This is the first mod I've made for my 7x14 Mini Lathe. The gearing on the back of the apron is exposed and can pickup chips. Many people have made a plastic guard to cover this. You can see one on Varmint Al's Mini Lathe Page. Another is shown on this page .
Since I have a CNC mill I decided to make a nice one out of 1/8" Delrin. I spent a morning with the apron and a pair of calipers reverse engineering it's shape and the entered it into BobCAD and generated code for the mill. To cut something so thin I used double sided tape to adhere the thin Delrin to a thicker piece and clamped the sandwich in the mill. It cut a beautiful 1/16" pocket in the 1/8" thick material. See photo below
And below you can see it in place on the backside of the Apron
