I was able to lift the lathe by hand (very carefully) up onto my workbench for stripping.
I did not even bother to try and clean off the assembly grease since a good deal of the equipment would be removed anyway.
Stripping the lathe for the conversion was actually quite simple. The tailstock was first off, followed by the toolpost (Img 1), compound slide (Img 2) and cross slide (Img 3). Finally, the saddle was slid off the tailstock end of the bed.
The cover for the electrics was removed, the twist knob removed and the potentiometer (speed control) removed (Img 4). I noticed that this may be an ideal location for future wiring, but more on that later.
Next was removal of the leadscrew, and the associated gears from the headstock. This model lathe uses metal gears, I believe some use plastic.
Tools required for disassembly were a hammer, metric allen keys, and metric spanners.
I listed all the removed equipment on Ebay and recouped $150 towards the cost of the lathe!
The last two images show before and after removing the gear train.
The most difficult part of all was removing the gear train. The gears were extremely tight on the keyed shaft, and I needed a gear puller to remove one of them. Luckily I had the right tool on hand.
The stripping process confirmed my belief that this is a well built little lathe.
