Member postings for I.M. OUTAHERE

And for those who have ever wondered how they are made .

https://youtu.be/0QrynzJ_lZ4

My comments were made with the understanding that the op had modified the machine and now dismantled it which would usually void any warranty .

If the mods are reversible ( ie no holes had been drilled or tapped and nothing had been cut off ) and the machine can be assembled so as to look like it had never been touched the best option would be to return it and hope they honour the warranty .

There is no garauntee that the replacement won't be the same or worse and it may be something that Chester don't know about , They simply can't test every machine that comes off the boat before a customer picks it up .

Scraping the head in can be diffficult but if they don't take it back the op really has little choice , i have had to do this on my first chinese machine but fortunately it was mostly burrs around the mouting holes on that lathe but the C2 clone was a different matter ! The vee in the headstock was way too big for the vee on the bed so the headstock kept moving it was also nose down on the spindle - fortunately not by much , a bit of a scrape had that sorted and the vee was shimmed so the spindle ran parralell on the horizontal plane and located on the vee bed - apparently this is a fairly common fix .

I would blue up the section of bed where the head sits ( make sure there are no burrs around the mounting bolt holes ) and then place the head up on the bed and give it a rub back and forth to see what contact points you have .

The v slot is ok and although the flat side is not the best provided you can get contact points in each corner it will be usable . I feel your issue is more about the head rocking around on high spots in the middle of the v and flat section .

Once you have it sitting there without any rocking you can use an epoxy filler to fill the voids ( take a look at stefan gotteswinter youtube channel as he uses this to fix a column alignment issue on his mill ) it can be re machined but you need to make up a jig that fits in the spindle bearing housing so you can set it up to machine everything parralell to the spindle bore .

Sounds like something is moving , check that your toolpost and compound slide are clamped down tight .

The toolbit could be moving in the boring bar , if it is the type that the toolbit sits in a square hole and retained by a grub screw i would look at investing in an insert type boring bar i had nothing but trouble with the cheap boring bar that i had .

You can get an adapter that has a mt2 male on one end and a 3mt female on the other so you can use your 3mt tooling on a machine that has a 2mt tailstock barrel .

How many brass welch plugs have been pressed into cast iron engine blocks and never fell out ? Millions ? More ?

Sure they only operate in an environment that is running around 15 psi and they are operating around 80 deg C but they do the job.

If you are running more pressure than that you need something to ensure it doesn't move - a thread or cotter pin etc but the temp of steam won't budge it .

Edited By XD 351 on 15/11/2017 05:20:32

I haven't made the same system but looking at it the longer bracket extends the swivel to pivot point a little more and allows the small bracket to sit in behind the long bracket which could be to give the spring some clearance so it doesn't interfere with the ram .

i made mine with an old air ram and made a valve block so i can adjust the feed rate very finely , it also has a valve for fast feed to get the blade down to the work fast and another that closes the hyraulic circuit and locks the feed .

I used an old mower fuel tank as a reservoir with a submerged pick up tube .

Is the unit a printer / scanner ? If it is will it scan to the computer ?

IYou say it was working fine 2 months ago on the same pc ? If so could itindicate an update issue of some sort ?

In the hardware manager section in control panel check to see if your usb is working correctly and update the drivers for it , i had an issue earlier this year trying to load a programme onto an arduino nano clone and it wouldnt work , I tried everything i could think of but it wouldn't cop it . As a last ditched effort i had a look to see if the usb ports were working correctly which windows reported they were but i took a pot shot and checked for new drivers online and there were and it started working even though the ports were working fine with my printers etc it didn't want to know the Arduino .

What type of printer is it ?

When i switched to a new pc running W10 my brother laser printer worked without any problem but my hp bubble jet didn't want a bar of it , i didn't use the driver disc that came with it as i knew the drivers on that disc were superseded and i didn't want all the other crap that comes on their disc on my new pc , if you have used an older install disc i would uninstall it and look on the printer manufacturers website for a newer version if you want their utilites on your pc .

Ended up going into the control panel - hardware - then look down the list for printers which showed both printers working correctly but i clicked the update driver icon and downloaded a new driver online and it fired up and has worked ever since .

Hi Tom,

For a first engine i would recommend a simple wobbler type engine as it will teach you about getting the parts to fit together and are not expensive to make , you don't really need a lathe to make one but having one will make life much easier .

If you are new to machine operations - using a lathe or mill etc take a look at a youtube channel called that lazy machinist - you will learn a lot from that channel i promise you !

If you do start out with a wobbler engine then try the youtube channel called mrpete222 as he makes a few of these engines .

If you want to watch someone make some things from brass ( mostly ) take a look at the clickspring channel - it is worth watching this just for the camera work let alone what you will learn !

There are no stupid questions and we have all been where you are now !

Ian.

I use a pretty simple method to align the column ,

Set up a dial indicator on a mag base and clamp it to the side of the head ( not in the spindle ) then set up an angle plate on the table and square it up so the vertical face is at 90 deg to the x axis ( use an engineers square for this ) you can then use the indicator to sweep the vertical face of the angle plate .

Lock the X and Y axis up then take a reading by moving the head up and down the column , compare the reading at the top with the one at the bottom of the angle plate , don't wory about what it shows when you are raising or lowering the head as it will wander all over the place so just use the reading at the top and bottom of the angle plate and lock the gibbs up at each reading to remove any play between the column and head .

Once you are happy that the column is square to the table you tram the spindle in the normal manner .

You can use the same method to check if the column is tilted forward or backward just set up the angle plate parallel to the X axis .

Unfortunately photos can be deceiving and altered with photoshop .

A machine that is spotlessly clean is,no guarantee that it hasn't been abused or is worn out , a good scrub with degreaser and a coat of paint can hide a lot of problems .

A machine that shows oil stains at least shows it had some lubrication but can also indicate a long service life and thus more wear.

It really is like buying a used car , you really must do your homework so you know what you are looking at and for .

If the alignment is done with just 4 bolts it would move around all over the place , maybe some alignment dowels in there somewhere ? If there are no dowels you should be able to loosen the bolts a little then tap the top of the column across to align it , this is what i had to do with the head of my x2 mill as the head casting is 2 piece and the column tilts - ideally after the alignment is done fit some taper dowels .

Just out of curiosity how did you ascertain that the column is tilted ?

Ian

My Clarke CL300M (mini lathe) is 18 years old and going strong, although I blew up a motor and a control board (both my fault).

i fitted a 1hp 3ph motor runing off a vfd and it spins up to 3000 rpm if i want to change thwe belts around , only problem i have now is shearing the chuck off of the spindle 😳.

Some of his videos are side splitting funny as well !

Another carbide tooling video was made by Adam booth ( abom79 ) that from memory was made with the help of a sales rep from Niagra tooling and i found it very informative .

Edited By XD 351 on 07/11/2017 12:34:37

1. Might be worthwhile to check the thickness of the saw for uniform thickness , ideally it would be hollow ground so a few thou thinner in the centre .

A lot of people think they are a big heavy industrial machine but they were designed for tool and die makers , the more adjustments or the abillity to adjust the machine components to suit different angles the more chance there is for something to move .that being said i don't know of anyone that wouldn't like to own one - me included!

Did you try arc eurotrade ? They sell genuine sieg stuff that will fit your lathe and comes from one of the few good factories in china . I suspect you will have to make an adapter for a burnerd to fit a mini lathe .

Edited By XD 351 on 03/11/2017 07:46:37

So you are the one that bent all the micrometers i found in a cupboard at a place i used to work at ! 😄

A few were swiss made too 😭

I found the postage a little dear but when it turned up 48 hrs later and fully insured i didn't mind paying it and it was still cheaper than buying here in OZ .

I haven't used them since they moved a few years back .

Ok i think i may be beginning to understand what you are asking

On a bridgeport you can swing the entire head and column left or right or offset it in regards the y axis centreline and you want to get it back on centre ?

If so the graduations on the column/ base would be accurate enough to do the job and even if the head was set up so the centreline of the spindle was not directly lined up with the centreline of the y axis it won't affect how the machine operates .

With a bridgeport you can tilt the head left or right and nod it up or down so when you mention the word "tram" that is what most people think of and getting the spindle centreline perpendicular to the table surface in the x& y axis .

Edited By XD 351 on 03/11/2017 07:05:30