Material for Lathe Gears

ycroosh

ycroosh

Active User
H-M Supporter - Commercial Member
Good morning (or other part of the day),
I recently purchased an old Jet 10x24 lathe (made in early '70s) and there are a few gears in the power feed train that I'd like to redo (one has missing teeth and one is deformed).
What material would you recommend for the job? My initial though was to use brass, but I'm not sure if steel would note be better...
I will likely use a "fly cutter" (single point cutter) on my mill, if that matters.

Thank you
Yuriy
 
Most anything in your scrap box will do for gears - especially in the home shop. On the many lathes I've worked on the gears are often made from a very 'soft' material, reminds me of one of the leaded steels, and a few others from cast iron, course then there are the phenolic and brass, etc --- so it really shouldnt matter much. I had to cut a complete change gear set of 10 gears and I had 4 from some grade of cast iron and the rest from scrap yard steel finds ("unknownium:)))
 
I purchased some gears from clausing that appeared to be a cross between aluminum and zinc kind of like that old pot metal that they use to make handles out of that broke when you squeezed them. And maybe the thinking is to break a cheap $2.00 gear than $100 shaft.
:tiphat:
 
As there is not a lot of power transmitted with change gears you should be able to get away with just about anything. This includes plastic, brass or aluminum. I mentor a FRC robotics club and we make all of our spur gears out of aluminum (6061-t6). In this case they do not have to last along time, but the get beat up on pretty baddly (used in the power train and are subjected to rapid changes in directions at full power ( about 1 HP) and we have yet to lose one.
 
I was going to make gears from brass for my craftsman lathe. It was cheaper to buy a complete set of gears than it was to by the rough stock and mill my own. 2 1/2"diameter x 6" long piece of brass =$81.00 crazy!
 
I'm running one aluminum gear in my South Bend to cut metric threads. Works fine against the cast iron gears on the Banjo.


BOB
 
I have an old 9" south bend with a tag on it that says Property of the British Admiralty. It is has a full set of lead change gears. I used that Lathe for all kinds of work in the 80's and 90's and have yet to strip a gear. It appears that the light cuts taken while threading are not stressing the gears very much. Whoever made them did a great job.
 
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