Member postings for mick

Its a toolmaker's optical chuck, only used one once and that was at college in the 60's

If your following a set of plans, then the designer should have taken care of the sizes, I'm assuming your using continuously drawn cast iron bar. Bore and turn the diameters in a continuous bar form, then support with a pipe centre, or pressure pad mounted in the tail stock and part to finished width. A handy tip here is to rig up a digital caliper to the saddle and the depth probe attached to the bed to ensure they are all identical width. Split the ring by using a sharp pair of side cutters with one confident movement. Make a simple fixture to hold a stack of ten or so rings and hold the gap open with a piece of metal approx. 3mm wide, this of course depends on the rings outside diameter. heat evenly until cherry red and allow to cool. This is a tried and tested method, but always make more that you actually need!

Hi. Michael. 1.5mm divided by 25.4 = 0.059'' If you want to argue over 0.003'' on a screw thread be my guest, but for practical engineers its a practical answer.

Why not a 1.5M same meat, different gravy, but easier to source..

The boring bar is just to hold the insert, its the insert that needs to be a reasonable quality. I've bought a set of eight boring bars from Alidirect for around £40.0 and I can't fault them, even with the inserts that came with them, but you can buy a packet of named inserts from the same source a whole lot cheaper than in the UK. If there is a draw back you may have to wait two to three weeks for delivery.

Felt tip pen, black or blue

A self centring four jaw would be a better option, there are some decent and inexpensive ones out there, mines a Tos which I've had for about six years and use all the time, in fact the only time I use a three jaw these days is to hold hexagonal stock.

My Dog Has Fleas. Nothing to do with engineering, but I thought you'd all like to know!

Just to muddy the waters, if you want an 8 TPI 2 start thread, use either a 16 TPI hand thread chaser, or a Coventry Die Head chaser, grind the back teeth away until just the front two leading teeth remain, securely set the chaser square to the headstock, set the lathe to cut an 8 TPI thread and cut both starts at the same time.

APT

Hi. Chris. I've had a look at mine and I think you could take off the feed drive gear and just wind the table off using the lead screw.

I restored mine a couple of years ago, as far as I remember once the gib strip was removed I just tilted it to clear the dovetails.

Supermarket own brand lime scale remover.

Tesco lime scale remover is brilliant, just rinse it off in warm water.

APT have great prices and stock range of carbide end mills with next day delivery if the order is placed before 4pm. I don't use anyone else.

Alidirect (Hong Kong) the choice and price is unbeatable, best to look at all the buying choices as the same tooling sets appear several times from different suppliers with different prices and shipping cost so its a case of finding the best deal. I bought a couple of sets of straight turning tool holders and boring bars a few weeks ago and can't fault them.

Hi. All. Thanks for the replies, I've had another play with it. When I first tried to reset the clutch the adjustment lock nut was tight so I thought it had to be something other than adjustment as the clutch was engaging as before and I haven't had to touch it all the time I've owned the machine, however as I tried to fine tune the adjustment to the 0.010/ 0.015 gap described in the manual nothing appear to be changing, but as health and safety don't regularly inspect my shed I tried adjusting the screw with the belts in the lowest speed position, the clutch engaged and the motor running, this way I was able to find the sweet point when the clutch started to bite, which appears to have worked and things look to have returned to normal, but it doesn't fully explain why the adjustment, that was locked, failed without warning, hay ho, the joys of owing an iconic British machine!!

I've had my pre-owned Myford for seven years now with no real problems apart from readjusting the spindle bearings about a year ago. I'm experiencing a drive problem in the low speed range which has started without any apparent warning. It doesn't matter which belt setting is selected the spindle only just rotates while the motor is at full revs, you can stop the motor rotating by holding the chuck, which doesn't need any pressure to halt it. The lathe behaves perfectly okay when the high speed range is selected. I've tried adjusting the clutch from no engagement to full engagement but without any effect to the underlying problem, any input would be appreciated. Thanks.

Buy a complete set from Hong Kong they're so inexpensive so it doesn't really matter what sizes you use on a regular basis you'll sure to need the other sizes over the years.

Further to Duncan's post, why not switch to metric as up to M5 the diameters and pitch are pretty much identical to BA.