- Joined
- Aug 9, 2011
- Messages
- 67
I tightened and adjusted what I could and took some test cuts. I was surprised how well it worked for light cuts right out of the box. There was lots of room for improvement though but decided to play some more. After a hour of use the cuts started getting chatter marks. Inspection revealed the spindle had developed some play and I couldn't get the taper out of parts, .005" in 2". There were multiple loose and tight spots in everything so the bed and all ways got scrapped and lapped in. This took days. I got the bed way thickness front and back within .0003". The carriage "gibs" were a pain to adjust if not impossible with the saddle on. This will get addressed later. I cleaned up the center slot that the tailstock T-Nut rides in and surfaced the casting underneath on the Bridgeport. This was good to .005" average from end to end with little effort. Called it good enough.
Well this sure doesn't help and I was hopeful this would cure the taper issue. Can't hurt to clean up all this paint. I ordered new bearings that were better designed for lathe applications. The bearings that come with it are not good bearings for this. Why they are installed from the factory is beyond me. I decided not to use taper bearings and go with 7206B-2RS Angular Contact Bearings. You have to make a spacer to use these.
There was big issues with chips getting in the gears. A temp quick fix that worked pretty well was hot glue some foam. I wanted to move on to more important issues. I now have made a lexan cover for the carriage drive gear like LMS one.
The tail stock action was horrendous. It took too much to loosen and tighten. With the center slot width and thickness machined, T-Nuts work real nice with just a quarter turn. Even with this spring added the stock hold down nut had to go. These are the mods I did. The nylon sleeve in the bottom made a huge difference. The hole is just too big and needs a spacer of some kind.
Stock nut is junk even with a spring
Moved on
Spotting, scraping and lapping carriage. After a few hours I got this. I wish I took a picture before. I was scared to go further. as I might loose what little contact I had on the inner V.
Then after another hour or so. This is awesome!
Using existing holes this is my carriage stop. I will move this to the back next time I have the carriage off for the taper gib mod.
The cross slide had issues. The bottom of the slide was rubbing on the carriage.
I lapped it in this way and it worked pretty well but I knew it wasn't right. I bought a 7" shaper a few years back and this was the perfect machine for it. This is the first cut that I made on it! COOL! Even after removing .003" off the carriage it made no change in the movement of the slide. Interesting. At the time of this writing the slide has a one slight tight spot. It is acceptable for now. http://www.gecko-innovations.com/images/shaper.avi
Lapped in the compound. I only had to scrape a small area. I use valve grinding compound for my final lapping.
Not bad! Form tools are rippin. 1.25" hex. My neighbor asked my son if he could make some custom pins for camping tarps that would press into AL tube. Worked out great and gave my 16 yr old great satisfaction to have had made something and even get paid for it.