Getting Started With A Lathe

what do you have to machine? cut it! its all for an education. what you like to cut and don't like to cut will be your first education. alum and plastic is too easy and expensive. grab what you have and chuck it up and take a cut see what happens blue chips with hss slow down. its hard to get a good finish with some mild steels 12l14 l stands for leaded. added to the steel to ease in machining and get a better finish for production. unless you order a specific material you probably wont know exactly what you are cutting. practice with what you have. learn by this. experiment go faster, slower more feed less feed deeper cuts or less deep. find out what your lathe likes and what it doesn't. bill
 
Yes yoose' were right the 1st time Mikey (agree to disagree!) Smiley Face here!...4 Monarch EE's, 3 Hardinge HLVS, 1 Rivett...+ various "garage" lathes (Southbend, Logan, Lablond, Clausing, + a Logan and a Craftsman (Atlas) actually at home garage lathes...35 yrs of machining jobs and making tooling for everything from Amana microwave parts to IBM, HP, and TI chip tooling Western Electric and GE parts to Delco auto. parts to Peerless and Price Phister faucet valve parts to Space Shuttle parts to Patriot Missle parts, to armour producing tooling for the bottom of Military Humvies and Helicopters to shirt button tooling (Arrow) to Fishing pole tooling to "have you had a soft drink from McD's, Burger King or 7-11 etc. parts" (syrup and water pistons and sleeves) to kidney machines to blood machines (Cobe lab)...to good old endline tooling (beer can pop tops) and on and on.....I ("we") used, almost exclusivly all sorts of various grades of carbide toolbits on everything from leadloy to crs to prehard to air hardening to oil hardening, to copper and elconite to brass...on and on...same principles on/as/of edge sharpness, toughness, wear etc. and why tooling made with carbide produces up to 1 million + parts (my record on 1 Texas Instrument Toolset before it was trash LOL (170 hrs to build , fits in a shoebox) compared to the same toolset out of hard tool steel faces (30,000 parts then trash plus it starts wearing more immediatly)...
FYI the binders in carbides (which is pressed) go from between a mix of 6% cobalt (harder than the hubs of hell, brittle, imeasurable except with metalurgy, will destroy a diamond point and won't even make a mark with a hardness tester) (% of cobalt, more or less, is the indicating factor in the hardness of carbides) to 24% that is soft down to around rc64, almost like HSS and the best toolsteels but will "micro" contaminate everything it cuts and rubs against...There's, let me guestimate, over a 2 dozen grades (choices) of carbides (isostaticly pressed or not) for different applications.
Carbide baby! "Can't touch this" (Well, only diamond and electricity through "fancy copper" and wire will touch it right)...Another Smiley face here!
(Uh oh, is this a friendly......ing contest over cutter material? (Yoose' know there's also newer TTZ Ceramic cutter material and braze on diamond too?!!)...
But OK and all, I'm done with this "thread" now (Hey, I heard that!)
 
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Great, Chris. We ALL know carbide works in industrial applications with big, rigid, high horsepower lathes but that is not what we have here. We have a new guy with a really light lathe running at mortal speeds trying to make his first cuts. So, let me ask you. Which carbide tool or tools will outperform a well-ground HSS tool on a Craftsman 109?
 
There are times when carbide makes sense, even on a small lathe. I haven't run into that very often because I get to choose what I machine but sure, it can happen. In that case, I have a lot of carbide tooling for my lathes in my drawer.

To all, I apologize if it seems that I am being obstinate about this. That is not my intention. This is not about being right, nor is it about whether HSS or carbide is better for cutting metal. It IS about the lathe on which the tooling will be used.

We are dealing with a lathe that you can pick up with one or two hands and put it on a shelf, with a motor that runs at low speeds and that is flexible enough to literally move when it encounters higher cutting forces. Our OP is also a new guy who is trying to take his first cuts on his new machine.

I've been him and used a lathe even smaller than his. I've done numerous tooling trials with both HSS and the carbide turning tools I have so my advice isn't just pulled out of the air or off the internet. I am convinced that in this case a HSS tool will offer him a greater chance of success with his new lathe.
 
So to follow up I have been making some cuts with aluminum I had and I ordered some 12L14. The passes are light with minimal removal and manual feed (not engaging the lead screw), but its looking good so far. I have been using hss bits and have a few that I believe are ground well that needed some touching up. I need to tighten/adjust the carriage on this as there is more movement in it when cutting than I believe should be. Im getting the 12L14 really to practice with the bit grinding, using same material to see the differences angles, setttings, speeds, etc. will make. All I have is the 4 jaw chuck so that takes a bit of time to get that indicated properly when chucking a piece. Thanks again for all your help.
 
I have been using carbide, because I have not taken the time to apply myself.
I used to be Brett good sat grinding tool steel, but have forgotten most of it.
I am running a plain apron Logan with the wiper motor leadscrew drive conversion.

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Cleopatra sorry, disregard not able to delete

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mikey said:
Great, Chris. We ALL know carbide works in industrial applications with big, rigid, high horsepower lathes but that is not what we have here. We have a new guy with a really light lathe running at mortal speeds trying to make his first cuts. So, let me ask you. Which carbide tool or tools will outperform a well-ground HSS tool on a Craftsman 109?
Click to expand...

I have only used well ground HSS tools on my 109. Well, I did quickly try one simple carbon steel tool, and I have two more in line. They were free, and I know how to back down on the speed. They are tricky to use, since if they get a tiny bit dull, they will immediately overheat and break down the edge. Then all kinds of bad things can happen, like they can even dive in and snap the tool off. You have to watch them like a hawk.

As for carbide, the only time I use it on the 109 is for parting. It works MUCH better than HSS. I am not really sure why, but there are a lot of reasons that people post on the Internet. My guess is that they have a better grind. I use one of those often-posted junk circular saw blade homemade tools. This little thing outperforms a generic wedge type HSS tool on a 14X40 lathe. For just about anything else, I would agree with you, Mikey.
 
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