- Joined
- Feb 1, 2015
- Messages
- 9,640
Terry,Not much time to play with the lathe lately. Work, church and assorted other things have been priorities. Did steal a little time this afternoon to do a couple of simple things. I did not care for the 2 chuck key method of removing and installing chucks. I picked up a cheap Harbor Freight screw driver, cut the tip off and ground the end down to fit. Seems much easier to use as the longer length allows the handle to clear the head stock.
Rearranged some of the pegboard to hold the modded screwdriver and few other things.
I received the Belfanti 6 bolt compound kit so I'll hopefully be installing that in the next few days. Seems like a well thought out and complete kit.
I wanted to have the kit installed so I could duplicate the bolt pattern on the plinth block I'm going to make so both would be interchangeable on the cross slide. I've ordered the necessary pieces to make a plinth.
I also took advantage of a 15% off day on Ebay to grab a tail stock DRO.
Beats me why they would put the DRO in a box like this since it'll never be in it again once it's installed.
Beautiful job on the lathe refurbishing. Regarding the Belfonti compound clamp, it was based on the clamp I designed. I hadn't seen any photos of his actual product. It looks great. Very professional. I used hex head cap screws instead of the studs and nuts but otherwise very similar. One addition that I made that he hadn't was to add three additional socket head cap screws to the bottom of the dial plate. The OEM mounting become4s the weak link in the compound and the addition increases the rigidity of the compound significantly.
Another modification was to add six more tapped holes plus ta second pivot hole at the back of the cross slide. It increases the effective travel of the the cross slide from 7" to almost 12" and permits turning from the back side of the lathe. The six unused holes are blocked with set screws and the pivot hole with a cap to prevent swarf from getting on the ways and lead screw.
I had used a tommy bar for chuck removal for several years and noticed that the three holes in the spindle nose were gtting deformed from using the bar. The reason is the leverage is coming working the bottom of the hile against the top of the hole. and the distance is small so the forces are great. I decided to make a hook spanner to do the job. No more fear of chewing up the spindle nose.
If you look through my posts, you will find a number of G0602 modifications/improvements that may be of interest to you. Here are a couple.
https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/improved-g0602-compound-clamp.34796/
https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/just-one-more.67397/