Gallery, Projects and General > How to's

Finding tool centre height on a lathe

<< < (6/8) > >>

Pete.:
On my lathe, a previous owner has scribed the center height on the side of the tailstock ram, so all you need to do is slide the tailstock up and set the height of the tool using that mark.

Bogstandard:
Pete,

On a lot of early lathes, that is how they came from the factory, purely for that purpose.

There is a problem with these early lathes. As the tailstock wears, they get what is called a droop snoot, where the ram starts to hang low the further it protrudes from the main casting, so if you set your tooling with the ram even partially extended, it would be set too low.
The other problem with the tailstock marking system is that most times, the ram can rotate a little in it's housing, so rendering the height marking useless, it could be almost anywhere.

Problems, problems problems  :bang: :doh:


Bogs

Pete.:
Gotcha John, I never thought of that.

Easily remedied by marking the nose or side of the tailstock housing rather than the ram, much less versatile though!

AndyB:
Oops! :doh:
I'm with Pete there. I don't extend the tailstock though, so maybe that's why it works...well it does for me.

Thanks John

Andy

Bogstandard:
Pete & Andy, or anyone else who uses the tailstock method.

I am certainly not trying to say your are wrong in using that method, it has stood the test of time. I was just trying to make you aware that a problem could occur and you need to check if either of the two problems are present on your lathe before you use it.

My last lathe was an old atlas, and before I repaired it, it had those two problems in abundance.

http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/index.php?topic=2114.0


John

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page