Dan Gelbart Posts Video Of His Home Made Precision Lathe

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Shadowdog500

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This is a neat video of Dan Gelbart's home made CNC late/grinder that is accurate to 1 micron.


Mr. gelbart is a tinkerer extraudinaire and made a fortune designing and building printer/optical devices and is called the father of computer to plate technology. He sold his company for 1 billion a while ago and teaches a college prototype design class part time and tinkers now. Check out his other videos which are a series from his prototype design course. The workshop he is filming in is in his basement.

Chris
 
A very cool lathe! But,I think I'd stick with my HLVH. I hope the glued together granite parts are strong enough. Probably are. The man clearly knows what he is doing. But,he doesn't seem to be protecting his lathe from grinding dust for some reason.

What does it mean:"says it all right there?"
 
Pretty slick. Love the tailstock, been toying with the idea of building a capstan tailstock for my 10k.


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george wilson said:
A very cool lathe! But,I think I'd stick with my HLVH. I hope the glued together granite parts are strong enough. Probably are. The man clearly knows what he is doing. But,he doesn't seem to be protecting his lathe from grinding dust for some reason.

What does it mean:"says it all right there?"
Click to expand...

The granite will break before the glue joint fails along the sheer joint. The White Knight and Spaceship II are held together with epoxy, that little lathe won't stress the glue joint in the least bit. My guess is that the compression bolts are to take up the stress that the air bearings apply rather than any stress from actual machining.

With air bearings, there should be no need to protect anything since there is no contact between bearing surfaces, and the positive air flow will prevent debris from getting into the bearing areas. I am sure he checks everything occasionally, but it would take years of use before there was any wear.

"says it all right there" is just a comment on what you can do in a "basement" workshop given enough ingenuity. I will hazard that he spent less building that lathe than he would have on a new precision tool room lathe and has he the accuracy of a laboratory grade lathe.
 
george wilson said:
A very cool lathe! But,I think I'd stick with my HLVH. I hope the glued together granite parts are strong enough. Probably are. The man clearly knows what he is doing. But,he doesn't seem to be protecting his lathe from grinding dust for some reason.

What does it mean:"says it all right there?"
Click to expand...

He has an entire career designing and building extreme cutting edge precision devices for the optical/printing world, and has over 100 patents on building small precision stuff. To do this he had to build his own cutting edge precision tools required to do the job. I'd bet dollars to donuts that he thought through of all of these concerns before designing and building that lathe.

Chris
 
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I knew he had at least one other lathe in his shop so I looked through his mill and lathe video. He also has a store bought Weiler CNC lathe in his basement.

35f801f5d84a225a0e48172d5e08e988_zps4bf97c3d.jpg
 
Some basements are different than others. Cubic money and smarts can do that. I was fascinated with that video. I switched to viewing it on u-Tube so I could subscribe. After his video was over several other completely fascinating videos presented, including a presentation of linear motors for industry and some old British videos about magnets from the 70s.. I highly recommend watching what comes up after.

Thanks for that, Shadowdog!!!
 
Amazing content- thanks for sharing!
 
Franco: "Some basements are different than others. Cubic money and smarts can do that."

Yes indeed.

Brian
 
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