Little Lathe Improvement.

20160215_105544_resized.jpg View attachment 122211 Started making a carriage stop last night. Only way I can see to do this is going "all the way" to the back side of the ways. This may have some good mounting area for other accessories being it's going all the way from one way to the other way. I used the mill for the first time and am "definitely" going to need a 3-4" spacer, on the table, to be able to get the work high enough to do the milling. I put a 1" piece of iron under the vice and was barely able to get the 60* cut. My Chicom angle vice was off by about 4* and have to cut twice. (You pay less, you get less!)

The post sticking up is where I'll mount the dial gauge. Gotta figure out how I want to make the lock up. Maybe a gib or if someone has an idea for me just chime in! Thanks
 
Last edited:
Used the mill for the first time yesterday and cut my knuckles using the fine feed adjustment. I raked my knuckles on the corner of the belt shield. Today I made an extension of the shaft to clear the corner and also put a different knob cause the original is slippery. When I removed the fine adjustment shaft I added a thin washer to take the wobble out of the shaft. Seems a lot better.

20160214_134152_resized.jpg
 
Finished the carriage stop. Not exactly a work of art but functional. Used what ever materials I had on hand. Not pretty but I'll bet it will work just fine.

20160215_202634_resized.jpg 20160215_202402_resized.jpg
 
Last edited:
Yet another little improvement, for me, on my new Grizzly! I didn't like the flip/flop gib adjustment for the cross slide so I made a cupel of knurled knobs using the screw shaft from them. Maybe one day I'll actually make something with my machine instead of working on it! LoL I guess I like doing it though.

I would like to make a chip shield to keep all the mess on top of the lathe stand as it would make cleaning up a little easier. Maybe even a brass worm gear for the thread counter. That would give me a chance to learn to use my dividing head I bought about three years ago!

20160217_122316_resized.jpg
 
One of the "biggest" irritants for me has been the cross travel of the carriage using the rack. Seems that there was an alignment problem of the carriage gear box pinion gear and the rack. It was putting a tight squeeze and could caused a jerky operation. I discovered two problems. First was the pinion gear was made so poorly with pits and rust. I purchased another but was not much better. I used a triangular file to smooth out each tooth. Second was that I added .009" shims, to the back side of the carriage gear box, because the pinion gear was not riding level with the rack. Things are much, much better now.

20150423_142602_zpsljwulcoq.jpg

20150423_142602_zpsljwulcoq.jpg

20150423_142602_zpsljwulcoq.jpg

20150423_142602_zpsljwulcoq.jpg

20150423_142602_zpsljwulcoq.jpg

20150423_142602_zpsljwulcoq.jpg
 
My latest improvment is the addition of my new 4-way independent chuck. Took me "only" two days to get it done. Had to make a sleeve in order to join the back plate and the chuck. The two center hole dimensions were about .070" difference. My run out at the back of the chuck is .005" depending on how much finger pressure I'm using to spin the chuck. Is .005" acceptable on a 4-jaw chuck? I couldn't put a step on the back plate
cause the thru hole is bigger than the chuck's thru hole.
20160220_164602_resized.jpg
 
My next improvement might be a vacuum attachment to the tool post to suck up the mountains of chaff during the cutting process. "WHAT A MESS!" Gotta find a project to make instead of all the improvements.
 
if it's any consolation, I've been doing this for 3-4 years and the vast majority of my projects have been improvements to my tools :)

for the 4 jaw, there should be a lip on the back side of the chuck. You need to cut the back plate to fit this, although on a 4 jaw it's not that crucial. The only way to check run out would be to chuck a known straight piece of dowel that you can engage with the whole jaw depth, get it to run less than 0.001 at the tip of the jaws and then see what the runout it a few inches away. As long as the back plate registers were machined on the lathe, then you should be able to keep that <0.001 for some distance.
 
I had a bit of a problem with the chuck/back plate mateing. The thru-hole of the back plate is larger than the hole on the chuck so I as unable to make a step on it to fit into the back of the chuck. I had to make a stepped sleeve to mate them before marking and tapping the back plate. My tolerances were good and had to mallet the two together onto the sleeve.
 
Back
Top