Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 7:16 pm
Damn, that blows man. Maybe I was wrong thinking the HF press was as good as the Craftsman.
Oh no, the press as a whole is fine; accurate and plenty of power. The problem is they're using one little cheap cast alloy to act as part of the 'transmission'. If that wasn't enough, it's threaded, bored out, and takes heavy shear and tensile loads whenever you stall the spindle suddenly.
Other than not being able to use it as a metal lathe (which I can't really complain about), this is the only thing I've had trouble with. It's the weakest link in the whole thing.
I'll eventually get the replacement parts, so I'll do a mod tutorial for fixing it once-and-for-all.