- Joined
- May 15, 2017
- Messages
- 95
First off this is gonna be a bit of a ramble but ultimately this is for newcomers and those who don’t yet have the tools in hand and are yearning to know what to expect or how to understand certain things , In my first month or so of owning a decent hobby lathe (10”x almost 40”) which is right about now, I’ve learned quite a lot From making HSS cutting tools out of old broken taps and actually getting nice finishes to filling the gaps in the powerfeed/thread cutting gear train to finally getting some consistency when parting. The most important thing to understand is it unfortunately takes having the tool and the work in front of you to really conceptualize some of the things your learn by lurking on machining forums ... like no matter how many times I read about the DOC being double the amount on your dials (unless they specifically account for it ) it won’t click until you try to get a specific diameter and you overshoot it by some nonsensical amount and then it clicks and all of the sudden you start to be able get within a few thousandths of your goal !! Another gotta do it in person thing is feeling what speed and feed your machine and work want , sometimes you are turning a piece and the chips aren’t breaking you’re making the same doc that you did on the other piece of mystery metal so maybe you should adjust the spindle rpm and then boom “oh yeah I’m using my nice new carbide insert tooling and I read on the HM forums that speeds and feeds for carbide are higher “ but then maybe that doesn’t really work and now perhaps the finish of your work has cleaned up but that chip !!! It just won’t break , hmm well they do seem a little warm not blue or anything but maybe some coolant or something and BAM all of the sudden the chips are breaking away all nice and neat !!! Feeling what’s going on has got to be one of the most fundamental pieces to machining and I know everyone is going to be like “well duh” but the difference is that newbies may feel the machine but translating what it’s telling you is all experience and it’s all in the moment. Accuracy on the other hand comes from getting your nerves out so far in my experience ... for the first few weeks really I was just enamored with the lathe cutting the metal , it’s beautiful and as long as your not redlining anything it really doesn’t sound too bad either it’s rather quiet as far as the actual cutting goes but in that period of time getting specific numbers was an afterthought in comparison to just hoggin away some more metal !! But once you start to get past that you begin setting out with the goal of making something very specific , in my case I needed to come up for a solution to a missing shaft that would allow me to connect my spindle to my quick change gear box and I Had a random Jacobs chuck that I found in the drawer on my lathe it needed to be screwed onto something and then held in my tail stock ... it had the required thread info on the side of it so away I went learning how to thread with my lathe (now that it was a possibility ) and with all this came dimensions ,and learning to adhere to them .. I’m currently in school to become an engineer however theoretical dims and practical are worlds apart and in order to hold to an accuracy your proud stating on a forum you’ve got to learn the art of “sneaking” which means either jotting your numbers down or keeping them in your head and reminding yourself to stop and measure and then measure again and then measure again and then measure again 
seriously though stop take a breath and remember you probably have to double whatever your dialing in as a depth of cut and you should only be cutting a few thou at a time as you get to within say 20 thou as a beginner ? I’m sure with more experience you can easily close that gap but that’s the point of this ramble ... there’s a whole world of things to learn naturally by experience once you have the tools in hand and if your having trouble finding something to buy just know that your time will come and soon you’ll be cursing your very own lathe or mill or whatever it is you can’t wait to have seriously though I know this was a ramble but I hope there’s someone out there who finds it Entertaining if not helpful.
seriously though stop take a breath and remember you probably have to double whatever your dialing in as a depth of cut and you should only be cutting a few thou at a time as you get to within say 20 thou as a beginner ? I’m sure with more experience you can easily close that gap but that’s the point of this ramble ... there’s a whole world of things to learn naturally by experience once you have the tools in hand and if your having trouble finding something to buy just know that your time will come and soon you’ll be cursing your very own lathe or mill or whatever it is you can’t wait to have seriously though I know this was a ramble but I hope there’s someone out there who finds it Entertaining if not helpful.
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