Member postings for andrew lyner

Edited By andrew lyner on 26/04/2019 18:03:15

Edited By andrew lyner on 26/04/2019 18:05:57

I found this video which, for me, is an almost free toe in the water for DRO on my mini lathe.

The overall accuracy is not that vital as I would always work to the vernier calliper in the end but this unit will save the 'counting' which I find to be a bind.

I have seen other videos from this guy and he is hardly a Cowboy - a fair amount of experience. I have done the suggested mod on the gauge itself and I'm waiting for a small cylinder magnet to arrive before actually fitting it.

I have read all the comments on the video and there are no surprises.

Just thought I'd pass it on for the benefit of the non wealthy new members of MEW. It may well be a repeat of information that already exists here but it could help someone.

I still have a large supply of lubricants but I have moved up in optical quality.

I ordered the eBay tool (scissor type) and it is quite heavy duty. It seems to have some lateral movement but, once the wheels have started to bite, it works fine (so far).

I still don't understand how the system works actually. The feed speed, the diameter of the piece and the pitch of the wheel lines all seem to 'cooperate' to give good diamonds. Is it to do with the lateral movement that the tool seems to allow?

I read one post on this forum that claimed the ratios had to be calculated first etc. etc. but others just pooh poohed the idea.

I decided to use simple locknuts and it seems they only need be done up finger tight to keep the bronze domes in contact. The clamp works a treat; very firm and stops the pieces from wobbling even under a heavy cutting load. Once I get the three screws set right, there is no serious movement but the pads just wear a shallow groove - no problem.

PS I really could have done with some of your gunk a few years ago when I had a zoom lens that would move itself whenever it was on a slope. My heaviest grease was no use at all!.

It was cheap and I threw it out, iirc.

This is a bit of a necropost but it's still relevant and the problem of tools dipping down when they catch is always with me. It tends to go away when I nip up the Gibb strip but that's fiddly, too. Life improved a lot for general stability and chatter when I made up a Saddle Clamp and a similar screw-down of the compound to the cross slide could also help. I'd bet that others must have done something like that too. (There's not a lot of meat in that area though and I wouldn't want to affect the strength.

I decided to go for the eBay one. I'm sure it will be up to anything I want it to do. My Warco Lathe is doing very well but I still have trouble with getting a good finish. Still learning about sharpening tools correctly, though, so I put it all down to that. The quality of my knurling will probably be at least as good as the rest of my work.

Thanks for the views, chaps.

I just got back indoors from feeding the kangaroos and read this. Usual sloppy thing about filling in my profile but I do worry about the dangers of this new fangled internet. Risks and benefits, you know. Essex is where I live, since moving back from Wogga Wogga - I really miss those dingos.

That RGD tool in the link does look a bit flimsy and the ones on eBay here, look more substantial and a bit bigger. Has anyone tried one of those? The useful gap seems to be a bit under 40mm, which would be good if it's not too wobbly. It has the right size shank for me and there are extra wheels. The 50mm Warco one looks less substantial from the picture but someone mentioned the problem with relying on pictures.

Doncaster's a long way to go, I'm afraid. I may be demonstrating my dilettante attitude to the business but I was hoping to get the benefit of the experience of others from this very useful forum from the comfort of my office chair. I would travel a fair distance to spend a few hundred quid, though.

If only there were those shops around. It would take a day trip to visit any supplier that I know of. Cheaper just to buy blind.

I have made a few bits and bobs for my lathe but there are things I actually want to make with it and I can't be sure enough of my skills to be confident that what I made would be good enough. I could, of course, make it like a tank - as I do with most of my home made tools. No beauty pageant!!! And the materials would cost loadsamoney.

I realise that I need a clamp type knurling tool for a light weight Mini Lathe and I was wondering what people's experience has been of what's available. You can spend as little as £16ish from Axminster and over twice that from other sources.

I don't do 'heavy work' (well, you wouldn't, would you?) and would be unlikely to be knurling steel. Some names would be a great help. The Indian-made stuff I have bought really looks and feels pretty fair, in general and it would be good to have a UK distributor.

Andrew

Edited By andrew lyner on 12/04/2019 23:01:47

That was a fun list of possibilities.

I had, of course, failed to spot how useful the plastic handle could be.
In the light of what's been said here, though, I wonder why they command such high prices on eBay.

I realise this a 'how long is a piece of spring' question but I have a number of elderly screwdrivers and reviving pozidrive drivers is not easy (I expect).

So should I consider cracking off the handles and make them into punches and other tools? I guess they would need to be hardened and tempered when I have finished messing with them.
It seems a shame not to give the metal a useful second life. There are many 'job lots' of old screwdrivers - Stanley etc. ~It could be a cheap source of metal. They do not go at silly prices so someone has a use for them.

@Hopper That looks a nice and meaty piece of kit. I notice it seems to be split in two halves - i guess experience told you that flexibility of use would justify any compromise on strength. My version is much the same shape but uses 8mm plate and M8 nuts. I was thinking that just making the screws 'tighter' would be more convenient than actually locking them but comments from you and other members have convicted me otherwise. I haven't room to put locking nuts 'inside' the circle so I will just use longer screws and lock nuts.

Andrew

Cheers for the ideas.
I fancy the spring solution for a start. I will root around in my springs drawer and see what I've got.

Andrew

I have made a steady rest for my mini lathe which has a max diameter of around 60mm and it uses three long nuts and three M8 screws (phosphor bronze pads on the end). It is quite rigid enough but I want to dissuade the screws from turning whilst it's running. I guess they could tighten or un-tighten as a result of vibration.

I am looking for a really thick grease or sticky stuff. I remember many years ago using a very soft Nylon compound for keeping magnetic tuning inductor cores in place. It would do the job fine, I think but I can't think where to obtains it.

I wondered about a nylon grub screw. Any other well known methods for this? Perhaps M8 butterfly nuts to lock the threads?

Cheers

Hi Brian

One of those links has a picture of the standard banjo. You can see it takes up a lot of room and it bumps into other bits. There is a protective casting around one of the upstream gears which I think must be to prevent you graunching it when messing about with wheel combinations.
There will be more than one solution for some pitches and, of course, it could require a vast array of wheels to achieve. I must say, I wouldn't have encountered the problem if I had been after a common (M) thread. it just happened that I was looking at the table (an extended one and not the one in the Warco book for the lathe) and I tried a couple that just wouldn't fit. It got me thinking. The 'second' adjusting screw can be a real devil, even for possible combinations.
However, on the whole, I am pretty impressed by just what my mini lathe can do for me. It's the only way I would be getting that facility with the money I want to spend on my DIY stuff. I'd get very frustrated if I was ever working to a schedule, though.

Yeah - I can do the maths but the banjo (far from being a banjo shape) actually gets in the way of many combinations of wheels. The suggested alternatives wouldn't suffer from this, I think.
I'm glad I found this problem at a non critical time as I can think ahead for when I really need one of those impossible pitches.

Edit: So I may even need more than one banjo if I want to do all possible mathematical combinations.

Edited By andrew lyner on 20/01/2019 10:42:55

The thread was for the inside of a telescope extension tube. They put fine grooves in the tubes to disperse any light that hits the sides of the tube. So any pitch and depth would be ok, afaik.

Both those alternatives seem attractive but they are only one point fixing. How is rotational strength? I suppose the answer is 'sufficient'

I needed a fine but unspecific thread pitch and it appears to be impossible to achieve some combinations of gears because the swinging plate will not allow it. It is annoying me, just after having sussed out the system; the sums are surprisingly straightforward but real life gets in the way.

This must have been a problem for many mini lathe users. Of course there are combinations that are impossible because the larger idler gear can prevent the smaller gear meshing but the swinging idler plate can only swing so far and the straight slot is too short. etc. etc. That prevents otherwise legal combinations.

I guess I could design a replacement to deal with this but my drafting skills are limited and I can see I would end up doing a lot of bodging and filing. (Surely not!!!!)

What's the experience of other mini lathe owners?