Something special coming in issue 253 of MEW

As an experiment, MEW 253 will include an 8-page pull-out plan for a Tailstock Turret to suit lathes of roughly 3" to 5" centre height. The plan will be accompanied by a detailed and illustrated build article.

This will be an up to date take on the sort of plans included in our earliest issues, but the design is a new and unpublished one.

Obviously 8 pages of plan plus several pages of text is a lot to dedicate to one subject in a single issue, so I have chosen a well thought out, practical and attractive design that I hope will be of interest to most readers.

This is an experiment, I will be waiting for reader feedback before looking at repeating the exercise, but I hope you will like it!

Neil

Neil Wyatt:

I look forward to this as I think an effective TT is a very useful addition to an amateur lathe.

One problem in practice is the tools fouling the toolpost particularly if a rear toolpost is fitted. For this reason, the late J A Radford preferred QC tailstock tooling, publishing his design in ME and his book "Improvements & Accessories for your Lathe". I have built this and use it very satisfactorily on my Super 7.

My larger lathe has a conventional TT, again very useful but fouling is a problem and I have often wished that the QC tailstock tooling once offered by Arrand were still available. I guess that the Arrand tools were based on a short steep taper with some means of retention/release. Can anyone add to this?

An 8 page pull out, this is probably a daft question but here goes anyway:

Will it work properly for us digital only subscribers?

whens it out?

and would it work on clarke 430 with 6" centre height?

Edited By naughtyboy on 06/03/2017 11:33:30

V8Eng makes a good point, the Metro pull out plans that were in ME at the end of last year did not work well in digital.

Maybe Neil could add them as a pdf in the "subscribers only" section to make it easier to view and save on the sticky tape when trying to piece them together

Just what I was thinking, but with an additional though: I wonder if it could be adapted for a toolpost, and if so, maybe into a cnc tool changer. All-in-all it makes it sound very interesting.

Regards,

Richard.

A good idea, Jason.

Neil

Yes, It will work on any lathe big enough, but obviously you may not be able to use really large tooling with it. It is shown with an MT2 shank to suite mini lathe, Myford and most popular hobby lathes, but advice on fitting an MT3 shank is included.

Neil

Probably not too practical, but I expect MEW to be carrying an article (not with full plans, but lots of practical information and photos) on a shop-built cnc tool changer for a milling machine some time in the not-too-distant future.

Neil

I'm doing a cnc lathe conversion (in very slow time at the moment!) and a tool turret is both an interesting possibility and something I have seen on some of the smaller commercial machines. I look forward to the ideas if nothing else, as it's always the basic idea that's the hardest bit to come up with.

Regards,

Richard.

Sounds like a great idea. I look forward to seeing it. Sounds more like the type of stuff mags published more of decades ago. It seems ironic that as drawing has gotten supposedly easier with CAD etc, authors seem to submit fewer articles with comprehensive drawings of tooling. Maybe because digital photography has made pics so much easier than drawing? Looking back at old ME and even MEWs, the hours put into pen/pencil drawings must have almost rivalled the time put into building the original project, but photos were mostly pretty basic, or sometimes non-existent.

Will the upcoming turret drawings be metric or imperial?

The drawings will be fully metric.

I've come to the realisation that I work wood in metric and metal in imperial...

Neil

I am really looking forward to this, especially as the plans are in metric

Neil, I am the opposite way round, I work wood in imperial and metal in metric lol

Allan

Me too. I've come to the illogical conclusion that it's because +/- 1thou is fine for what I mostly do in metal and +/- 1mm is adequate for woodwork.

Cheers,

Rod

Is this turret made of wood Neil?

Mike

It's not my design :-0

Neil

Looking forward to seeing this, sounds verrrrrry interesting.

George.

You need one of these.

But then again you might not be able to afford one.

John,

Think you're right. I do need one. Less a matter of being able to afford one than 'How to create one on a budget of next to nothing (or preferably, absolutely nothing)?'. I do have about 150kg of LM4 lying around and a small furnace, so that's part of the raw material problem sorted. The rest is probably available as re-workable scrap at home. A small stepper motor is hard to blag for free, but they aren't too expensive.

Regards,

Richard