Member postings for not done it yet

Can you heat the housing and slide the old bearings out

Depends on the material. Aluminium fits tighter in steel as temperature rises. Better to freeze it possibly. A dewar of liquid nitrogen would easily do the trick, I suspect.

It is not table size that matters; it is table travel. Scales must be sufficientlly long so that the readers do not foul at the extremities of travel.

I think Robin and Duncan are on the money. I bought both because they are often megabucks on epay and not always available for my obsolete lathe. Also, they are not eating anything and possibly have an appreciating value.

Unless your stock is perfectly round, it would need a bearing surface cut before using a fixed steady, so would need a centre as the first operation(?) and only needed for internal work on a long workpiece. If you turn long thin sections a travelling steady is good.

Get each as and when required. Especially if you are cash-strapped. There is plenty of other tooling, to use up your available funds!

CFE. College of Further Education. The place where many went to learn a bit more after leaving school. I worked there. Uni's (where you might get a full time degree) are another option. Many of us with a science degree have used these instruments for a range of scientific experiments.

You are considering over-speeding your equipment by 100%? Possibly dangerous! No problem if changing the drive pulleys to avoid this, I suppose.

The stronger motor might be a problem with the lathe if attempting to work it too hard, but would be my choice of the two, if they are your only options.

Personally, I would likely go for a 3 phase motor and a VFD, but that does not seem to be an option for you.

Try your local CFE.  Most decent 'A' level, and above, science departments might have a travelling microscope which they would pull out of a cupboard - well, the one I worked at twenty years ago did.

Edited By not done it yet on 11/06/2016 10:50:02

Look up clickspring on Utoob. He has a vid on making a square hole broach, including hardening and tempering.

Too late now for this thread, but good for any newcomers. Similar to the method cited above but starting with a more easily worked material.

210kg is chicken feed. My old Raglan is specced at 3 1/2cwt - so about 180kg. Under is a stand and a drip tray weighing about 80kg. The stand base (about 1/2'' thick and 5'' high, in old money), weighs about another 100kg. That lot is easy to manoeuvre by simply raising it onto a few pipes and rolling it around. I have limited space and raise it with a 600mm pry bar, under one corner initially. The college engineering tech used to move machines weighing a tonne or more by use of a crow bar, if just needing to move them a short distance. No sweat at all.

I don't understand the problem re positioning the lathe where you originally intended. It cannot be so big if you were using an engine crane (assuming here we are talking car engines rather than marine!).

However, wherever installed it should be shimmed to be level and vibration free. Better to bolt the lathe to the floor when shimmed level, unless the base is sufficiently rigid (not the usual case these days?).

Raglan used the fact that 44/52*30 almost equals 25.4 for the Raglan gear train. Might that help to sort out an alternative? Probably not, but just a thought....

Sorry. As a new member I hadn't realised precision and accuracy was/is such a hot potato (or a can of worms, if you prefer meat to veg!).

I simply judge it the same as a target shooter would. Precision is measured by the size of the

grouping and accuracy refers to how close that group is to the bullseye. Nothing mystical or contentious enough to get hot under the collar about!

... all the way to real top end, high quality gear...

Yes, agreed. But would you expect a high quality bench grinder for £18?

I have seen visibly identical tools that have been dismantled showing the differences in quality of the innards. The only external difference was the badged name and the price on these particular angle grinders.

The retailer was marketing the vastly superior product at 'not so much more' than the carp. And probably his price was better than that for the cheapo version in some of the well known diy retailers, badged under yet more names.

Buyer beware, if buying the cheapest on the market.

By substandard materials, cheap labour. As above labour is on a different scale to living standards elsewhere on the planet. Who wants chinese bearings? I don't. But these machines are not used that much and would soon need maintenance if used 'hard'. As always, you pays your money and get what you paid for.

Every measurement has an error. It will be the measured value plus or minus a certain tolerance. Even a dro will have an error tolerance of at least one final digit, probably more

. If one needs better tolerances then one can measure by one's measuring kit, one needs to be surface grinding, honing or lappin

g.

I don't have measuring kit sufficiently accurate - it may be precice, but not accurate! - to get to the limits that some seem to aspire to. Reproducibility might be a better aim, for many, than absolute accuracy.

Many don't even know the difference between accuracy and precision. Do you?

Anyone know what lathes had a 1 3/4" 6TPI spindle?

An easy starter for ten! How about a Raglan for the first reply? May be others.

Edited By Richard Balderson on 03/06/2016 21:23:08

The one I bought recently is for a one horse power motor and I was told that twice the power is OK (but not much more, if any?)

I think one needs to read the advertising carefully. A one HP motor will clearly require more than 746W at full load. The question of whether a 3/4kW VFD might be at its limit might depend on the integrity of the manufacturer. I would have prefered a 1kW VFD, but I could only find a 1.5kW item at the time at what I thought was a reasonable price. Not seen any at 50 quid like the poster above suggested as what it should cost.

RAB

Other alternatives are a 24V wiper motor or perhaps even use a window winder motor from a lorry as a strarting point.

I recently bought a 2HP single phase to 220V three phase inverter drive for 75 quid delivered from epay. My other two - both 230V single phase to 415V 3 ph @ 0.5 and 1HP - have worked fine. The 415V 3ph. output versions carry a hefty premium over the 220V output versions, so convert to 220V if you decide to go this way! Far better, IMO, as the opportunities for programming soft starts, braked stops, variable speed - and loads more - is worth the outlay.

Drop in drills to find the thread core size and consult thread tables. Likely Whitworth, depending on the age of the machine.

I would suggest you consider a QCTP if you do more than a minimum amount of turning. I bought one, but they are fairly easy to make if you have a reasonable milling machine or slide (for lathe). I got fed up with keeping adjustment shims for each cutter. Best single improvement I have acquired, I reckon.

I never bothered with anything fancy like that. Apply brake and try to turn wheel for single slaves and a piece of sticky label if I was ever unsure on both leading shoe set ups. Had self adjusters for the last 30 years and gave up on shoes at the front several years earlier (Fords). I wouldn't trust a modern day jubilee clip - most are not the same quality as years gone by....

But, as above, mild steel strips bolted together, or an old drum are two perfectly good solutions of several.

Edited By Richard Balderson on 28/05/2016 11:31:07