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Watchmaker's Lathe vs Vintage Hobby-lathe for making spinning tops
- Thread starter blueice
- Start date
You get what you pay for. Limiting yourself to a price tag and expecting precision don't jive together. You want precision, you need to pay for it.
I have a Taig, very similar to Sherline, in many aspects, but not as precise. If you want to put a little money into it, it can be made so.
Given your parameters, I would also recommend a Sherline. Maybe a second-hand one. Try FB marketplace or eBay. It is a metal cutting lathe that is very precise out of the box.
A Taig might also work for you, just take it with a grain of salt on precision. I can guarantee you can't cut tungsten without chatter on it.
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I have a Taig, very similar to Sherline, in many aspects, but not as precise. If you want to put a little money into it, it can be made so.
Given your parameters, I would also recommend a Sherline. Maybe a second-hand one. Try FB marketplace or eBay. It is a metal cutting lathe that is very precise out of the box.
A Taig might also work for you, just take it with a grain of salt on precision. I can guarantee you can't cut tungsten without chatter on it.
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Never tried a Sherline so I have no comparison basis. However, my Taigs (I have 2) are capable of excellent precision. They may be within your budget. However, I can't comment on the tungsten requirement. Here's a link. https://taigtools.com/
By the way, they may be also referred to as "Peatol" in the UK.
Wow! They have really changed. They have done some upgrades to better compete with Sherline. I got mine 20 years ago, and it was like this:
g237) Taig Mini Metal Lathe 4 Turning Cutting Drilling Threading W/Accessories | eBay
Great Lathe W/Custom "Cabinet" W/Robbins & Myers Motor. & Lots Of Accessories No Belt Large & Heavy. ============================================================.
www.ebay.com
No lead screw. It's just a track that loses teeth. Great learning machine. I think I paid $300 for the base model and a few hundred on accessories back then.
@blueice IMHO You would have to get pretty lucky to find a used prescion machine with everything needed to make a spinning top in your price range. Once upon a time, there was a Taig Australian site. Try some classified ads (online for the Land of Oz). You could get lucky.
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That is acceptable, as long as it has the rigidity to cut tungsten at all. I will sand my way to the final fit.
I looked at their website and they might be just what I was looking for. Selling barebones kits with headstock, a non-aluminium bed and a decent crossslide w/toolpost for a very reasonable price. I have a motor already and can manage without a tailstock so it all works out. No they don't have tapered bearings but otherwise it is exactly what I need and nothing more. Now let's see if they will ship for less than the entire product cost.
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I’m predicting that mounting a lathe chuck to a grinder motor spinning 3600 rpm is not going to be a successful endeavor.
I think you’re best best noted is the unimat, and the acceptance of brass as your stick material. But I’ll be watching to see how it goes. Good luck!
I think you’re best best noted is the unimat, and the acceptance of brass as your stick material. But I’ll be watching to see how it goes. Good luck!
Why do you think so? Too much spindle play and not enough low rpm torque?
I'll be using brass for most of my prototyping; tungsten is quite expensive. You think the unimat is better than the taig/sherline others here have mentioned?
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Ordinary lathe chucks are not rated for 3600 RPM, they may fly apart. Small one's might be rated higher, however, but I'd check with the manufacturer.
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Firstly I don’t think there’s a chuck that’ll mount to a grinder shaft. But yeah, 3600 rpm seems awfully fast. I do most of my turning at less than half that. Few lathes spin that fast. I think the maximum rpm I can achieve is 2800 rpm. With a 4 pound chuck spinning at 3600 rpm, things are going to be pretty exciting. Any imbalance is going to be amplified. And yes again, I don’t know what sort of torque you’ll get out of a grinder.
I can’t say the Unimat is “better”, but it was what I thought you originally were leaning towards. The new Sherlines are pretty expensive by comparison to a vintage Unimat. And I can’t deny a personal preference. If I could find a Unimat cheaply, I’d probably pick one up.
Remember that everything deflects under load, and loads include tool pressure. The machine needs to be stiffer than the part it is making by a healthy margin to (mostly) limit that deflection to the part.
Probably the only lathe I can think of that specifically fulfills all your requirements is a Monarch 10EE. Bring your checkbook.
The traditional watchmaker lathe has a 2” swing and is made for lightweight workpieces, even if you fit the accessories needed. They are designed to go fairly fast and not to push tools through really hard materials at 5-cm diameters. I can machine (semi-hard) blued steel in my Peerless watchmaker lathe using carbide gravers, but only up to diameters of about 5mm. (And good luck finding collets bigger that about an eighth inch for the 8mm WW spindles on most watchmaker lathes).
For a fairly massive chunk of hard material like a spinning top (especially before machining), I’d probably want a lathe with at least a five or six-inch swing that weighed hundreds of pounds.
I think the Sherline will be too light. And Unimats are made of pot metal and are not designed for machining hard materials at large diameters.
Hardinge made some precision turret lathes. Search on YouTube for “Steve Watkins at Work”—he uses one that he named “Bob” because people kept complaining about how he pronounced Hardinge.
And I would spend a lot of time watching Stefan Gotteswinter’s ouvre of YouTube videos. He works at the kind of precision and size envelope you describe, and did so with an import lathe in his earlier videos.
Finally, I think you’ll find it difficult to hold your tolerances with a scroll chuck, unless you use a tru-set type and dial it in for every setup. (And those are heavy.) Four-jaw chucks can be dialed in, but it’s a slow process that has to be done for every setup. You may want to make arbors to hold the workpiece precisely that can be mounted in a collet.
Working at high precision takes commitment!
Rick “thinking even a light cut on steel at 2” diameter would stop his Peerless instantly” Denney
Probably the only lathe I can think of that specifically fulfills all your requirements is a Monarch 10EE. Bring your checkbook.
The traditional watchmaker lathe has a 2” swing and is made for lightweight workpieces, even if you fit the accessories needed. They are designed to go fairly fast and not to push tools through really hard materials at 5-cm diameters. I can machine (semi-hard) blued steel in my Peerless watchmaker lathe using carbide gravers, but only up to diameters of about 5mm. (And good luck finding collets bigger that about an eighth inch for the 8mm WW spindles on most watchmaker lathes).
For a fairly massive chunk of hard material like a spinning top (especially before machining), I’d probably want a lathe with at least a five or six-inch swing that weighed hundreds of pounds.
I think the Sherline will be too light. And Unimats are made of pot metal and are not designed for machining hard materials at large diameters.
Hardinge made some precision turret lathes. Search on YouTube for “Steve Watkins at Work”—he uses one that he named “Bob” because people kept complaining about how he pronounced Hardinge.
And I would spend a lot of time watching Stefan Gotteswinter’s ouvre of YouTube videos. He works at the kind of precision and size envelope you describe, and did so with an import lathe in his earlier videos.
Finally, I think you’ll find it difficult to hold your tolerances with a scroll chuck, unless you use a tru-set type and dial it in for every setup. (And those are heavy.) Four-jaw chucks can be dialed in, but it’s a slow process that has to be done for every setup. You may want to make arbors to hold the workpiece precisely that can be mounted in a collet.
Working at high precision takes commitment!
Rick “thinking even a light cut on steel at 2” diameter would stop his Peerless instantly” Denney
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