What a mess, what am I doing wrong?

Thank you all for the advice and comments. I didn’t know Cast iron had those machining properties, and now that I do I never want to see it again. What a terrible experience. Dust and chips everywhere. Such a pain to clean up.

Now I’m worried the dust and chips found their way into the apron and other gears/screws. Ughh.
 
Don't give up on using cast iron. It is a good material for many applications. Learning to machine it is like most any material - every material seems to have some unique issue.

As far as cleaning the machine. Yes, you'll need to do that. Depending on the job, you can cover up parts of the machine to minimize ingress and every once in a while take things apart and clean them. For covering up the ways & carriage, make sure what you use won't catch (use paper or aluminum foil), job dependent.
 
I have one of the Aloris #16 lathe tools, that uses either the TPU or TPG inserts, I’ve never been impressed by the over all performance. I believe the tool is okay, but the overall quality of the available inserts, is the root cause of the poor performance. I’ve tried numerous grades and numerous manufacturers, with, little difference in the end results. I’ve had much better results with CCMT and TNMG inserts.
 
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You can see in at least one picture that I covered the taper attachment with brown paper (held with blue tape). Crap still got in there. And in my hair, and way over on the mill, and in my wife’s shoe closet upstairs and down the block on my neighbor’s truck.
 
First "step outside the box"...

Spin the tool post arround BACKWARDS.

Now get some brazed carbide tools...Just the cheap sticks but the largest that will fit your standard holders...The ones with just the slot.

Place the holder on the tool post side now nearest to you then place it about 1/4 inch or so from the work (face side) and place it to where it can hold the cutter properly and away from work ( towards you) now place the cutter in the holder to where it can be just past work.

Now you have tool in right place to reach.

Use slow everything...low rpm and finest feed that you have as well as small depth of cut

Carbide will work just fine on small cuts and you are pushing limit of machine so smaller cuts are needed.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk
 
100LL said:
Thank you all for the advice and comments. I didn’t know Cast iron had those machining properties, and now that I do I never want to see it again. What a terrible experience. Dust and chips everywhere. Such a pain to clean up.

Now I’m worried the dust and chips found their way into the apron and other gears/screws. Ughh.
Click to expand...


Before you do anything else, use a shop vac to clean up the mess. The last time I machined cast iron, I used the vac while
I was turning the part: just sucked the chips away from the tool. Aluminum foil works well to cover the ways as well.
 
From the pictures...
Slower rpm.
Use other end of that tool for turning OD. You're asking for that tool post to turn and bury the tool into your work, you will not like that.
Move the chip breaker back a little. About 1/8" from cutting edge.
Hold a chip brush on top of insert to minimize chips hitting you. Don't let your lathe eat it. Chips hitting you is part of this business... Safety glasses. chip shield?
One more time, If your tool post turns and tool buries itself into your work you're not going to like that.
 
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Ok I’m trying to get my head around all the advice.

Consensus is:
Slower
Tool orientation
Get depth of cut on first turn

I think one advisor suggests setting up to cut in reverse? I’ve seen someone turn the tool upside down and cut threads in reverse when there’s little/no relief at the thread start. Is the advice to do that here for chip shedding control?

I got chips that were hot and flying, sometimes sparking. A lot were forming more like a powder or dust. One hit my lip and burned. Then when the turning started to squeal I knew I needed to stop and ask.
 
As I said above, slow your RPM's down, way down, use a coarse feed cutting cast iron, not a fine feed. That burns your tool up and creates all of that dust! Not as much. My bad, I should of offered to rought that out for you. Sorry.
 
You can expect tons of black dust from cast iron. That is typical.
R
 
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