Member postings for Martin Hamilton 1

On my Sherline lathe i mounted an Emco Compact 8 er25 collet chuck, i mounted it onto the Sherline face plate with no register at all between the face plate & the ER25 chuck. I simply faced the face plate off & mounted the chuck so as i could tap the chuck into true, this worked very well for what i wanted. Depending on what collet i have in the chuck run out is .0002" - .0003", as you go up in collet sizes its around .0003" - .0005". I could spend more time tapping it truer but you end up chasing your own tail + i am happy with the run out i have got, if i was mounting a chuck on a larger lathe i would def use the same method where the register would not be a tight fit in the chuck recess so as to be able to tap the chuck true.

The emco ER25 collet chuck i used was the one for the Compact 8 lathe, there is also a smaller bodied ER25 collet chuck that is for the Emco Compact 5 lathe. I just happened to have the Compact 8 collet chuck doing nothing, i kept it simple & wanted to mount it so that i could move the chuck around to get it running as true as possible. So i did not turn a register on the backing plate the chuck was mounted onto but just sat the chuck onto a flat backplate with 3 5mm cap screws holding the chuck on to the back plate. I figured that being a tiny lathe the loads put on the work piece & collet chuck wouldn't be that great & the chuck wouldn't move on the back plate not having a positive register. The chuck has not moved at all & i probably use it more than the 3 & 4 chucks that i have. I actually used the Sherline face plate as the back plate, simply faced it off & mounted the collet chuck to it & it works great for what i want & is very accurate. The ER25 collets i use are from Pro Machine Tools & are made in Germany by Farion & are .0002" accuracy.

I also use the Sherline adjustable tail stock holders for the live center + tail stock chuck, these adjustable holders make centering & drilling more accurate than the standard live center & Jacobs chuck. Without these adjustable holders i believe Sherline even state that there tail stock alignment can be around .003" out. Re collets i don't use the very small collets personally, i use larger ER25 collets 1mm - 16mm. I fitted an Emco ER25 collet chuck from an Emco Compact 8 lathe that i had.

Doug i have been using the cheap aluminium inserts from China for a while now on small lathes, i find they are a delight to use on most materials. They make such a clean crisp accurate cut with very little tool pressure on the work piece needed, which is what small low powered lathes need.

Personally i always think if someone is kind enough to trust you & lend things until you can source your own, you should always go out of your way to return items promptly. Unfortunately there are some people that either don't return items or you have to do the chasing to get your items returned to you.

In my opinion & experience on my Sherline the **gt inserts are superior re finish & tool pressure on the workpiece for small lathes. I still use some HSS tools where i need a more dedicated tool to what i can use in inserts, there are more now starting to use aluminium inserts on very small lathes as they find out just how good the are on most types of metals & plastics etc on smaller machines. Using **mt inserts on these small lathes will not give as nice finish generally but i do also use them as well.

I use the GT inserts with an 04 radius tip because this seems the cheapest & more popular size from places like Banggood where i get my inserts. I looked at the 02 radius tips which are quite a lot more expensive than the 04 tips & not so available from the cheaper shall we say suppliers in my experience. If anyone knows where you can get DCGT070202 inserts for £7-£8 for 10 inserts like i do with the DCGT070204 i would deff buy some.

On my Sherline i use inserts & hss, the ones i use of choice by a long way are the aluminium inserts. DCGT070204, CCGT060204 & TCGT1102040, these are fantastic inserts for Alu, brass & steel including silver steel. They give a finish like you would,t believe, i also use DCMT & CCMT inserts as well sometimes. I use a QR tool post on my sherline & 10mm insert holders mainly + a couple of 8 mm insert holders.Re taking fine cuts & precision with inserts, this is where the aluminium inserts really shine ( no pun intended on surface finish ), you can take cuts that fine that the metal comes of not as swarf they are to small to be called that really. You see more shinny particles glistening in the light rather than swarf falling, more of i dust coming off. Of course you can also take much deeper cuts also with the aluminium inserts, these are very sharp inserts indeed & care needs to be taken on catching your fingers & hands on the tool.

Edited By Martin Hamilton 1 on 16/08/2019 11:21:53

I have the Moore & wright calipers + Mitutoyo as well, i have had the mitutoyo for probably 30-35 years & the M&W for 5 or 6 years. For the money the M&W are very good & nice & smooth, i find them to be every bit as accurate & repeatable as the Mitutoyo. I would def buy another pair of the M&W again if i needed another pair considering the price.

On my Naerok mill the draw bar is no where near the threaded chuck arbor until the pin is in the groove & the chuck & arbor are lifted up to reach the draw bar. So it is not possible to thread the drawbar into the arbor & doing any damage to the pin or arbor.

That's strange Duncan as my naerok RD350 mill has the pin, i also have the 2 nuts at the top of the draw bar. The top nut pinned through the drawbar & second nut adjustable, my milling chuck along with drill chuck arbor have the appropriate groove for the pin & you have to rotate the chucks to line the pin & groove up to get the arbors fully up into the R8 taper..

Have a look on Youtube as Steve Jordan done a review recently in these, including assembly. His bearings were both on the tight side & used the vice with a plate to push the bearings in one at a time, his spindle was also tight & sanded/polished it in the lathe. If you have a loose bearing use some Loctite 641 bearing fit.

Its not just about the overall weight of the chucks, with a larger diameter chuck for example that weighs the same as a smaller diameter deeper more solid body chuck. The larger diameter has more weight further out from the axis which will be more load on the motor on start up to get things spinning up to speed.

I spoke to Warco this morning about whether there were adjustment gibs & screws on the saddles on there current WM180, 240 & 250 lathes, they confirmed there is none on these lathes. If you have a Warco lathe with this facility on the saddle it was probably made either by a different factory that supplied Warco in the past or the generic design of these lathes which all seem to be the same machines supplied by different sellers around the world was changed to not have the saddle gib & adjustering screws. Its obviously cheaper to produce a machine without this extra facility.

Barrie

It certainly is, it is certainly a very impressive little machine & very accurate indeed. Adjustments are so easy with the tapered gibs on both the saddle & cross slide. You are able to eliminate any movement to such fine amounts + factoring in back lash on the cross slide/leadscrew & saddle/leadscrew can also be reduced to around .0015" - .0020". The finish on the material is unbelievable straight of the tool with no polishing. You can take cuts down to a couple of tenths of a thou if you wish, just out of interest & not something i would normally do i wondered just how much it would remove on a piece of 1/2" diam mild steel with the cheap Banggood carbide inserts that i use. I got up to a 3mm depth of cut ( 6mm off diameter) & it done it ok. So stopped there.

Jason are you sure your WM280 has these gib adjusting screws, that diagram you show is for the mini lathes which does have these. I didn't think the WM240, WM250 & WM280 lathes had these gibs & adjusting screws under the saddle. They certainly didn't have any adjusters on these lathes the last time i was in Warco's showroom a few months ago, they also don't show these gibs & adjusters in the Warco parts manual for these machines ?

One of the problems you can get Chinese lathes is that the flat ways both front & rear ways is they are not always machined an even thickness along the bed length. You can only adjust the saddle whether it has adjusting screws or shims added to suit the thickest part of the ways, other wise the saddle locks up. I have seen this mentioned a few times by those that have adjusted the saddle either with the grub screws that are on mini lathes or larger lathes that have been modded to reduce movement. They say get the suitable fit on the saddle towards the head stock end of the bed only to find the saddle locks up going further towards the tail stock end of the bed or vice versa due to the variation on the thickness along the bed of the ways. I know some have got around this problem by tightening the shear plates front & back until they find resistance but still able to slide the saddle & have then lapped the shear plates/ways thickness with grinding paste to get a more consistant thickness along the bed front & rear. This can become time consuming doing this & providing you only need to remove a small amount of material along the bed.

This very saddle movement being talked about is one of the reasons (+ a number of other problems) why i got shot of my new Wabeco D4000 lathe after only a very short period. Once you have had a machine for a while you start to discover these problems over time of use, the carriage could be lifted up & down quite a bit which allowed back & forth movement as well as rocking & twisting of the saddle. Resulting in a terrible finish even on aluminium, carbide insert tools were a no no as the results were even worse & it was only usable with very sharp hss tools. There was no adjustment what so ever to prevent the saddle movement which was excessive + it didn't help with the back & forth movement of the cross slide, which had no adjustment on the cross slide nut to take out back lash between the nut & lead screw. When the lathe was new it had about .006" movement on the cross slide, after about 6 months of light use it developed to .012". Factor in the movement in just these 2 areas alone made the lathe undesirable to use & it had to go, i hated the Wabeco.

This movement of the saddle is not just a problem on the Chinese mini lathes, at least on the mini lathes there are adjustment grub screws on the front & rear shear plates as Neil talks about in his article. The larger Chinese lathes ( Warco WM180, WM240,WM250 etc ) as far as i understand have no adjustments at all on both shear plates of the saddles. I know some of these lathes you can lift the saddle up & down which also allows the saddle to twist front to back where the v in the saddle can ride up the v on the bed. I believe that on the Sieg SC4 lathe which is comparable in size to some of the slightly larger lathes over the mini lathes do also come with adjusting screws in the shear plates so allowing up & down movement of the saddle to be reduced.

Care to share how that is done Bob. Thanks.