How often do you use the morse taper in your lathe headstock?

The table of MT sizes will be useful for some of us, sometime!

The MT socket in my lathe's Headstock is used for:

Trimming centres that others have mangled.

Turning centres for use in other jobs, (Such as extension centres to aid centering work in a 4 jaw chuck).

With ER collet holders for small round pieces.

Modifying soft arbors to make other tooling, (Arbors for Slitting Saws, or Shell Mills etc)

Turning between centres

Carrying a Myford thread chuck for smaller jobs,

With Sleeves, for carrying work that will be transferred to the Rotary Table.

A useful feature, and, IMHO, probably better than a parallel bore for both alignment and certainly grip.

Howard

As a long term viewer of the forum, and very much a novice, I thought it was about time I joined in.

I seem to be in a very small club, as someone who actually uses MT collets in the headstock. It must surely be the most rigid setup for fly cutting and other milling cutters, for those of us without a mill - yet.

Mike.

My Boxford AUD has a MT 3 on the spindle, used a boring head in it just last month - see album.
BobH

The TOS lathe which has been in daily use for the last 18 years from new still has the adaptor sealed in wax.

The only thing I do fit in there is a home made one that is tapped 1/2" Whit for a depth stop bar. Only reason it's 1/2" Whit is i have a big legacy of Whit threaded rod and holding clamps from when Erricsons Telephones, later Plessy was in business.

Thanks for the table, saved and printed out. Will check later.

I do believe that there is also a short MT4 and short MT5 for spindles as well ? I'll measure what I have and do a list.

Probably the best dimension is just the large end, everything else has to carry on.

My Thiel mill uses a short MT5 in the vertical head. Overall length of the arbor taper is 91mm + a reduced parallel diameter 45mm long. I guess the reduced part is just to extend the arbor to permit the draw bar to reach the holding (butress) thread.

Dave
The Emerald Isle

My Warco 290 has a 5 MT taper, I made an adaptor to take 5c collets with a drawbar, I use it everyday, guarenteed concentricity.

I think the internal headstock taper is one of the most underused items on a lathe. For example if you are turning loco wheels a soft mandrel turned to fit the axle bore gives repeatable concentricity and only needs to be made once.

Michael

I have a full set, well as many as I can find, of metric MT3 collets which fit both my lathe headstock and my mill. Fair enough, I haven't yet used all the available sizes, but of those I have used, there has been an improvement in milling ability when using the vertical slide, and when turning. Indeed, as I write this I am contemplating turning a length of steel to 11mm dia at one end, and then using the 11mm collet to hold the work whilst turning the other end.

Although there are limitations in that I don't have collets for every available size and so have to adjust the work to suit, I certainly find them easier to use than setting up in the 4-jaw.

Peter G. Shaw

Every time I turn pivots on clock arbors, and anytime I need to work accurately but not between centres. Myford collets for most fractional sizes sub 1/4 inch plus 5/16 3/8th 7/16 and 1/2 inch.

Martin

Turning betwixt centres, and holding various fly cutter, milling cutter holders/chucks and a boring head.

Also VERY handy when you want to make morse taper accessories as they can be held in the lathe for finishing using an adaptor sleeve if needed.

It is a standard size - the only half-size that 'officially' exists, it's been used on Far Eastern and American lathes as well. I guess it maximises the bore, and you only need one sleeve.

Neil

Ok that was a very interesting and fruitful exercise looking for those sleeves.

Found my ER32 hex block that went missing, two big lumps of titanium bar I didn't know I had and a Jacobs Rubberflex collet chuck.

But found the sleeves and it's as I though there are short versions of the MT4 1/2 and the MT5

So the one on the left is a 4 1/2 but shorter and the others are MT5 but all around the 3" mark whereas a full MT5 sleeve is 1.786" on the large end, 1.507" on the small end but 5.550" long which goes with the table Nick put up.

So Nick in answer to your question yes I do have a sleeve.

I have not used my headstock spindle taper on my 3 lathes for ages,on my master I use a combined catch plate and soft centre,just a length of mild steel bar with a steel disc welded to it,and every time its used I turn a new point on the centre, years ago a soft mt centre was part of a lathes kit,as it could be turned to a perfectly true running taper, my combined tool saves removing the chuck and a perfect centre is achieved every time. The last time I used a hard centre in the headstock was to fit the centre that has a short parallel portion, to set up and measure the position of an angle plate bolted to the faceplate.

Using the headstock taper? Hmmm - how about this?

Used like this as a back stop -

For thin stuff -

Well that's another short article for Neil blown!

Regards

Steve

Quite often on the Boxford. 3MT adaptors modified to suit various jobs, available from Arc and all the usual suspects, 3C collets in the Boxford adaptor.

Back in my "professional" days, used very regularly on my two Colchesters, one of the most common jobs being swinging Triumph pre unit timing covers converting from bush to oil seal for crank oil feed pressure. Again, 3MT adaptor with the Triumph OPRV thread used. Dead concentric, and no need to bother a with a boring head in a mill. Did so many, i got the job down to 20 mins, inc. machining the circlip groove.

I have a warco 918 lathe,and have an er25 collet chuck, I also have m3 x3/4collet. one day when using

m3 collet , I for some reason (tried) to put the face plate on the lathe. I found that it wouldnt screw on, but on removing the collet it went on with ease. Now every time I use m/t collets I screw the face plate on to stop

any distortion of the thread. I should imagine this could be a problem with other similar lathes.

I love reading threads on this forum. Everyday is a schoolday! Steve thats really practical and nice idea. Is that a Mill MT Taper with your little mod applied to it?

TIA.

Grant

Scratch that from the gadget issue... actually we could still use it, as many readers won't see these posts.

Neil

between centres work and small chucks, faceplates can be mounted on an MT taper

They are worth having because any applicable tooling plugs in very accurately easily and quickly

If a workpiece is mounted on morse taper tooling it can be moved about for other operations

Edited By Ady1 on 13/12/2015 11:57:05

BU@@ER!

Was about to write my list as long as the proverbial, then noticed Headstock not Tailstock

Geoff - What can I possibly say

I don't have a Milling Machine, so I use the MT3 taper in my Boxford headstock pretty much all the time. I've just spent a happy 2 hours in the barn swapping out an 'Optiset' centring microscope, a centre drill, a #50 drill and my crappy tapping tool 128 times, making the cylinder cover holes in four G scale loco cylinders.

Optiset in a 1/2" MT3 collet. (Does anyone else have one of these? Got it off ebay ages ago)

Crappy tapping tool - just an MT2 blank arbor and a drill chuck from 'Princess Auto'

Another eBay bargain - nice little boring head, being used as a flycutter.

If I ever get a mill, it will have to be an MT3 one, as all my tooling is this size.

With a 4 1/2 MT in a D1-3 Camlock spindle you can take advantage of the bore through the spindle and also to provide enough space for 5C collets. For D1-4 you can do a 5 MT but there is not enough meat on the D1-3 for that. Surely you prefer that compromise over a MT4? Lots of D1-3 equipped lathes have this 4 1/2 MT taper. Reducing bushes to 3 MT come up from time to time on ebay.

Steve