New PM-1228VF-LB

StormForge said:
The stop does fit (it's just loose in the pic). It's pretty narrow in profile, however, and it also stops the carriage by impacting the wiper... It could certainly be significantly improved. I like the pictures I see above!
Click to expand...

Maybe you can just drill and tap for a screw with a very flat head or just thread on a nylon cap like mine. This is just to prevent marring or damaging the carriage.
 
Spent the morning today doing some threading and boring just for practice and fun.

I made a little storage jar from 6061. It's very far from perfect, but I'm stupidly pleased with it. The old Starrett was my grandfather's and is just standing in for visual interest:

Closed.jpg
Open.jpg


The threading setup seems to work well and can do most of the common threads with no gear changes (and I only missed a line on the threading dial once Flustered ).

The finish in 6061 is fantastic on slow power feed -- I wasn't really even trying and it looks great.

The thread/feed drive gears have a simple rocker-arm which allows you to loosen a SHCS and rotate either a forward or reverse threading/feed gear into place (the spindle itself has 1-button direction change). These gears work well but require a little finesse to get them to mesh quietly and smoothly -- snug the gears up and then back off just a little before you tighten the SHCS.
 
Add an O ring groove, and it's water proof. Looks pretty spiffy....
 
Yeah -- I was actually digging around in my bins for the right size O-ring but didn't see one... :)
 
StormForge said:
These gears work well but require a little finesse to get them to mesh quietly and smoothly -- snug the gears up and then back off just a little before you tighten the SHCS.
Click to expand...
Putting a strip of ordinary paper between the teeth of both gears and then firmly pushing the two gears together is simple, easy, and gives good, quick, and consistent results. Rotate the gears to remove the paper...
 
I spent some more time tweaking things. The measurement dials on the cross-slide and the tailstock were very stiff. I pulled everything apart and lightly honed all the dial surfaces and things move smoothly now.

I tried out the PM 4-jaw chuck which I bought with the lathe and it seems very nice. It's a D1-4 and seemed to fit well except that I had to unscrew the cam-locks so far from the back that the cap-screws which are supposed to prevent the cams from rotating are below the cams and don't do anything... Also, one of the cams seems to be either too tight (fully tight at the 3:00 position) or, when unscrewed one more turn, too loose (can be rotated past the 6:00 position). Any tricks with these?

I also spent some time cleaning up and sorting out my tooling. Shars had a well-timed sale on AXA tool holders which was nice!

Tooling.jpg
 
Do you have any thoughts on leveling feet/castors for the stand. Seems you did pretty good on alignment.
 
Hey Aukai -- I was pretty lucky and the section of floor where I put the lathe is both surprisingly level and flat. The stands are stiff enough that I was able to get everything level and solid by just adding a few shims and wedges under various corners. I think a much better approach would have been to add some proper feet. There are nice mounting points in all 4 corners of each stand that you can see in one of my pictures above. Maybe eight little adjustable leveling feet? McMaster has a huge selection:

https://www.mcmaster.com/#levels/=19s16m6
 
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