Fixing a Harbor Freight style Arbour Press.

[wizard69]

I've gone to shops and noticed the top of the ram on their arbor press mushroomed like an abused cold chisel or the handle bent into an L. It made me wonder what level of supervision if any those shops had over their employees

Sadly it is often the "supervision" that does such damage. On the other hand sometimes the job only has one way to get done as no one is willing to buy the right tools.

I have a little half ton press in my cellar waiting on a rebuild, thought I had scored when I got it, but soon found out the unit was damaged. Come to find out that teeth on both the ram and pinion where damaged and that with zero evidence of abuse on the handle or RAM. Some of these imported tools seem to be made out of wax owing to the way they fail with out any abuse at all. I can easily imagine that horror freight tool failing with out any abuse at all, the stuff is that bad.

[wizard69]

Enco was never my favorite brand; but the founders Nathan & Charles Usiskin had a grasp of quality control while maintaining pricing. They were pioneers of imported machine equipment. Best point was they sourced world wide, knowing the right areas excelled at certain products. The fact MSC bought them out indicates their standing, but new owners have little evident discretion.

Is it me or has MSC slipped substantially over the last couple of years? At work I literally gave up on them and have started to use alternative vendors. Given that, if a vendor doesn't have a good web site, that is search and organization, I see no reason to use them. I remember the days to the massive paper catalogs from MSC, McMaster and the like, I use to love seeing the new catalogs come in.

[Toolmaker51]

Yes, they have, drastically. I object to fact they managed to nearly dominate industrial supply, being staffed with equals to critters in local home improvement store.......They cannot answer ANYTHING other than what is on their electronic catalog. One more of the biggies I avoid like a plague.

There will never be another DuCommon, American Wholesale Hardware etc beside McMaster-Carr; they do an incredible job. People still buy old McMaster-Carr catalogs as an astounding reference.

[marksbug]

Teflon, brass, bronze etc. would all work in place of the steel. Teflon would not need any grease, although the rear part on which the rack teeth slide would still need greasing but I suspect that many users would not grease anywhere.

Teflon could be adjusted to be a bit of a tighter fit but teflon flows or creeps and I suspect that over time it would flow away in the region of the screw pressure and hence loosen that initial tighter fit. Maybe a thinner piece of teflon backed up with a steel plate would work well. On a practical side, my scrap box had a few pieces of steel plate but no teflon.

I have a funny story about that. Back in the 1960s I built a rotary disc inlet valve 2 stroke engine. I had just heard about this wonder material "TEFLON" and I thought that it would be the ideal material for the valve because of its low friction. I realised that it might grow due to centrifugal effects at high RPM so I inserted what amounted to a small knife in the lower part of the housing to trim the teflon to the size that it wanted to be. It worked too well. The teflon grew and the knife trimmed it, then the teflon grew and the knife trimmed it, then the teflon grew and the knife trimmed it.......................
I then replaced the teflon with thin steel, hard chromed. That worked well. Here is a pic of the steel version, I have none of the teflon.

Attachment 42209 Click image for full size.

we had a kawsaki 100 with the 10 speed trans(high low) it had the rotery valve. the jug was dead.we also had a suzuki 125 I think it was probably tm or ts, the trans was dead. so we put the suzuki cylinder,piston&head on the kawasaiki...reed valve + rotery valve. that sum bitch would fly. it used both carbs. and the sound wasent kaw or suzy... we did a lot of off the wall **** back in the early 70s' living in okinawa japan there were lots of that stuff to mess with after the GI's got done effing it up. I think thats where I learned that brands dont matter, it's what you do with them. hell my bug always got parked with the vipers&vettes at cars&coffie, one day a vette guy asked my why I was parking it there I told him it cant read it thinks it's a viper. and those vetted wish they were......but in reallity the vettes dont know that they arnt vw's.

[marksbug]

i do have one of those china wannabee arbor presses too....used it a few times, had it probably 25 years. we had a dake at work long ago,I think it was 5 ton but possiably a 3. I have no clue how old it was but it got a work out daily.