Agate Master Faceting Machine circa 1980s (or earlier)

[Lazza]

Hi All, Newbie to your forum. Have just started Lapidary/Gem Faceting with our local club in Mackay, NQ. Have just bought an older Agate Master Faceting Machine from an Atherton gent who has moved to a Mackay Retirement village with his wife, & who at 90 feels he can no longer facet. I'm looking for all/any info on the machine, especially manuals, instruction books, parts guides etc. If anyone can advise, please feel free to either email me or reply via the forum. Am happy to pay any postage, copying costs etc. that may be involved, many thanks - Lazza.     

[Ken]

Hi Lazza,
I have an agatemaster that I have just spent some time restoring and modifying you will see if you look at this thread:

http://aussielapidaryforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=5743.msg52635#msg52635

Good luck with getting written material it seems to be very rare but there are some great resources in ALF that I am sure will help you

- ken

[Lazza]

Many thanks for your reply Ken - only just found it, but I did see your impressive overhaul of your Agatemaster. Only issue I really have with my machine is getting the table centred when faceting a stone. Think it could be I'm not seating the pavilion centrally in the dop during transfer prior to cutting the crown facets & table. Had success the other day by cutting the table first & the crown facets last. Apart from that this old machine cuts a beautiful stone. As they say, many a fine tune has been played on an old fiddle   

[PCH]

Lazza were you able to find any manuals on the Agatemaster - if so could you send me details

[Lanzeyrion]

Hello,
Great find ! The agate master is a superb machine, very robust. I'm also interested in plans if anyone has, or even just photos of how the protractor works, if anyone needs to disassemble the mechanical case to grease it...
Have a nice day,
Etienne

[FlashGP]

Hi Laza,


You mentioned you had trouble getting the table centered.  Is that because the star facets end up smaller on one side than the other?


If this is the issue, it is not a transfer issue as that would cause the girdle to form a wedge - there are two causes.
1. The table dop is not parallel to the lap because 0 degrees is a fraction out or the cheater is not zeroed.  In this case see if you have a large target dop say 1.5” across.  Put it in the table adapter and bring it to the lap.  Then with alfoil (0.01 to 0.02 mm thick) try to slide it under the adapter from different directions and adjust the angle and cheater until the adapter is parallel to the lap.


2. You have cut the girdle facets a poofteenth deeper on one side than the other, which can happen on even the most accurate machine.  This error is magnified the closer to the table you get.  To cure this cut the stone as set in the instructions to position the table, then prepolish the table, and prepolish from the Star facets to girdle and polish from stars to girdle.


  Depending on the angle the Star facet meets next to the table move up to 5 times as much as the lower Star facet meet, the same happens with each tier to a lesser degree but the change multiplies with each tier so an 0.1mm change in Star facet position ends up as maybe a 2 to 5 micron change at the girdle which would be too small to see the effect of.


Happy faceting