South Bend 9 Compound Condition & "weld up" fixes?

[graham-xrf]

I edited my last reply while you were replying re: cross slide threaded holes.....

BTW: lol, I made a steady from ex-brake rotors - not the best plan

Re: Threaded holes in the cross slide to "bolt things to". I am going to take a look, but my lathes are 1947 for the latest one. I can perhaps drill and thread a couple of holes, instead of making a block with a strange cone shape under.

What was the downside to re-purposing brake disc metal?

 

[martik777]

The rotor was only .210" thick so was not too rigid and I was not able to weld as it was cast iron. Maybe a thicker rotor would work better.

 

[graham-xrf]

The rotor was only .210" thick so was not too rigid and I was not able to weld as it was cast iron. Maybe a thicker rotor would work better.

Hmm - if the discs I have are cast iron, then hopefully I will have got past the "weldability" issue by the time I try them. I think car discs have to be made with a goodly proportion of steel, maybe like wrought iron, because crude cast iron could shatter in a wheel, or get stressed up by wheel nuts. This whole thing is about welding on cast iron semi-steel, and we want that solved..

Welding up a lathe steady, in my mind, is made up of two discs, with the slides for the steadies welded in between. My Merc discs appear to be two discs already, separated by ribs for air cooling. Just one of those type might be stiff enough.

 

[ericc]

Careful! I was on a walk, and I found a broken piece of brake rotor disk in the road. I brought it home for doing some experiments with a welder and gobbed on 6011 with no preheat. It stuck well and hard. It took a lot of hammering to break it. Much later, this emboldened me to try to weld up a follower rest from a Chrysler brake rotor disk. It behaved completely differently. The metal bubbled and burned away like Styrofoam. I tried TIG silicon bronze. Same problem. I ended up having to burn the carbon out with a torch and brass braze it. This held. Moral of the story: brake disks are not made out of the same metal. Welding on these pieces were as different as night and day.