Tailstock turret

I've recently been given an unmade kit for the Sparey tailstock turret, the design of which I believe was originally published in the Model Maker magazine. It looks to me to be possibly a useful accessory for my lathe and fairly easy to construct. However, I am not too sure about the six stations as shown on the drawing, to my eye it looks too crowded and I'm thinking of reducing this to five or possibly even four stations. Has anyone here built one of these or similar and what are your thoughts on the number of stations? Or come to that is it even worth bothering with, after all I've managed for nearly 50 years without one

TIA

Phil

Have a look at Mikesworkshop, he made one with four stations.

Thor

Tailstock turrets are very useful for multiple components. The turret is, I think, described in Spareys book.

I have a six station turret on my 6.5" lathe which I find very useful, my only problem being that it can interfere with my recently installed rear toolpost.

J A Radford made some reasoned criticisms of tailstock turrets; his solution being his design for QC tailstock tooling which I have successfully made for my Super Seven. JAR's design was published in ME and is in his book "Improvements and Accessories for your Lathe". I could post photos if there is any interest in this.

ega ... Radford's design looks excellent, and has been on my 'must make one of those sometime' list for more years than I care to remember ... some photos would be of great interest.

Phil ... I think reducing the Sparey design to five stations might greatly improve 'handling'.

MichaelG.

Ega, thanks for that a photo would be most informative. Also the information about the rear toolpost is something I had not considered and as I have a rear toolpost more or less permanently mounted, I am beginning to wonder if it is worth the bother of making this kit.

Certainly I can see under certain circumstances it would be a useful accessory, especially for repetitive operations but I have a feeling that this may well end up as another project on the tuit list.

Phil

Full details, including drawings, are in MEW issue 178

Mike

As requested:

Photo 1 shows my Atlas turret and the potential for conflict with the rear toolpost. (The plain shank at two o'clock supports my Vertex tapping chuck when in use).

Photo 2 is of the JAR tool with centre drill in extended holder on the Myford. On the shelf above the lathe (photo 3) are some additional holders. From the left, the plain shank takes a die holder and the Vertex, and the short pilot drill second from left can follow up the centre drill without the need to move the tailstock. The additional drill chucks can stand ready with tapping, clearance size drills, etc.

The tool consists of an MT shank with short vertical male dovetail onto which are mounted the various holders via a corresponding female dovetail, the vertical location being set by the screwed-on stops visible in photo 3. In use the small ball handle is rotated one turn releasing the holder which is then lifted away, replaced by another and the handle again locked.

Phiip Rowe: I will PM re greater detail

Edited By ega on 04/01/2016 13:04:04

If Philip doesn't have the drawing to go with his castings, David Clark 1 is right: the drawing is on page 59 of Sparey's book. Looks as if it would be easy to modify to four or five tools.

.

Thanks

MichaelG.

Another problem with tailstock turrets on small lathes is the limited tailstock quill travel which makes it hard to cope with tools of different lengths. Sliding the tailstock back and forth in the usual manner helps up to a point but you still have to remember where the long tools are going when using the short ones. Conventional answer is to use extensions so everything is a similar effective length as shown by ega but now the bed avaliable for a workpiece is defined by the longest tool. Most of us don't have enough bed length to be cavilier about wasting space anyway. Figuring how to accommodate a long drill for a single operation has to be done but setting up so that all operations leave sufficient space is a couple of orders of magnitude worse.

My Smart & Brown 1024 has more room and more tailstock travel than most homeworkshop folks lathes but its still not enough to make my tailstock turret a regular fitment. Its a proper professional 5 station one with excellent rigidity but still a PIA most of the time. There is a good reason why such devices are relatively rare in professional use even though they make the right job go much faster. Probably one of those things where you have to deceide you are really going to exploit it and modify your working style to cope. Bilt like a Palm Pilot or Filofax I guess.

The Radford design QC tailstock toolholder is interesting but seems over engineered for its task. If you don't mind spinning the tailstock quill back to eject every tool putting single tool holders on the requisite MT taper looks to be just as effective. Alternatively a face cam flange and operating lever set-up could be a used to pop the Morse taper out without moving the tailstock quill. Flange on the toolholder, lever on a collar clamped to the tailstock looks the most economical way to go but it you needed full tailstock retraction a lever could be fitted to each holder. Probably need roller followers. If a self hiding spnner is acceptable then the lever could be dispensed with and the pop off device worke by a simple rotating square or heaxagonal sleeve.

Clive.