Member postings for Rob Athome

Hi Jeff, Thanks for your post and the pics. That looks like a fine idea.

Rob

Wow, super response to my posting, thank you all very much. Plenty of ideas there. I have just found a stash of 1/16" parting blades ( ARC Euro ) that I got a while back. I may start by seeing how those will reduce down on the grinder or even in the mill with a carbide cutter.

Seasons Greetings to all.

Rob

Hello,

I need to make some narrow grooving tools capable of producing shallow grooves. I will be machining in brass and the grooves only need to be upto a maximum of 1.5mm deep. The groove widths I require will be in the range 0.6 to 1.4 mm wide.

Three options spring to mind - (1) use materials such as hacksaw blades or worn out drills for the tools. In this case how do I mount them on the crosslide ? (2) use existing parting blades and grind down the width to suit the required sizes and (3) use standard 6mm or 8mm square HSS tool blanks and grind away the end to leave just a stub corresponding to the width of the groove required.

Any thoughts or even other options ?

Happy Christmas to all

Rob

Thanks Woody and Ronald for replying.

Rob

Hello Howard,

Many thanks for the detailed reply. The Sieg C1 has a mechanical lever to engage the autofeed and a separate switch to set the motor rotation to 'forward' or 'reverse'. There aren't any half nuts as in most mini lathes to dis-engage the saddle from the leadscrew. I checked out a parts diagram/listing for the C1 and what they refer to as a clutch is more of a forked coupling.

You are quite correct about a radius on the tool being sensible - I use this method myself for finishing cuts - it works well on brass parts but no quite so well on aluminium etc in my experience.

The manual for the C1 that I tracked down indicates a feed rate of 0.025 or 0.05mm per chuck revolution depending on which of the standard gears you have bolted on. There is also an extra set of gears available that whilst mainly intended to give metric thread pitches of 0.5 to 1.5mm can also function to make a coarser auto feed rate.

I suspect I should find out how much threading he wants to do and consider if just a tailstock die holder may be better suited.

Thanks again.

Rob

Hello,

I have been asked if I can help a friend who has a Sieg C1 lathe. He wants to start using it after it has sat in the box ( crate? ) for a good number of years.

Two things he asked about were single point threading and using the auto feed to produce a good surface finish on the material which will be aluminium or brass.

AFAIK the C1 lathe has gearing from the main spindle to the leadscrew via a on/off clutch switch so for creating a good finish it is simply a question of engaging the function and letting the machine get on with it. How do you use this function when machining upto a shoulder ? Same goes for threading - if you want to put an M6 thread on the end of a shaft down to a shoulder.

As there doesn't appear to be a threading dial I assume it is a case of using the reversing switch to get back to the start for subsequent passes.

Thanks for any info.

Rob