Gallery, Projects and General > Project Logs
Re-Pimping the 7x12 minlathe.
(1/11) > >>
RotarySMP:
I got a mini-lathe from Artec (a German brand), about 10-15 years ago. It is the generic lathe made by SIEG,  but branded and sold by every man and his dog. it was the only machine tool I had as we had an inner city apartment, and the lathe in the corner of the balcony was the machine shop.
http://wrathall.com/Interests/machining/My_shed.htm
 I did a lot of modding on it. Starting with the typical little stuff like swarf guard on the apron gears, and adding a carriage lock.
http://wrathall.com/Interests/machining/Carriage_lock.htm

Then on to some more extensive mods like the T-Slotted cross slide, which was very handy.
http://wrathall.com/Interests/machining/Carriage_lock.htm

It was quite quickly converted it to TurboCNC, which worked quite well. The canned cycles were really quite handy.

Since moving into a house with a basement machine shop, the 7x Minilathe has just lurked in the corner, except for being abused into turning wood on a couple of occasions. 

I was never that happy with some of the harlf-arsed mods I did, and also got interested in doing a scraping project, so figured the little mini-lathe would be the perfect practice piece as it is nice and small and shouldnt take for ever.

Here is the first installment of the video log of re-modding it...

Mark
RotarySMP:
I have made a fair bit of progress on the Minilathe.

Episode 2 - Still scraping
&t=1s

Episode 3 - Finishing the bed


Episode 4 -
&feature=youtu.be

Mark
Joules:
Great series of videos, I particularly like the 3D printed lathe dog, look forward to seeing how that works out for you.
RotarySMP:
Thanks Joules. My first thoughts were machining a steel lathe dog on the MAHO, but the 3D printer provides a way faster solution, for a one off problem.  On another forum someone was wondering whether that Lap would work 3D printed as well.
Mark
Joules:
Mmmm, many times I have used wooden internal laps, not sure I would trust the printed plastic direct, especially if it warmed up a bit.  I have small bending rolls and would consider rolling a thin wall tube for cutting up, then epoxy the pieces to a 3D printed lap carrier.  Get the best of both worlds, must give it a try.   I recently started laser cutting fine emory paper and adding that to 3D printed profiles for polishing.

Regardless of all that, very much enjoying your journey with the Mini lathe.
Navigation
Message Index
Next page

Go to full version