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

Well that title kind of sums up my question. I just find that except for between centres turning there isn't much work the taper in the headstock spindle does. If I were making a lathe I might get rid of the taper and replace it with the socket for an ER collet or somesuch.

Maybe I just neglect the potential for morse taper tooling.

Fly cutter - boring head - MT drill for work secured on saddle ?

Norman

I have a couple of small chucks mounted on MT2 arbors, get used on odd occasions only though.

Edited By V8Eng on 06/12/2015 23:27:32

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I would if I had one for turning between centers with a catchplate and dog.

Trouble is some bright spark numptie at Boxford decided it would be a good idea to make the taper in the headstock a non-standard Morse 4 1/2 taper.!

They will gladly sell me one that reduces to a No.3 but want £115 plus VAT for them.!

So if anyone has for some obscure reason got a 4 1/4 taper please let me know.

Nick

Ouch

That said you could put a piece of rod in a 3 jaw chuck and turn it to a point. Every time you took the rod out and put it back in you would need to turn a new point to get rid of any run out though.

The lathes I have had have either been too tiny to have a piece mounted on the saddle or hadn't had T slots in the saddle. That explains why I never thought of flycutter and boring head.

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But then if they had only put a MT3 in there in the first place you would be whinging that you could only get 3/4" up the spout

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I ain't saying that.

A 4 or better a 5 would have been more logical. ........... Make me a 4 1/2 and I will give you a bag of jelly babies and a box of Pontefract cakes.

Nick

Gimme some sizes of a 4 1/2 ?

Got a drawer full of oddball sleeves but going to have to be more than one bag of jelly babies

I have an ER collet chuck with MT shank that fit my small lathe, and I sometimes use the ER chuck to hold short work pieces or end mills.

Thor

Nick put a bit of bar in your 3-jaw and turn a 60deg point on the end, don't remove until after the job is done, drive the dig off the side of a chuck jaw.

I often do as above so the taper may only get used a couple of times a year for a boring head or flycutter when machining castings on the cross slide.

Depending what jobs come in I might use the mt3 spindle taper with Morse collets every day for a week, then not for a month.
Made an adapter to take little Jacobs type chucks too so it earns its keep.

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Nick

Apart from occasional turning between centres on the Myford, I do sometimes use the Radford disc-facing device which employs the headstock taper to locate supports for thin discs held in the chuck which can then be faced to fine limits.

On my larger lathe I have an MT adapter for the Myford chucks, again very useful on occasion.

To answer the original question: once in 12 years when turning my traction engine crankshafts between centres, using a MT3 centre in the 5-3 adaptor that came with the lathe.

Andrew

I also have a MT5-3 adapter and use the MT3 ER32 from my mill in the lathe.

Never.

After around 8 years of ownership I have yet to use the MT taper adapter in my current lathe headstock. But being a Smart & Brown 1024 VSL it is bored for direct fit 5C collets which I use on a very regular basis. I have full sets in imperial by 1/32 intervals and metric by 0.5 mm intervals. Pretty much the same with its predecessor, a D1-4 spindle SouthBend Heavy 10, which came with a reasonable selection of 5 C collets but no adapter. Around £300 to import a new adapter direct from SouthBend (the lathe itself only cost £550) but in retrospect worth it for the amount of use over 15 years ownership. For simple bar work I do prefer a collet despite having a selection of excellent condition chucks.

Clive.

I use the headstock Morse taper sometimes.

I make MT2 tooling for my mill. I usually make the taper in the lathe, holding the work in the chuck. I then remove the chuck and fit the taper , with an MT2 to MT3 adaptor in the headstock and then machine the business end of the tooling. This ensures concentricity of the tooling with the taper.

When gear cutting I mount the gear blank in the lathe headstock using an MT2 to MT3 adaptor and an MT2 to ER32 adaptor. I can then machine the blank to size with good concentricity to the taper. Once the blank is machined I can remove the taper from the headstock and transfer it to the MT2 tapered hole in the centre of my rotary table on the mill for cutting the teeth. After cutting the teeth it can be transferred back to the lathe for de-burring.

I also have an adjustable stock that fits into the headstock taper for making multiple parts all the same size.

Mike

I don't use mine much at all. On the other hand I came across a Myford owner that made and sold model aeroplane engines. He used it a lot. Jigs built onto the end of morse taper arbours.

John

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Very rarely. I cant remember the last time I used the headstock taper; I always do as Jason says and trim a homemade soft centre in the chuck to ensure it is as true as possible. Such a centre is best made with a shoulder to eliminate the possibility of it being pushed into the chuck (belt & braces). Colin