Hi,
Went looking at a lathe today, had some drill rod and a dial guage with me so set it in the chuck and started it rotating. It was immediately obvious that there was some runtout and it was about 10 thousands of an inch. I checked up and down the bed and the runout was consistent so I know the chuck was parallel, the bed was in great shape, but again the chuck worried me. I played with it for a while, looked at the jaws but the error was consistent. The lathe hasn't seen much 'hard' work in its life apart from a lot of foam cutting for various mold making. Everything works and it's generally a very nice machine. The question is, what do you think would cause it and do you think a new chuck would solve the problem? Or does it need to be reground. To be honest the seller was hanging around and I would have liked to have spent some more time, he wasn't pushy just making me uncomfortable! Thanks