I had one of those Craftsman lathes (Made by AA, not Atlas, by the way), though a slightly later model. For those not familiar with it, it is, if meticulously set up, capable of doing some work, but precision is difficult to achieve. It uses the half nuts for both feed and threading, requiring gear changes of course for all changes in pitch. There is no separate handwheel for the carriage, so the only way to move the carriage is either to unlock the half nuts or to turn the leadscrew with the crank on the right end. The carriage is easily reversed, however. The compound has no dials, so it requires some guesswork to get final cuts right. The quality of castings and so forth is not too bad, but the headstock is pretty flimsy. It uses a planetary back gear setup that is rather clever but not very robust. It's better than no lathe at all, but not by a whole lot.