Simple project. Just wanted to protect the ways when removing the chuck. Did not have something dedicated for this lathe. As you can tell, I just used whatever was around to make it...
The last few days, my “shop” has been in the kitchen laying a marble backsplash. Into the home stretch now:
(still have to lay 3 more rows below the range top line)
Tomorrow, I have to lay the mosaic inside the pencil rail “picture frame” behind the stove area. Looks like:
Then I get a couple days off for it to cure, then seal the marble and finally grout.
It’s been a major PITA. The pencil rail has been the worst to get it to fit right, I’ve had to cut and hand file every cut to get it to fit tight to minimize the visible seams, but it will all be worth it once its done and the missus is smiling….
Today I completed a little paying gig for UHMW tank bushings. These bushings are secured to steel brackets in the bottom of a tank, via cotter pins, and a paddle shaft rides in the large hole. They are in a very high volume and abrasive environment, so these bushings don't last long. UHMW is fun to work with, the stock was 2 1/4" square and the part needs to be 2 1/8" so I used the four jaw on the lathe and removed 1/8" in a single pass.
The large hole was done on the mill with a forstner bit. Thanks for looking.
Just have to cut some pieces to fill in the edges.
Then I’m not going to look at it for a couple days, maybe a week. I need a break from all this cutting and motar-ing.
Also tired of being wet every day.
Marble is a biotch to deal with, most especially with the smaller pieces. It chips out and just generally does wonky things when cutting small pieces. I’ll probably end up cutting a bit large on the wet saw and then sneak up on final dimensions with the belt sander table. Can’t see many other ways to cut so small and not have it crumble away on me…
Today was a dirty day in the big garage. One rule i don't use is if a tool seats for more than 3 years you don't need it, but in this case i have one more trailer and i need the tubing to make shelving. It started difficult, this trailer was upright in front of the big table, getting it down it pulled out the anker from the concrete and fell down, i'm experience not to stand under it. No harm it did dented and tore up my tool cart and made a very loud bang, even my neighbors came to check if i'm still alive. Cutting it apart was difficult because when i made it i made it from an old fence with and arc welder and all the welds are deap. I did cut thru all the welds and separated all the tubing and sheets metal. I did leave the sides and one piece from the floor together because i plan to use them as is. I had a cutting disc brake on me at the collet, thankful i had safety glasses and only got a bruise.
Worked some more on my ELS. Got RH and LH threading buttons added. Shot a 1 minute video on the lathe operating and published it to YouTube. Never done something like that before. This video is devoid of any artistic quality, and the audio is simply the noise of the machine, but it showed the lathe moving with the half nuts engaged, and the control panel used to operate. 3.2" 320 x 240 touch panel display powered by a Teensy 4.1 micro-controller. 4 Nm closed loop stepper and a 4096 PPR rotary encoder. I have incorporated my lathes factory DRO's into the controller. There is no separate DRO box any more. Just the tape, the read heads and my PCB.
My very first foray into YouTube. My video skills can only get better...
Lathe was only running at 100 RPM and the thread pitch was set to 100 TPI. That way there was lots of time to kill power before things got away from me. Fortunately all went well in the video. I could not believe how petrified I was while shooting this. It was really hard trying to keep the shakes away.
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