Member postings for Neil Lickfold

I looked at a manual for the the 2506 lathe as I can't find the manual for the 2406 lathe. No mention of screws for alignment of the headstock. But most lathes do have them. Although it is on a dovetail, does not mean that it can't move a small amount left or right. You have to take apart a fair amount of the covers etc just to get to the head stock hold down bolts. 4 of them, 2 through the middle of the Vee, and 2 through the middle of the back flat area.

I am of the opinion that the head needs to be readjusted slightly. It may be that just loosening the hold down bolts and re tightening again may just realign it all. Or it may need a small amount of pressure to the side that needs correcting, then tightened in that position.

Most sales people will have no idea about how to set up or how to adjust the head stock alignment. Most machines are fairly good from factory, but every so often one is not. I don't think that scraping of parts or adding shims will be required in your case. It is not that far out that sort of procedure is required. If things are really wrong, take it back and ask for another machine.

Cheers Neil

Edited By Neil Lickfold on 28/12/2022 22:39:45

The headstock adjusting screws are at the back of the machine. You will also need to slacken off the head hold down bolts just a little to allow it to move. Doing up the headbolts will have an effect on the horizontal alignment too. So take time and use an indicator on a parallel bar that runs true to see the changes that are being done. You need a horizontal indicator and a vertical indicator, makes it so much quicker for the checking as you tighten and make changes.

Sounds to me you have a machine that has only been put together, and not properly assembled. Somewhere there is adjustment for the headstock to make it run true to the run of the bed, 1st is to get the bed so that it is true with no twist. It does not need to be perfectly level, just all pointing in the same direction. You need better than a builders level. Then check things. I have seen new lathes with the head quite a way out of adjustment before. Also seen tailstocks out of adjustment as well as top slides that are on a taper to the axis of the lathe. So when would forward the tool was around 0.2mm above the centre line. And wound back the tool was 0.2 below centre line. So start with the basics, then see what is wrong from there.

Depending on the board, there was a jumper that was used to connect or disconnect the speaker. Latter ones, the little speaker was on a cable that went onto the board jumper, if you wanted to remote mount the board speaker. It only goes beep, either the onboard or the remote speaker. Some liked to disconnect it, as it was rather annoying. Probably not as annoying as the ring down modem beeps, but still annoying. At work, we still have a 486 still going that does the files for a mill from 1996. The Pentium based backup pc is from 1999. It was amongst the last to support the board and software used.

They are all getting clever. Now they are scamming in NZ with an Auckland 09 or Christchurch 03 prefix, giving the false allusion of a NZ based call. Typically they disconnect as you pick up, hoping you will call them back. The answer phone has been good at catching them, and they are back to calling cell numbers again. It comes through as missed calls with rotating numbers all being missed calls. The other one doing the rounds again is pretending to be be from an outfit that is employed by banks to be looking out for fraudulent transactions on credit cards or bank accounts. A friend recently was caught by a card skimming scam, but they were taking out amounts of less than $20 at a time. But over a week had taken out several hundreds of dollars. As she did not check her account everyday, it had been going on for 5 days when she realised what was happening. The bank refunded the money to her account as the transactions were all in another city. The people doing the transactions as far as I know have not yet been caught. She thinks it happened when her card went out of sight from a bad swipe of the card. They held the card below the counter and swiped it a couple of times then when it was OK, she entered her pin number, not realising what was actually happening at the time.

I worked in a place that had a centre drilling machine. It had a spindle, and various V blocks with clamps. On the bottom plate was a centre pin. Then there was an adjustable plate that rose up , that was keyed to the column and could be reset from the one on the ground. This matched the centre of the spindle. The Vee block could be moved in or out and the centre of a part could be corrected for its position as well. We used it for drilling the centre of quite large bars, then they were put into the lathe for turning between centres. We often made custom dogs for parts, and others had drive pin holes placed into the main drive end of a part.

This is what I do to find approximate centre height when only using a boring bar when the stock piece already had a hole in it. I mark tge outside, then wipe a edge from something that is held vertical. It leaves a mark on the side. You could wipe a known tool on t outside too, but does leave a mark that may not be wanted.

Yes it does. on the DMG mill, the onshot system is filled with the 000 grease. I have greased my cross slide and top slide on my S7 myford, as well as the ways on my mill. Very happy with it. It transforms the machine to use is for sure.

I replaced the spindle bearings in my HM50 mill head. The new bearings were the correct sizes, but the shaft luckily was oversized and needed a little over 0.03mm to get to the nominal diameter, and then a little more off to allow it to slide with the pressure of the wavy bearing rings. Keep in mind that if the spindle is not round, the inner race will be distorted to that non round shape, same for the housing the bearing sits in, also needs to be round. Otherwise the better quality bearing becomes waisted money and can fail earlier than a standard bearing of less concentricity and roundness. There is a white looking lithium grease for spindle bearings, and is worth getting some.

Neil

Norton make a very dark shiny looking dressing stick called a Norbide dressing stick. It is very good for hand dressing of wheels, especially hand forming a radius. The dressing stick above works well for a course dressed wheel. There is a lot of technique involved when hand dressing a wheel. Like been said, hold it in such a way that if anything goes wrong, it falls away from you and falls away from the wheel being dressed, and make sure that there is nothing to trap the dresser. So clear away the work piece from the wheel when dressing or touching up etc. You can use a piece of thin card or brass or steel shim, to push against the wheel , to then see the shape or measure the radius and where it may need adjusting to get right. The trick is to dress and take away any vibration which is runout from the wheel. A fixed diamond is the best for truing a wheel. Generally I have the diamond at about 30deg off the angle to be dressed. There are books on tool and cutter grinding, maybe one is in your local library.

When I did my apprenticeship, drill sharpening was essentially the apprentice job to keep them sharp and on drills all over 4mm. Under 4mm they were discarded. So I got a lot of small drills free. Now days , people don't like learning, and anything that seems like hard work is avoided as there are now drill sharpening tools that do a very good job in a timely manor. Often the home shop does not have the best grade of wheel for sharpening drills on, as often they come with hard wheels , suitable for general grinding of soft steel. Few know about using diamond dressers to re dress a wheel, and if they need a fine dress or a course dress. Touching up a dulled bit is easily done with a fine dressed white wheel. But a drill with chips or heavy edge rounding will be best if started with a course dressed wheel as it cuts cooler. Some my be lucky enough to have fine or course desic CBD wheels to sharpen drills on. But that is what often the serious wood turner has at their disposal and sometime come up for sale at a very good price.

One thing I do, is use a basic clearly graduated rule, I like the small Toledo ones, and measure the length of the drill sides. In general they will be about 1/2 the diameter of the drill or so, and of equal length to drill an on size hole, assuming that they are held at the same angle to the wheel. After a while , you get used to making your hands the fixture to get the angles even and adjust the back off to suite the material and rate of drill advance etc.

When you have a drill, and the hole is oversized, the side with all the chips is the one doing all the work. So just take a little more off the side with no chips to get it back closer to cutting evenly on both edges to get it back to size.

Another trick, when we did not have reamers, was to radius the outer cutting edges with a stone, and run that through at a slower speed, to get a very close to size hole. When done with castor oil, it would be very close to the drill size. This was for things like odd sized ejector pin holes in plastic dies etc.

Where ever possible, would drill the hole with the largest closest drill we had, up to 1.5 inches or 38mm diameter. Just start with a spotting drill, or centre drill, and in with the drill. This is when you find out, how important web thinning is.

On my X45 mill, I put the grooves into the cross block, and made them with a ball mill cutter. While at it, made a side mounted single point to lube both sides of the X axis and the Y axis. I just followed what other mills I have used that have lasted a long time have used. I also added an oil area to get oil in the gib on the sliding side, instead of relying on just what ever dripped from somewhere. I have some pictures in my album of what I did to the X45mill . My view is grooving all the table length does is drips oil onto the floor.

Now instead of pumping oil through, I am now pumping the grease from DMG Moori , 000 grease. Quite an amazing product, and it keeps lubricating for longer. It can also allow for smaller gaps and not seize as well. It goes through the oil gun just great, like oil but is a very light grease. It is whitish in colour.

Neil

Here in NZ, 5hp is a 3phase for sure, as maximum power on single phase is 3kw.

With that amount of power, things are very different compared to a hobby mill with 1 kw to 1.5 kw. Are those the mighty bite clamps you used Andrew? Looks very good all round and a great result too.

On rectangular blocks, I use two indicators , one on each face. And two short keys to get at the jaws. Some machines have guarding , that prevents the use of two indicators.

I have a long stylus Girod indicator with the small dial. It can get in about 30mm or so just on the stylus. On things with a 40mm hole it can get in as far as you can read the indicator. For getting into very long holes around 250mm deep, I made a pivoting gizmo and use the low press finger indicator with it. It is close to 1:1 ratio. I use this for indicating the bottom of a drilled hole , to align the hole and make the outer true to this hole. I will try and post an image of one of the setups. This is an early one that used a brass tube to keep the weight down and only used the indicator stand end for the pivot. It shows testing at the front of the part checking it's error reading on an area that is known. My latest one uses a piece that has 2 ball bearings in it to reduce pivot drag. In hindsight I probably should have used the type of pivot used in indicator stylus ends.

Sometimes, it is quicker with 2 DTI and 2 keys. Sometimes its easier to have a stubby length key for the under side and the std key for the top. Some lathes do not allow the ability to use 2 keys front and back at about the same time.

There is an OZ collet and the taper is 1:10 or 5.71 degrees per side, or about 11.42 degrees included angle. They were quite popular with Hare and Forbes, and other spindle adapter types as well. The front is 30 deg taper per side like an ER collet but with less taper in the main part.

There are a lot of different collets around for sure, and trying to figure them all out is not an easy thing.

We have at work another odd ball collet with the main part only being 4 deg per side, or 8 deg included angle, but the top is flat .

Cast Iron is also a good material for Ali casting as well.

For a few parts there is someone 3d printing, then pouring the Ali into the mould, and the ali melts out the plastic as it is poured in. Can't remember the plastic type used. Im sure an internet search will find the process though.

On my mill, I have the pulley ratio so that at 50hz is 700rpm. I can over hz to get 1500 rpm for small cutters at low loads, and can slow down below 700 rpm, again with low loads. If I go above 50hz, the power is actually less than at 50hz and if I go below 50hz the power is also less, as a percentage of the hz, for example, 10hz 20% of the 50hz at 2kw, so will be down to 0.2kw or 200 watts at 10hz.. It's true that the motor can be over current and get more power at the lower revs, but at the cost of shortening it's coil and insulation life. Using the nonferrous inserts on a home machine can often work very well, especially if the out hard skin is removed first, or if you are not trying to be cutting the harder materials above 30Rc

Out here, is HSS tools sold under the brand name Ifanger, they make a series that you grind it back, and can keep using the tool for finer pitches as it gets smaller. Not sure on the brand in the UK. Now days there is micro series carbide bars for threading . Typically for M10, the Bar is around 8mm stock and the min bore size is from 6.5mm to 7mm depending on the brand, and will be around 16mm of reach or so. Longer series ones are available. I have not seen carbide ones like the Ifanger ones, sold through

Have a look at this style.

https://tradetools.co.nz/shop/turning/ifanger--external-parting-threading-turning/threading--ifanger-internal/g60-00-a-cobalt-ifanger-internal-thread-cutting-tool-65mm-min-bore

I have made some offset holders to make tools from 6mm and 8mm shank tools. But the tools I make do not have the helical lead on the from , like the Ifanger tools do.

The advantage of starting a thread by screw cutting, even if it is only to say 9.8mm of the 10 mm diameter, leaves less for the tap to cut and you get a more concentric thread , compared to just tapping it. Another idea that works is using a leading or 1st taper tap, and grind a front guide diameter that follows the hole. I do that on things that need the thread concentric, but can not get down a hole to guide it etc. It all depends on the level of concentricity required. An example is the push pull head inserts for model diesel engines. The contra piston thread is made concentric to the insert, and the nut is screw cut on the inner and the outside. The outside is done with a full form insert, and the inner is thread cut and then a tap run through for the finial sizing. The head is screw cut and the outer thread of the nut is the gauge for the head thread.

In my album is a very small threader that I have made for a difficult to make M5X0.5 pitch thread that is inside a cone. Just to show what can be made.

Neil