Member postings for Ajohnw

Ian's right my criticism is harsh and is comparing them with conventional back geared lathes but all sorts of factors come into it. It also annoys me that they don't give an additional belt setting rather than just the usual 2 which tinges my attitude a bit.

Actually the lathe you have ordered is one of the ones I have suggested that several people should get rather than something smaller. Part of the reason for that is that they do come with a sensible level of motor power for use with variable speed.

An example of the "problem" is what most people do if they convert a machine with mechanical methods of reducing speed to variable. The mechanical method increase the torque available at the cutter when the speed is reduced. A variable speed drive doesn't so when people convert they also usually increase the power of the motor.

Harald Hall has a good run down on setting up a lathe on his web site. The most important aspect of mounting a lathe is not to distort the bed. Most of the ones I have had have been just mounted on a tray. I don't usually bolt this to a bench but that's personal thing. I would use the same method if the lathe came on a cabinet and have. One lathe I owned was fitted with screw jacks in the feet of the lathe as supplied. These are just a collar that screws in and out of the feet. Some may have a locking nut but this one didn't.

I get some suitably sized nuts, bolts and generally penny washers but some ordinary ones may be handy. I pass the bolts with washers through the holes in the tray and then fit nuts and washers and tighten these down. Then a nut and penny washer on each bolt. If the lathe is then sat on this these nuts can be used to support it evenly without any strain. I just use finger pressure to do that. Then nuts and washers on top of the feet on the lathe. I tend to nip these up rather than tighten them fully. The jack nuts can also be used to level the lathe with an ordinary spirit level. I've also used rubber washers in the same set up - under the feet of the lathe. The thing to remember is that all of the major forces in a lathe are actually in it and all the fixings are doing is keeping it in place.

Some lathes don't have feet but the same arrangement can be used but there may be problems assembling it unless all thread is used in the tapped holes in the base of the lathe bed. Some people make some small jack screws out of larger nuts and bolts so that they can bolt straight through them to fasten the lathe down. As I mentioned I don't fasten them down firmly. There is too much risk of straining the bed so I just effectively leave them just sitting there on their tray. Lathes on cabinets are a bit different. Very top heavy. I would fasten the cabinet down. I had a fright with a Raglan once which demonstrated how easily it might tip.

Actually I installed a lathe that didn't have traditional feet for fastening down recently. I didn't fancy driving to collect some suitable width x 1/2" aluminium so have used 18mm mdf, well sealed as an experiment. It wont transmit vibration as much as some materials might. This has been cut to a size to allow the fixing holes to be a couple of inches out from the bed and is simply bolted to the lathe bed via countersunk holes. That is then fastened down to the tray. Actually as their surface area is high currently they just sit in the tray. I did look for some automotive rubber mounts that have a thread on each end and rubber bonded between but couldn't find any suitable. Often used for mounting exhaust systems.

These add on feet look a bit like castings. I'm confident that the mdf is strong enough for this but don't fancy it getting wet. I never use suds but do use brushed on cutting oil at times. When I tried this lathe it was mounted firmly on a thickish mild steel plate. Maybe 5/8 or so using home made screw jacks. I don't think that is the way to go especially with this one. It might benefit from being mounted on a strip of 3'x2'x2in concrete slab. If I try that I will allow it to bed down onto epoxy putty before fastening it down firmly. The slab will just sit on the bench.

There is a technique where the bed is strained on purpose at some point. The lathe needs to be mounted on something really solid. The idea is to twist the bed at the tail stock end to correct very minor taper turning errors over a distance of say 6" from the chuck. Usually a thou or so error. The tailstock will need to be corrected to suit and obviously the twist introduced at the end of the bed will be a lot more than the amount 6" from the chuck. I'm inclined to feel that this mostly dates back to when lathes were mounted on hefty cast iron cabinets.

One thing I should say is that I wont run out of balance items on a face plate - I add balance weights as I am rather fond of my head stock bearings. Not doing this might cause a lathe to move about. Lathes deserve more respect. Change wheels have done the job so far and if I needed more I would make some.

John

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Mine is in the house. Not that it matters were I am but I had a splash board at the back against the wall made of ply. Just some 1/4" I had around. It's gone somewhere but the wall is part tiled.

It has cushion flooring. Good quality so easy to sweep up and it lasts. I have had problems treading swarf out onto a carpet in another room but not very often. I just take more care now. Eagle eye spots it anyway as does the dog. I usually work in sandals. Easy to take off and I don't hold heavy things in such a way that they might drop on my feet. If I made large scale traction engines I would wear something else and wouldn't be working in the house.

I had a lot more problems with flying swarf when I had an ML7. Bed and spindle a bit worn so swarf broke off a lot and went all over the place. Some reckon work improved this but not completely. Nice curly swarf doesn't fly around.

One problem people might not think about is noise especially if the machines are upstairs. I have some up there too. While looking for a 2nd lathe I visited a widow selling one of the cheaper gear heads that don't use precision ground gears. To noisy for me to buy. I checked it over for her and told her all was good and showed her which bits went with it. Afterwards she told me she understood why I was concerned about the noise. She often went out when her husband was using it - up stairs. I have things like radial arm saws and bandsaws on the top floor and they don't cause any problems. I'd say smooth running machines and no gears at higher speeds should be ok but houses vary. I've been in some were people can be heard walking around upstairs. They tend to be timber frame builds.

Pass on timber frame but with a bit of sense floor loading shouldn't be a problem. Joist's run in one direction and heavy loads can be put up against a wall that also supports the end of the joists. On the other hand people can be extremely heavy and might even jump about in one place. The main thing really is that a 4 legged bench wont be the ideal load spreader - more of a cabinet type arrangement or a machine cabinet will make a much better job of it. Mounted like that a 200kg wouldn't bother me, getting it up there would.

Storage can be a problem. Easier to show part of my solution. Shelf fittings from screwfix and mdf from B&Q same company but B&Q will cut up the mdf and sc were much cheaper for the fittings in bulk.

Taken part way through yet another tidy up. There are a number of shelves above the ones shown so I need some light weigh steps to get at things. Again sense is needed. What's under the wall etc. This house has some walls in places that are offset from the ones below. They did some strange things in 1911. I wanted shelves in my top floor workshop but the walls aren't solid. We have used some racking instead but the weight of the items on them compared with a lathe etc are low. Actually I have added some racking to the one above. . Shallow as putting things in front of others just makes it hard to get at things. The floor board here rotted away long ago and were filled in with concrete. The rest of the ground floor is solid but this area wasn't for some reason.

Yes my lathe is supported at one end on a window sill above a belfast sink at one end with bulk of it's weight on a very old kitchen unit. The miller which is surprisingly heavy is supported on that and a steel filling cabinet, deep draw a4 type. An old one. I did think about putting a length of the thick kitchen work surface across the lot but didn't. It's good strong stuff. I have made hefty benches in a shed and a garage using it. Kitchen units are also surprisingly strong. The modern drawers in them wont be much good for heavy bits and pieces but shelves will probably be ok - on decent makes.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 09/02/2016 18:05:42

At this size I would be thinking I need a length of material about 1 1/4 longer than the work or even longer if the bore of the spindle is big enough.

Assuming the bore is too small grip approx 1" long in the larger chuck, jaws the normal way round. Face end, centre drill, drill and bore hole, fit a tube centre and then do the od's. Then part off. All one setting so as good as the lathe can be.

If parting off might leave a messy face I would part off a touch longer. Put some tape on the work where the jaws will be, set it in the chuck still using the tube centre but not gripping the work tight enough to puncture the work, remove centre and take a light facing cut. You could use the same sort of technique to allow a shorter bar to be turned up fully but concentricity wont be so good. A decent 3 jaw and some care plus use of a tube centre should keep the error down to a few thou max. I'm assuming both ends of the bar are square on before you start. They will be close if you face an end and then press that end hard against the face of the chuck and then face the other end.

Centres can often be useful for getting better alignment when there is a hole in a part and the work has to be reversed. 3 jaw chucks can be pretty good alignment wise if the work is put in correctly. On that score I noticed a real turner doing that and hand facing correctly on youtube, an add for the recent Ceriani lathes. Short sharp and sweet. There is a nack to centring the work in the chuck but it comes easily with a bit of practice.

John

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Some would say all of the extra weight in that 300kg warco I linked to is the headstock gears too.

I do wonder why some one doesn't make a good well proportioned small lathe at reasonable cost.

The Chester Craftsman and Crusader seem to be popular with some. 390 and 450kg. The Craftsman is a lot of lathe for the money - they don't rate either for real industrial lathe use.

I'm not keen on them as a company. Unfair really. I took a friend up there who wanted a lathe and thought may as well look myself as well. I mentioned several things that I didn't want to find out about after I bought it and they said not that one to a number of the ones they had on show indicating that they were well aware of the problems I mentioned. You'd think they would do something about them rather than just carry on selling them. Most of the sellers have sold these models at some point One thing the salesman did say was that he was amazed by the things people made with the mini lathe. That was the one I pointed the friend at - just by looking at them. Took no notice and bought the baby, hopeless for what he wanted to do with it - as he found after he had bought it. His reason for the baby was weight - worried about his shed floor in this case. None engineers are often hopeless in this type of area. I asked him what happened if he jumped up and down in it. For some reason peoples expectations on the weight score seem unrealistic to me. I'd guess it's on a sold as a lathe so must be a lathe basis which is fine providing people realise what it means in terms of what the machine really is capable of. Then there are all of the misleading aspects about motor power, some worse than others. Two words are needed by motor spec's. Output and continuous. All sorts of consumer items take liberties with both - power tools too. Few realise the problems associated with variable speed as well - until they have bought one.

John

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That takes no account of how the metal is distributed Neil which in terms of bending can make rather a lot of difference. To me it looks to have a poorly designed bed. The shallow section at the end of the gap, the gap itself and also the fact that it uses a dovetail bed and no mention of hardening where I have looked. The bed also looks rather shallow. It does look like they haven't chobbled the bed away to make room for the motor.

Another make of Chinese dovetail bed lathe I owned had these finished on a super duper linisher according to the supplier. It was interesting to see how quickly cast iron dust built up in the oil I used on it. What cast iron matters too but this sort doesn't vibrate and really should be hardened. The amount of "wear" causing the dust in the oil did fall off eventually.

Wabeco 4000's come in at 71kg net (no kit), 200mm swing and 350mm between centres. The bed is narrower than ideal and the compound is also lacking. If they fixed that all in all it would probably come out well up towards 100kg. That's not accounting for a relatively thin saddle to gain swing there. It does have a rigid bed at this length though but I would be dubious about seriously loading the machine with its 2hp output motor at low speed which because it is variable speed is impossible of course. Actually due to the compound I would be worried about doing that at 460 rpm which is the max on it's low speed range. Too slow really and the other goes to 2,300.

John

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I'm always telling people weight is important - not that there is much point. Best let people just get on with it. If well made it's a good metric for what it's likely to turn out like on just about any machine tool.

John

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The variable would benefit from another speed range as many would that really do go to low speeds.

Youtube shows that it's a brand name that has even been associated with Nutool in the past. There are several golden oldies on there as well as these. Made in Italy - maybe.

Personally I don't like the look of the gap at all especially if a face plate was put on it. The bed looks weak too where that ends.

John

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I think that the attitude you have expressed about your warco lathe and say colchesters and in real terms many others is entirely correct Jason.

I don't mind changing gears for screw cutting. In some ways if odd pitches are needed it's the best arrangement. Feeds are another matter. The trouble with those is that finest doesn't mean best finish. It varies. I'd say I would be happy with 4 or 5 suitably spaced.

John

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There are a couple of sources of Schaublin in the UK

used and recon work. They often sell rather quickly

**LINK**

New

**LINK**

John

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GIMP is one hell of a package to get into Peter. One of the problems is all of the plugins that are available for it, which ones to use and in some cases the results they produce as they will be what the person who wrote it wanted. Making use of the underlying features in GIMP is also unlikely to come easily. Much like Photoshop actually but there are some good video tutorial about. You might like to watch the Fotoxx videos. It will do more than you need but is very simple to use. Coral After Shot Pro is available for Linux. Not OS but cheap and pretty capable. Very very little tuition about on fully using it though. A couple of video's of one person.

You could try freedos for dos programs. I have used that on some very old msdos applications at times. Dosemu is another.

I haven't used virtualbox often for a long time but when it was maintained by sun and not 64bit it ran things at a native speed, hardly any difference at all.

I had to compile LibreCAD due to my version of OpenSuse being past it's support date. Given that the compiler and bits and pieces are installed it's easy. Some distro's will probably install this as a job lot. Best ask on it's forum if in doubt. Maybe sucking eggs etc on this subject but just in case as it can be handy.

First download the compressed file somewhere sensible. Right click and extract here. That will unpack the file into a directory named according to it's version number. Get in that directory and look at any readme or install text file. Often they will tell you what to type in the terminal.Then right click on that folder and select actions open terminal here. This is KDE, others are likely to be similar.

There are 2 basic ways things are compiled. If there is a .pro file in the directory that was opened it will use cmake. This is being used more and more so to compile

cmake ./whatever.pro

make

su or sudo

make install.

Or the older way

./configure

make

su or sudo

make install

Both can be followed by a make clean. It removes some files that were used to produce the final program.

The first command checks how the machine is organised and if all of the needed bits of software are there. Errors if any will be can't find so and so. So find it and install it. It really is best to restrict sources to the distro that is being used. They can be compiled from source too and if that goes without a hitch all should be ok. Another error might be that a certain part can be found but it's the wrong version - best forget installing what ever it was as fixing that may mess all sorts up. I have messed things up this way and had to go to the distro forum to get help sorting it out. It might have killed the machine all together. Really this is what distro's are for - they will provide software that will all work on the machine without upsetting each other - but if they don't provide a particular piece of software compiling your own is the only way.

Sometime the configuration part suggests a piece of software that is needed and then when it's all done suggests another. Just keep doing it but after 2 or 3 it might be best to give up.

I used microsoft software even dos to write software for the machine itself and for the systems I was working on. Going back to the early days when I found that printing tied up the machine up fully and that dos wasn't re enterant I came to the conclusion that Gates was some sort of idiot that didn't really know what he was doing. As IBM wanted him to arrange for it to do that from day one that might be the case. Lots of extremely bad practice. Things like compilers and assemblers were a bit jocular as well compared with others I have used. Later on as some aspect of the tools they provide are still lacking I do wonder if this is all down to a rather clever but savage business model. I've also watched while they have slowly but surely wrecked other software businesses who produced much better offerings. So cheesed off with this sort of thing and not wanting to use what I used at work I switched to Linux at home. Apart from BASH which I hate it's ok and hasn't caused me much in the line of difficulty for rather a long time now and I still know very few BASH commands. I've mentioned most of them, but not ls and cd and the . / 's etc.

I really should sit a type these in one go - less typo's but too many to fix on this one - probably.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 08/02/2016 17:49:16

I'd missed that Jason. They may also still do them to toolroom spec but the costs rocker. For me the used ones of this range are a nightmare. They seem to be very modular and screw cutting and feed features can vary. I don't fancy loosing the ease of changing feed rates over a wide range on the old screw cutting gearboxes and I feel that some of the new models have gone a step too far.

On the rest at the hobby end I'm not keen on variable speed. They could improve my view on that subject by adding more belt settings and not just the usual 2.

The machines might bend in half though.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 08/02/2016 16:04:22

LOL Boxford one size Jason. Not sure that they do 2 centre distances now as the new style seems to have grown in length since it was introduced. There were 2.

The usual UK source of the others is here, millers too.

**LINK**

SwissTec wow now with a name like that they must be good ?????????????? Opti etc.

I can bench mount some of the earlier new style Boxfords. I've looked at a couple and found a brand new check on one. Couldn't run it, engaged screw cutting and a tiny bit of pressure on the saddle feed and it jumped out. Ex college and I'd guess lots of screw cutting by some who didn't bother looking at the screw cutting gauge so just kept trying to ram it in. Not sure so I gave it a miss. Otherwise it seemed perfect.

Making some assumptions about what the OP's friend might make I would probably head in this direction but would make sure that it did sound like gear head with ground and hardened gears should sound like. I'd hope that the accuracy report was met as well.

**LINK**

Excel did what I would call a butch colchester student some years ago but that style of lathe seems to have gone. I was told that the head was alignable on this particular model.

If he also wanted to do very small accurate work he could augment the warco with one of the modern watch makers lathes - at a cost. S&B will it seems make a pultra for him - even better as they are big for this style of lathe. Maybe others too.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 08/02/2016 15:37:45

Unless the OP comes up with some idea what is going to be made there isn't anything other than a very simple answer.

Wabeco and Emco or Boxford but only at a one size. Boxford prices - reckon on circa £12k maybe 15k plus. More variation on the other 2. Design wise those can be a bit lacking in areas depending on the actual model.

However China do make some decent lathes as do TOS, or did but they aren't the sort of thing that model engineers generally buy and the price and these days size will reflect that.

Schaublin - the only certainty about those is that even worn ones that don't deserve the name any more still fetch high prices. This is true of other mainstream makes as well, they are just cheaper in comparison, Hardinge too. All of them really.

There is one used lathe that I feel can be found in very good even perfect condition if some one takes their time looking. The Myford Speed 10 or even the later ML10 with the same bearings. Like many others they just use a pair of taper rollers for the headstock bearings which will put a limit on the finish that can be achieved reliably. To do better things like DSG's are needed - if they still make this type. The only ones that definitely do is Schaublin as far as I am aware. Both makes are likely to see a considerable amount of work before they are likely to appear on the used market and in practice few people need the initial performance levels these machines have. There is a UK source of recond's schaublins but if done fully they are still rather expensive.

On the other hand a file and emery cloth etc can cure all sorts of ills. Some styles of lathe bed such as Myford 7's cause more problems as they wear. Modern prismatic beds are a lot better but a lot depends on them having an ideal width for the size of lathe.

Maybe I should add that my training gave me a totally unrealistic idea of what lathes can do but I do understand why.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 08/02/2016 13:45:58

This sort of question really needs a bit more information. Just what is going to be made on the machines. In some respects there is an argument that a beginner needs a lathe etc just to find out what they actually really do need.

Given a clue on what is going to be made and there may be some solutions.

John

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Have a look ar LibreCAD if Draftsight has too many problems. It will open and save several type of drawing files. For 3D FreeCAD is looking to be the best bet. I am playing around with SketchUp under wine. Not working fully so far so I am awaiting a bug fix on PlayWithLinux as it allows a number of wine settings to be changed easily. To be honest though as I find out how various things are done with SketchUp I feel it's cranky and bugged. The other problem is that it comes as a trial of the £300+ version and stays like that for 3 months. No idea what remains after that.

If I listen to the radio I use VLC. It's a media player and plays media and video too. Radio is a text file with the url's in it or typed in directly. It will remember those via open recent media. Video is on odd ball on Linux as many of the codecs are proprietary. How disto's support them varies. VLC comes able to support the lot. It can do all sorts of things. I keep meaning to see if it can be used to play flash in web browsers.

PDF's can be read using Adobe as they maintain a Linux version. The Linux one that comes with KDE is very slow when scanned books are flicked through so I generally use a reader called Foxit reader. It's free, fast and small. They do a windows version too.

I switched to laser printers a long time ago as we didn't print that often and I was fed up with them blocking up. Colour lasers. They do work out cheaper per print even given the cost of the toners. I always buy one that supports Linux directly so that there is no problems obtaining drivers. I'm not sure how many printers are supported now but in the distant past this could be a problem for some especially if they wanted the latest greatest. I understand this has improved a lot of late - people at HP for instance writing drivers in their spare time for instance. My opensuse seems to have HP's device manager in it some where. Probably because HP always validate Suse on their servers.

Flash has had a bit of a problem of late as Adobe haven't updated the Linux version. Google seem to have done something about this. Looks like Chrome/Chromium needs what ever they have done. Firefox queries using the older player at times but does and Opera doesn't care and just uses it. The update was down to security concerns that I suspect don't apply to Linux. Adobe have done this sort of thing in the past on their reader. Big bloated thing so I use Foxit anyway.

For photography I mainly use 2 programs. Fotoxx and RawTherapee. Both are happy working on jpg's. There are a number of others I use for panoramas/extreme perspective correct, Hugin and yet others for HDR. Also the GIMP at times. There are a series of video tutorials on Fotoxx. Others too.

Fotoxx is Linux only. It's aim is to be able to do what 95% of even pro's might want to do to shots. No single application will replace PhotoShop but a mix will.

There are all sorts kicking about including PDF editors and pdf are an option on printing to file. LibreOffice might even export them. Sometimes the easiest way to find things is google Linux what ever it does.

John

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What Linux forum ? and what program? The latter particularly. I really am curious.

There are generally 2 forums that are the best ones to use. The forum of what ever distro is being used but some are better than others. People who ask anything on Debian for instance some times do get bad responses. I searched opensuse forums for wine and found 300 posts. Anyone who answered in a silly fashion would be chucked off. I'd guess Ubuntu is the same.

The other is linux questions org. That one would probably be more why not use so and so instead.

The place to ask specifically about wine is winehq. The usual response is have you installed the latest version. More help may or may not follow.It depends on what you want to run and if anyone is interested in sorting it out. On that score there is a video on youtube called why linux stinks. It's interesting and explains the problem well.

Personally i have several dos level os's under my belt and have no interest what so ever in picking up BASH. However all of them can do similar things so I use google as needed when and if I need to. Doesn't happen very often. Last time I wanted to check which partitions where being written to. My machine uses a flash disk and hard drives and I don't want to write to it other than for software updates as writing is what wears them out. BASH being BASH totally OTT I thought that it could probably do this and google came up with how in under 10mins

I really would be curious to know what windows programs you feel you must run Peter.

Oh the video might be called why linux is crap. Not sure.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 07/02/2016 23:24:10

Running things with wine is a bit of a mixed bag. If you want to try that playwithlinux might be a good idea as it will install wine along with other things that you might need with it and probably helps install programs too.

Q4wine is good too, Another called Swine is pretty crap. I sometimes install the only windows program I ever use in a sort of none standard place. Q4wine allows the directory it's run from to be specified. It's an optical design package. A rather old one as the newer free versions are much more crippled. There aren't any Linux equivalents. A problem with Linux. The people who write the code do it because the want it. Most of the people who work on wine are interested in running windows games. The usual problem with wine and windows programs is just what dll's it needs to run. That can be right pain to sort out as it usually needs guesswork.

A better option really is to mention the windows program you want to run. There really are many that will have Linux equivalents.

John

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Artesianfoundary do have an item that may be of use. I wondered about making a case with it due to what it's used for. I need to handle some though

**LINK**

There are fair few suppliers about but shipping costs sometimes make local purchase the best option - if you can find one.

These people sell on ebay as well. I obtained a castable from them. I asked about a particular type and lo a listing appeared.

**LINK**

A well known supplier that does all sorts and also has a retail shop with some of the items in it. One of the furnace books uses their materials. For electric Myfordboy suggested I should buy it but none of the books use the technique more modern cheap kilns use that are basically made from blanket.

I'd rather work it out for myself anyway.

**LINK**

And one that may offer a high alumina cement but they don't state how high

**LINK**

There are lots about searching refractory bricks brings them up especially if insulating is included as it usually excludes fire bricks which are very dense and heavy. I did have another that listed all sorts of things while looking for something that turned out to be very expensive so didn't link to it. I might try another 1/2 hr with google

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 07/02/2016 17:56:35

My son reckons that stainless corrodes - he looks at stainless saucepans which do and he lacks a technical education. School part covered it under the heading of resistant materials which seems to only exclude plastics.

Stainless is a broad field as are copper alloys and many other things.

John

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I'd already found them Kwil but the £200 min order rules them out completely for me. I'm thinking more in terms of £50 and it looks like I will achieve that too.

Edit or something much more like it.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 07/02/2016 16:41:57