Member postings for Robin

FOUND IT... YAY

Martin gave me the clue...

The front panel has a T component, 14, 15 or 16.

So I go to the box that came with it and find two more gears, Durned things are interchangeable.

The manual truly leaves a lot to be desired

Hi John

The lathe in your Thread Dial Indicator link has a 3mm pitch thread and the indicator goes up to 6.

I also have a 3mm pitch screw but the indicator goes up to 8 with a 16 tooth gear.

Is that going to work?

I cannot cut threads. I used to be able to cut threads but now I cannot.

It is all set for 1.75mm pitch to cut an M12 thread.

The first pass looks great.

Subsequent passes don't hit the same helix. They have a choice of several starts on different helix's.

The front panel says I can start on 1 or 5. I gave up on that an hour ago, I am only using 1.

After beating my brain for explanations, I have come up with 2.

Either my brain is completely addled and I no longer understand screw cutting on a lathe, or, the gear on the thread indicator dial has the wrong number of teeth.

How do they decide how many teeth it should have? Is it easy? It is not something I have ever thought about

I think I am okay on that one, but keep checking

The cabinet is two plinths and a drip tray.

When I took the twisting force out by putting a roller under the right-hand end, the taper reversed itself.

The correct adjustment is there to be had, all I have to do is find it.

I must confess, I am not blessed with a vast assortment of drill bits, "a bit over 14mm" to choose from

I have never had much luck with welding, Never found the right darkness in the mask. Lord knows I have tried.

My son has TIG and MIG and doesn't think there is a problem

Why, thank you

I have 1 1/2" x 3/4" steel bars coming which I will drill and tap to take the weight. Those large m16 nuts are mere locknuts.

Have to get my 15" tap wrench out, biggest I have, unless this is about to turn into another jolly shopping opportunity

Sounds good and I agree with this Ian Bradley bloke, fix the headstock, adjust the tailstock. However, I won't be reading his book because education is for young people with their lives ahead of them, not for old gits living on anti-stroke meds.

I like shopping with my granddaughter, drawing CAD on my computer, and exporting that CAD to the machine tools in the garage.

This week I have bought a hoverboard, made some machine feet, and ordered some steels to fit those feet to the bottom of the lathe cabinet. One foot in each corner, one tie bar across the middle to stop the bed sagging like a hammock.

Once made and fitted I will reawaken this "Topic" and I will be most grateful if you could be here clutching your copy of "The Amateur's Workshop" just in case it all goes horribly wrong, as it probably will, confidence being that feeling you get just before you understand the problem

After further investigation RDG Tools have an HBM 5MT LATHE PARALLEL TEST BAR for £79.50 incl., but the description next to it is for a 'tween centres bar so I would have to enquire what it actually is

I might get away with glue but drilling holes in her garage floor is not really on the cards, we have to keep this credible. She has X-ray vision and knows instinctively if I am hiding something.

I like Mark's M12 adjustable feet, but how does that square with your "few thou here and there"? How about three m12 feet and one fine thread foot at the lighter end? I have a set of M17x1.0 taps and die which need trying out.

Someone in New Delhi is selling MT5 alignment test bars for £70 including carriage on fleabay. Worth taking a chance?

Wasn't sure if I wanted to admit it, but I do have a level, does that make me weird?

It is making me think I may want a floor mount I can adjust while looking at the bubble.

This listening to good advice trick really works, I must do it more often.

I removed all twist from the bed by replacing the oak block with a steel roller.

I turned 6" of steel down without the tailstock and measured the ends 25.14 and 24.975

It tapers 0.165mm, 0.0065 inches.

Pretty crappy BUT it's going the other way.

Somewhere between what I had and what I have now lies perfection.

I think I feel a quest coming on

I think Pete has it. I want to turn a cylinder so the obvious test is to turn a cylinder.

However, that means it must be nutted down tight which rathe precludes adjustment.

Perhaps turn the truncated cone it is set for.

Put a DTI on the tool post, which will show perfectly straight.

Adjust it until the DTI shows the correct error.

But first, I am moving into uncharted territory, I am not a shim person...

These are the bolts holding the headstock down at the front

I have cleaned the plaster and paint away from where the shim will go. Don't want to do a Hubble.

The shim will be 0.26mm thick, 180mm long, have two 12mm clearance holes for those bolts, centred 16mm back from the front edge.

How wide should it be? I see problems for both too much and too little. Is there a best practice?

The headstock appears to sit on a flat plate which is part of the bed. Two bolts from above, two from below.

I could try it on 3 feet, a tripod, that only involves sticking in a bit of broom handle under the light end so it can rock.

I was trying to turn 5" of 1" hex steel down to 17mm to fit some bearings and stuff. They didn't go on very far, it got fatter approaching the chuck. Like me, fatter. The tailstock was quite extended due to a DRO scale, not much chance of it forcing a 17mm steel bar into alignment

My lathe is turning tapers where I do not want tapers

34" of overhang in the 3 jaw chuck. At the far end it has 0.01" of runout on the DTI, not bad for a rusty old bar of 1" cold rolled.

However the far end is 0.25mm forward and 1.11mm below where the tailstock wants it. This may or may not agree with the test spec. that came with the machine, they forget to define their units, could be Siamese.

If I face down a bar leaving a tiny nub in the middle and then dent it with a hard center, I find the tailstock is fractionally low and forward. Unfortunately making everything worse not better.

Could it be in need of levelling? I never bothered. Seems unlikely but could the uneven garage floor be twisting it?

The "head stock" appears to be held on by 4 chunky screws. I cannot see any taper pins locking in the misalignment.

Should I send out for shim and start rotating until it turns cylinders, or, would loosening the four bolts be a huge mistake?

I never offset a tailstock in my life for taper turning so I am quite hapy to shim it for the vertical alignment.

Decisions, decisions... What would you do? Has anyone dared loosen those bolts? How did it go?

Pure aluminium is for extruding into coke cans and not for cutting. You get ghastly burrs around the cut edge.

High helix cutters, extremely rigid machinery and flood coolant help a bit.

Such fun. But let's hope your "aluminium" is a more cut-able alloy with things like copper, manganese and magnesium added. Extruded bar cuts a treat.

If you are planning to cut any distance at one particular depth remember that the aluminium oxide surface layer is grinding paste which will cut a groove in the edge of your tool if you localise it.

I just bought some cheap "aluminium" plate off e-Bay to make a belt guard. Thought I would cut front and back from sheet, 3D print the sides. Hopefully not pure Al but I am sorting through my fancy cutter box just in case...

I used to shop around for the best price on grey case drill bit sets, 1 to 10mm in 0.1mm steps.

Eventually, I became suspicious and got the jolly old micrometer out for a quick measure.

Then I bought horrible, red plastic, cased sets by Dormer. 1-10mm cost me £193.62

I have become jealous of those red cases, I hide them in the cupboard under my bed leaving the old grey cased sets lying around in the shop for other people to use. Those have lots of empty spaces, unlike my beloved Dormers

I can lose things in plain sight.

I know it is on the table right in front of me but I cannot see it.

It can be quite alarming when it suddenly pops back into my ken