Some help needed with lathe

Hello Neil, thank you for your kind offer, you have a PM.

Bazyle, yes, I have seen the programs you speak of. I intend familiarizing myself with them and eventually to be able to cut some threads! One of the strangest things about the lathe are the feet, they appear to be the only item on the machine which has been cast. They are made from an alloy.

At some point I intend getting the bed reground, there are a couple of dings and the carriage is a bit stiff towards the middle of the bed. At this moment I am stilll learning.

I initially thought that the chap who made the lathe had used a "off the shelf" headstock bearings and spindle and tailstock collet holder and merely built a machine around them. Now I suspect he may have in fact made everything from scratch, very impressive.

I am assuming he made a wider angle on the collets in order to improve precision. The four jaw chuck you see on the machine is an Adept but looks as if he might have modified the thread to fit the lathe's spindle.

My intention is to keep the lathe and get some tooling made for it. The carriage had a lot of tooling marks made by the milling bit. So, although the machine is nicely made, it looks as if it was very much made as a functional item rather than just a study piece. I have been slowly scraping the marks in order to bring out the metal's sheen.

Thanks again to everyone who has kindly offered advice. Next on the list is understanding how to cut a thread on a machine with no reverse.

Kind regards,

Victor.

Hello Roy, are you referring to the diameter of the threaded part? I am not sure abot the thread but its diameter is1/4.

I will take the dead centre to be properly measured on Monday, hoping that this will be enough for my uncle to understand via email and make me a suitable arbor. Unfortunately, the caliper I have here leaves a lot to be desired.

Kind regards,

Victor.

I'm with Bazyle, I think this was made in the toolroom as "lunchtime" job. So wouldn't assume anything about anything thread wise. Lovely piece of kit by the way.

Steve

Thanks, Steve. You are probably both right, made by a machinist in his spare time. That would explain why he didn't spend too much time on details like removing the tooling marks from the carriage.

Kind regards,

Victor.

Victor,

If, as I suspect, the cone angle in your headstock and tailstock spindles is 48° [or thereabouts]; then you might be able to make a little adapter to fit ... with a 40° internal cone.

There would be very little material there, but if you also move the internal cone forward a millimetre or two, it would be more substantial.

This will never be as good as properly re-machining the spindles; but it would retain originality, and let you use available collets.

If the lathe was mine, I would try making a few of these, in Brass.

MichaelG.

Hello Michael,

Yes, I did think about making some sort of adaptor but seen as I intend using very small drill bits, I worried about loosing concentricity, The brass suggestion sounds good, I do have some stock here.

The best solution will probably be to get my uncle to make me an arrbor and see if it works out, if it does, it should be simple to make some collets. eventually, I will have to learn to make such bits myself

Kind regards,

Victor/

To my eye the cone angle in the photos looks about 40 degrees. Although Tubal Cain suggests 40 is commonest with a few lesser angles used, the link Michael gave includes examples with 45 and 50 degree included angles (it gives the half angle). It may be that teh maker had access to some American collets.

Neil

Hello Neil,

Thank for the info. I have been looking at the sheet and see what you mean.

Strange that there is so little information about such things online, just goes to show how rare some things are.

It might also be that the lathe was not made in the UK, I know nothing of its provenance apart from the fact that the last owner built live steam engines. Of course.he did not build the lathe. I wonder how old it actually is.

What attracted me to the lathe is how unique it looks, the downside is that the tooling seems as different to the norm as the lathe is.

On Monday,I willbe able to get the dead centre measured properly, this is bound to be of help.

Kind regards,

Victor.

.

Neil,

Given that we "know" the cone angle on that RGD drill arbor to be 40°, I beg to differ.

But, of course, only direct measurement will tell.

MichaelG.

I am pretty certain that the top of the RDG cone measures 12mm, the dead centre exactly 1/2.  Seen as both cones are of the same lenght, 1/4, my dead centre's angle is bound to be greater.

Unfortunately, I cannot measure the angle until Monday, but they are most certainly different.

Kind regards,

Victor.

Edited By Victor francis on 02/11/2013 19:04:54