Has anyone here ever modified a capstan attachment to fit a regular centre lathe?

Thank you all for the very helpful replies, I should have been a bit more specific in my original post though -

There three parts I am making and they: are small bolts with a bastard thread (I have the unusual thread die) in batches of about 200 and concertina buttons which are slightly more complex and made in two parts, I would probably produce a batch of abound 400 of those parts at a time. I enclose an image to show what these are like. The tooling up and setup for making this sort of thing is not a problem, I
make a lot of them .. if somewhat slowly on a centre lathe. Im not really interested in outsourcing the work
I have just had a lot of bad experiances with doing that on any level sadly.

I actually have one of the 2mt tailstock 6 tool capstan like attachments and as has been pointed out
the lack of a depth stop is quite a drawback. Also the one I have is somewhat flimsy sadly, perhaps some of them are better.

The guy bazmak who made the capstan for his mini lathe looks to have done an incredible job but sadly that path looks a bit beyond
my milling capacity (wm 12 mill and wm 180 lathe) and time limitations (self emplyed with two under 5 children)

The bed turret for the sherline lathe looks incredible, it would be that exact setup which I would be
trying to emulate - not quite as perfect as an industrial capstan lathe (looks like its missing the handy
lever collet setup which many have) but I feel such a setup would be the best thing for my needs and limitations ect.
As pointed out sadly their website seems to be down though.

Still looks a bit hard to see the best way forwards - Perhaps I need more sleep you have all provided very useful suggestions I think I just need to have a good think now on this one.

Best wishes

Jake

There are capstan attachments made for some of the Smart & Brown lathes which probably could be modified to fit your lathe, you would need a mill for the mods, though.

**LINK**

As mentioned in previous post here is an image of a concertina button - made in two parts

Jake

I notice that a rather distressed capstan attachment is on E-Bay at the the moment (for rather too much money!).

**LINK**

Item 154308218335

Probably too large as the turret is 5" diameter but might be worth an ask. You'd need to do the dovetail base it slides on in two or maybe three bits to get the length as it will be too long to do in one go on your mill but its not an impossible job. Frankly for the size of work you plan a partial length dovetail may well be fine.

There is a nice looking Myford one :- **LINK**

Item 175612996112

That looks pretty much ready to go, albeit a bit spendy. A Myford bed is of simple square edge design so, if the centre heights work, its far easier to make an adapter.

Alternatively consider making something similar to the tool carrier off a tailstock turret as the basis for a cross slide mounted version. Or buy a cheap one and cannibalise it!

If simple manual rotation will do an angled block to hold it at the right tilt having some sort of spring loaded registration stop inside fixed to the cross slide will suffice to mount it. Use a multi-position bed stop as I suggested in my previous post.

Still need to sort a cut off slide or substitute tho'. I suspect for your mall jobs a simple hand pull down, or up, device pivoting on a rod behind the lathe bed might work. Sharp too and stop spring to work against.

Clive

Edited By Clive Foster on 14/02/2023 14:45:24

In theory it should be possible to set up the tailstock type tools so only a single stop is needed. It needs some initial time spent on setting up the tools so that they all extend the correct distance from the stop which may entail making side lock type holders for things like ctr drills to bring them out to a similar standout of the larger items of tooling such as running down boxes and die holders.

Conversion to lever feed would also help but no reason not to just wind the barrel out to a improvised stop.

I think it was mentioned earlier about arranging several tools along the cross slide, it will depend on available movement but as your items are quite small the tooling could be a lot closer together than this picture of a Sherline CNC shows. Again if set to protrude the right amount then a single stop would work and feed the cross slide in to easy to remember increments of the handwheel.

For making bolts I don't think a capstan helps.

Face off and turn thread diameter to a length guy front tool post and saddle stop.

Thread,- tailstock die holder

Part off - rear tool post and saddle stop.

Not sure about buttons not enough detail.

How about something like this from *** Mikes Workshop ***

With a bit off work setting tooling and some additional stops could be made to function. With a lever operated tailstock could be even better.

John

Edited By Journeyman on 14/02/2023 15:57:57

Having used both to make nuts, bolts and studs, personally I think that a repetition lathe is better suited than a capstan unit. Although, as always, it comes down to tooling. I have a Britan which has a small footprint, similar to a Myford. I normally use a Coventry diehead for external threads. But a clever holder with dog clutches allows an ordinary split die to be used almost as quickly as a diehead:

Andrew

It is possible to use a tailstock turret to make bolts, I use dedicated cutters similar to end mills with a thru hole of the correct size for the bolt stock and then thread and part off.

There’s a myford capstan on sale for £575 in Lathes.co.uk

Two Myford bed mounted capstan units, a cut-off slide, a cross-slide mounted capstan unit + capstan tooling on Ebay at the moment - search "Myford" & set "Newly listed" then scroll down.

Nigel B.

No idea, but presumably there is a male thread on the white piece and a female thread in the silver piece holding the two together?

It does not look like a capstan set up would save much time over what can be done with existing gear such as form tools and lever tailstock if you start off with material of the correct OD. You might look at making some capstan-lathe style roller boxes to mount on the tailstock turret. These consist of a pair of small rollers to hold the work steady while a pre-set cutting tool turns the job down to the reduced diameter as it is feed along. Then a miniature Coventry diehead type thing to do the male thread and a tapping head to do the female thread quickly without smashing the tap into the blind hole.

The domed end on the silver piece could be put on using a combined parting tool/form tool as the final operation. Will need a bit of polishing afterwards to finish it off to such a standard but you are going to have to do that anyway.

Making bolts is definitly lever tailstock territory. Or using hexagon stock and a multi-stop carriage stop you can have a stop to set the amount of bar sticking out, then the amount of shank turned down (or roller boxed down) then apply thread with die head in tail stock. Then part off using carriage stop again, putting the chamfer on the hex halfway through the parting process, or make a combined parting/chamfering form tool.

The cross hole is a bit special, especially in the workholding aspect. Special jig required etc. But time could be saved by making a drill bit with a surrounding hardened silver steel sleeve shaped as a countersink cutter, so all done in one motion.

Edited By Hopper on 15/02/2023 00:50:51

I adapted a Hardinge turret to a South Bend 10K lathe. I managed to get the holes in the turret concentric with the spindle within .001".

And one on eBay for 650 Quid. Ambiguously labelled as a tailstock though. LINK

Not sure if it might be a bit big for a mini lathe though?

Edited By Hopper on 15/02/2023 10:20:07

Edited By Hopper on 15/02/2023 10:22:22

Well everyone was very helpful on this question and I was so impressed by the array of various solutions to the problem of speeding up production. In the end after a lot of investigation, deliberation and very careful searching I was able to find a myford C7 capstan lathe which I am very happy with. Space was found and deals were done.

I would like to thank everyone who posted responses to this thread, although I may not have replied to each post individually I did carefully consider what every single poster said.

Best wishes

Jake

Clive, Noel -

You don't need the complexity of electronics and motors to automate the indexing. You'd already indicated turret and capstan lathes have this feature as a matter of course, and entirely mechanically; and though I don't know it worked I doubt it was very complicated.

The mechanism also indexes the adjustable depth-stops, so the Myford version was perfectly conventional in that regard.