Gidday All

Hey all,

Im a complete beginner from Australia who out of shear luck and fortune managed to find a Optimum TU-1503v Bench Lathe on a rubbish pile at a Skip Bin yard behind my place of work. So long story short needed a new square nut for the tool holder and still need to get/make a dead center for it as well.

Had a try at making a dead center for the machine today, didn't do too badly, although a little thinner (1mm) than needing to be, but will try again with some better steel instead of turning a Galv bolt to size. I learnt a valuable thing and that is that I will need to purchase some better tools as the cheap 11x piece set I have is not the best to work with. But hard to find 8mmx8mm shaft tools in Australia though.

I have always wanted a lathe as I do leather work, and want to make my own tools etc. And maybe once I have a little more skill make a mini steam engine or parts / extras for my little one I already have.

I have no other tools equipment and not a lot of money to buy them either, so my question is.... what would be the bare minimum workshop tools to look at getting. I already have a bench vice and drill press on the list of things to get.

Thanks.

Welcome!

If you want dead centres, try to find some old Mores Taperr drills, that bhave been discarded because of being, redundant, too short or wrong size.

The important thing is that the Mores Taper is not damaged. (This is your location! )

You hacksaw off the flutes.

Then mount in the Mandrel.

Set the Topslide over to 30 degrees.

With a sharp tool, set to centre height, start taking small cuts. As you take more cuts the taper will begine to take shape.

How do you know when the tool is set on centre height? If, when you face across the end of a bar in the chuck, there is a "pip" in the middle the tool is NOT on centre height, nor will it cut properly.

When you have finally produced a sharp point; you have your first dead centre.

Repeat and you have one for the Headstock and the Tailstock

If the Tailstock barrel is a smaller Morse Taper, (Say 2 MT where the Headstock is 3 MT) you need to find a drill with that taper, and buy a 3 - 2 MT sleeve., so that it can be machined in the Headstock.,

You might, eventually, find a need for a third!

Remembering your budget constraints, I would advise some purchases.

1 ) A set of Zeus Charts.

2 ) Ian Bradley's book, "The Amateur's Workshop" This will provide a lot of information, including how to set up your lathe.

3 ) Use High Speed Steel tooling. Cheaper than carbide tips, and can be sharpened at home. One toolbit will cost about the same as one Carbide tip, but can be used many more times. Grnding tools, will teach you a lot.

So now, I'm advocating buying a Bench Grinder, A 6 " will do, and last for years..

These things are capital investments (Except the HSS toolbits. They will eventually wear out. If you want to support home industries, get a Diamond turning tool from Eccentric Engineering. Costly, but GOOD )

You will need some measuring equipment. A 6" / 150 mm Digital calliper can be bought from a discount store for about £10, so possibly Au$ 15? This will allow you to measure outside and inside diameters and depths, upto 150 mm, and can convert from Metric to Imperial at the touch of a button.

As you gain experience, and confidence, you can expand / improve your equipment, as the budget allows.

Some kit may seem expensive, but it is worth buying good equipment. Buy cheap, buy twice tends to be true.

But you are not looking for Industrial quality and precision- they COST.

You will not be working to micron limits. Neither your equipment, nor your experience, will allow that.

If eventually you can work to make things that fit, within 0.025 mm ().001" ) be satisfied.

You can save money by making some of your own tools. A Centre Height Gauge, a Mandrel Handle, Tailstock Die holders, as instances.

Better to make mistakes on a bit of steel bar than on an expensive casting from a kit!

Taps and Dies will soon figure on your "Wants" list

Buy the ones that you will use most often.

You can spend a lot of money on different types (Whitworth, BSF, BSP, UNC, UNF, BA, Metric, to name some ) so only buy the ones that you are going to use most frequently.

Ditto for drills. If you are going to work in Metric, you may never find a need for Number or Letter drills..

Eventually, you will want a 4 jaw independent chuck, to hold square or irregularly shaped objects, or when you deliberately want to drill /bore something off centre.

This will let you in for Dial Test Indicators (You will find a use for .both Plunger and Finger types. Finger tend to be smaller range, and smaller divisions than Plunger. ) and a Magnetic Base to carry the DTI.

You can use a finger clock internal or mexternal, but a plunger cannot do intrnal, without a fairly rare attachment.

Finger clocks are often 0.0005" per graduation, where Plunger types are often 0.001", (or the Metric equivalents ) but have longer travel.

So horses for courses!

HTH

Howard

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Buy that lot at once will cost you a pretty penny, anyway welcome to the forum.

You will need a grinder to sharpen your tools

Start with hss, cheaper, until you get to the stage where you find you are sharpening too much and want more cutting time

Then move up to carbide, cheap 8mm are fine, use a green grinding wheel

I have a medium grey wheel for hss and a green wheel on the other end for carbide

Practice making your own dead centres, polish with metal sandpaper(aluminium oxide)

Get some books, spareys the amateurs lathe is good

welcome to the nuthouse

GL

And be careful, newby users make mistakes until they get into good habits

wear glasses, even cheap 5 dollar glasses will be better than nothing, and be prepared for a lot of finger/hand splinters in your early days

Edited By Ady1 on 10/06/2021 19:47:11

Thanks Howard that's the info I was after for sure, you did have me lost on a few terms and terminology in that though, had to use professor google for a few references lol. I have a good set of calipers already, didn't think of the bench grinder though, They are not expensive to pick up, and can use it for work stuff as well.

I was given a Zeus Chart (had to look up what that was as well lol) when I purchased the tool set by Hares & Forbes. Awesome service at that shop, Sales rep went out of his way to give me some advice and the chart etc.

The machine is a MT1 in the tail stock, the dead center that comes with it is only 45mm long total. I have asked a couple of shops that sell the machine if they can get one separately, but looks like they cant unfortunately.

I will for sure look into HSS tools etc. Anything has to be better than the set I am using. This is the set I am using if this site allows links: https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/L0085

Learning that Lathe equipment isn't cheap lol, I have been searching when my partner is not around so she wont see the price of tools etc lol.

Yeah can understand that one for sure. Just had my brother-inlaw cop a piece of metal in his eye that had to be surgically removed. And he wasn't even using the tools, it was just an unlucky accident where he walked past one of his employees while they were grinding and it shop up and got him.

Got some splitters and little burns in my fingers and hands yesterday. I have also learnt that wearing sandals isn't a great idea either, was picking splitters out of my feet for hours after lol.

My first attempt at at Dead Center. Didn't get a MT on it, but was more trying for the basic shape, and getting used to the tools first. As you can see... it's not that great, but has a shape to it atleast

The groove at the bottom of the shank is where the headstock hit the jaw, and twisted the tool a bit out of the holder causing it to dig in. (Whoops) learnt not to do that again, and to set up the limits on the head stock a bit better

Edited By Damien Fisher 1 on 10/06/2021 23:48:58

Don't make the belt tight to start with, it will slip when you make a big mistake or have a dig in and this teaches you to keep your tools sharp and your feed steady

Once you get better at it you can go for more power, you will know when you are ready to up your game and maximise the potential of your machine

I have no idea as to the availability and price of tools etc. in Oz but if they are just about similar to those in the UK, and I understand Oz and China trade extensively with each other, then I would have thought for the price of about a fiver it is hardly worth the bother of trying to make a 1MT dead centre which needs to be hardened in any event. Only the head-stock centre can be left soft. There are a lot of sino-phobes in the UK but I have never had any issue with what you get for your money and the quality of Chinese tooling has improved greatly over the last twenty years. In fact it seems to me that it is only the brand that differs. I strongly suspect that these days even the so-called quality marques are only constituted of Chinese components and re-badged accordingly, although I have no way of being certain.

It's quite expensive for tools here in Oz. Its getting harder to get anything from China here with all the Covid Politics happening currently between Australia and China, Even the price of Chinese stuff has risen because of it in my opinion. Would a standard MT1 dead Center fit in though? this machine having a shortened tailstock?

This is the only picture I could find of the original dead center that comes with the machine:

Hi Damien, Welcome to the forum.

I live in Sydney and as you have said, tooling supplies are harder to find here than in GB. Ausee Machine Tools in Melbourne and Hare and Forbes (Hafco) in Sydney are the main suppliers. There are also importers that sell tooling from China. Do a search on ebay and click on Australia location. Aldi often sell digital calipers, which is what I use for most of my measuring. (they do fail after time but are cheap and come with 12 months waranty). The internet is a great source of learning and DIY tooling. Do a search on Google and Youtube.

Paul.

Hey Paul. I went to Hare & Forbes, awesome service from them and they are only up the road from where I work. I have a good set of calipers already, but will for sure look at Aussie Machine Tools for other tools as well. Been watching a lot of youtube, not much on mini bench lathes for beginners, but a lot on bigger machines which I would assume all work in the same or similar way.

I dont know that machine but if they have shortened the thick end then a standard one will stick out too far.

If they have shortened the thin end then the chances are that the bore wont have enough room for it to fit in.

From your pic the I cant quite work out if the thick end is the standard size (should be a little over 12mm) but it is close so likely the thin end is shorter.

It might be possible to cut the thin end off a centre but if it is hardened (which it probably is) then you will need to use a thin grinding wheel (with appropriate precautions).

Do you have a tailstock chuck that fits the lathe?