Myford, and with a number of ill thought out features;
A rack that's either too short, or too far towards the headstock, such that the saddle will wind off the right hand end, if you move too close to the tailstock.
Headstock belt adjusting screws, which rather than having nice rounded pads on the end, are pointy grub screws which cut into the eccentrics on the shaft.
And a really odd one here, many of the fixing screws are metric, though the leadscrews are imperial. I presume this points to it being made in China/Taiwan, rather than India.
This means you find odd things like this: Where the adjusting collar fastens onto the cross-slide leadscrew, at the handle end, the thread is 14mm 26TPI, nice mix of units there.
(No it's not 9/16" or 1mm pitch, I checked
)
Now I could live with the odd thread spec, but the collar which screws onto it has been drilled 14mm clearance. i.e. it slides on, rather than screwing on, though it is nicely made; The securing grub screw in it, rather than having a soft pad to lock onto the thread, bears straight onto the thread on the leascrew, chewing it up nicely, but not securing anything as it's a sliding fit, rather than a threaded one.
I guess I need to turn up a 14mm 26TPI collar nut on the real Myford; trouble is that's in Sheffield and the Warco's in Buxton. Ho Hum.
Does anyone know what other little surprises might be in store for me?
Edited By peak4 on 15/09/2016 01:56:12
Edited By peak4 on 15/09/2016 01:57:00