Getting better with this lathe thingy

[Chris]

Unfortunately, I snapped one of the handles off the lathe yesterday. I caught it with the generator frame as I was hauling it out of the garage. I rang Chester machine and they do a replacement, but only for the whole ball crank, which I didn't need. So I took the chap's advice and I made one. Still getting to grips with various techniques such as machining radii etc, but it's functional. And it fits! Not quite ready for making my own crankshaft yet, but give me time. Lots of time.

Chris

[attachment=0:364hztdw]P1000870.JPG[/attachment:364hztdw]

 

[Gav Peter]

That looks great Chris. Nice job.

 

[Jon Wildsmith]

Looks good Chris, fancier than I ever got with it So how did you make that then?

 

[silvercruiser]

Very Nice

 

[AndyCook]

a thing of beauty!

 

[Chris]

Uhm, thanks. Not sure I should say. Probably all wrong.

I put a piece of plain bar in the chuck. Turned it down and faced it up as usual. The I put one of the lathe tools in the post. But instead of putting it in the post as normal, with the three screws holding it down I actually put the very end of the tool under one of the screws so that it stuck out at 90 to the tool post. Difficult to describe in words. Put tool in as normal then turn it 90 degrees around the middle screw and tightened the screw? This means that the tool post when rotated around its axis makes the point of the tool describe a perfect arc. Like a ball lathe in reverse Jon. I took successive passes until it looked like a dog's bone. Then I swapped the tool to normal mode and shaved one end off the dog bone. Turned a thin shaft between the non radiused end and the stock piece so that I could thread it, polished it up with emery, sawed it off and then threaded by hand.

Bit crude I guess but it works. I need to make a tool holder so that I can do this properly. Chester has an open day on the 28th so I am going for a rummage. There is probably such a thing. Or a proper way to do it.

Chris

 

[Ben]

nice work Chris.

how come you decided to thread it by hand? is it easier by hand than doing it on the lathe?

 

[Chris]

At 6mm Ben, yes. Turn down to just a shade over 6mm then 30 seconds with hand die.

On the lathe, quite a few passes to cut and the potential to snap the pip off completely. Plus stopping the lathe at the end of the cut is quite demanding on the brake. I did do some 6mm yesterday and it went OK but this was too small. The thread only needs to be 10mm long, so this was cut down before it went onto the crank.

Chris

Wait til you see the knob I made for the Jet wash! The plastic one snapped of the hose winder. Lovely stainless job on there now.

 

[Jon Wildsmith]

good to see you're making full use of your new toy Chris

 

[Rob80vx]

I must admit since I visited you the other week im having severe lathe/mill envy.....

 

[Jon Wildsmith]

Amadeal have some good deals on machines that are in stock at the moment I ordered a lathe from Chester Machine Tools 2 months ago that was supposed to be here by now only to find out when I chased them this week it might turn up in June if they can be bothered! Canceled that and ordered basicly the same machine from Amadeal instead and it'll be here next week

 

[Chris]

New lathe, replacement lathe..

Now my name isn't Sherlock Holmes, but..

This was just a ploy to get all new stuff wasn't it. How big is this new lathe Jon? CNC by any chance?

Dr Watson

 

[jeepmadmike]

That's a nice little bit of machining.

I love my lathe and any excuse to use it!

It came in handy making my girls little jeepy axles steering etc etc

 

[Jon Wildsmith]

Nice jeep!

It's a smaller lathe Chris, table top, no brake, no gap, no power feed, no DRO, won't fit 80 series brake disks Big enough to make pinion spacers for diffs and things that sort of size though.