The lathe arrives!

[tinkerer]

I have no idea what a good substitute would be. The 100 may mean 100%. Amazon sells it by the gallon for $38.00 US.

[AdeV]

I have no idea what a good substitute would be. The 100 may mean 100%. Amazon sells it by the gallon for $38.00 US.

Not in the UK they don't - it's all ultra-expensive "health" stuff, or hair conditioner, or similar, and comes in little tiny pots or bottles... Anyway, I had a slightly closer look at the lube chart, and did a bit of deductive reasoning (probably entirely wrong, knowing me  ), which leads me to believe it may be a lube supplied by Houghton Edgar Vaughan  :



I've sent them an e-mail... hopefully they'll reply. Thanks for taking the time to try to puzzle this one out for me 

Meantime, I couldn't resist a little play. The first job was to make a chuck key, there being none supplied with the lathe. I couldn't find my square bar stock, so I decided to use one of the arms on the chuck key I made for my dividing head. The bar only needed about 0.020" shaving off to make it fit the 3-jaw chuck - and accuracy wasn't mad important, so I lobbed it at the vice & took very light (0.005") cuts with an end mill:



I invite you to count the number of errors/bad practices I'm indulging in here. I can think of at least three.

Anyway, managing to avoid launching lumps of metal across the shop, I milled down 3 sides by 0.015" each (who can't count? me?). The 4th side wasn't possible with the key in the bottom of the vice due to the right-angled bit. And it's slightly narrower than my parallels. A trial fit showed it was OK anyway, so I left the 4th side un-milled. This is the result:



Nasty, but it allowed me to chuck some bar into the lathe to have a little play.


Oh boy, now the learning begins....

I won't show the results of the first bar, because frankly it's dreadful. I managed to chip the carbide bit that was in place, and mounting a new tool will be a major pain in the posterior - a QCTP is definitely right near the top of the agenda. At first, it seemed that the lathe was in a massive hurry. Observe the chart below:



I wanted the slowest possible feed rate for either sliding or surfacing. 14 is the smallest number, so I set the gearbox accordingly. Banzai!!!  The carriage shoots off across the room, and it looks like I'm cutting a really naff thread. WTF??? Shurely this isn't right? I try facing the end of the bar & get a lovely spiral pattern. What's the deal here, do I need some uber-wide bit here? Have I made a massive mistake buying this lathe? I do recall that the minimum number of threads per inch was a comparatively low number. 28, in fact.


Hmm. 28tpi is all the way over the other side of the gearbox.


 

 

I remember reading about this on Tony's lathes.co.uk site. Edgwick didn't quote their surfacing/sliding speeds in thousandths per revolution; they described it in cuts per inch! So I'd managed to pick the MAXIMUM speed of the lathe, instead of the minimum!

 

Adjusted over to 200 "cuts/inch", and got a MUCH better surface finish. Still rough as a bear's arse, but that's because I've chipped my carbide bit. 

Oh, and when I clamped the bit in the chuck, I broke the (really really crappy) weld on my chuck key. So I can't get the bar out now.

Hey ho. Tomorrow I shall make a whole new chuck key. One that doesn't have welding on it.



That's all for now!

[AdeV]

Well, the machining practicing continues apace. No photos I'm afraid, because everything I've produced so far has either been garbage, or just a thinner bar than it was before I started 

Lacking a thread cutting bit, I figured I could get away with using my carbide cutter, as the angles weren't a million miles out, and this was just a practice piece. As mentioned above, I'd chipped the cutter, but being indexable meant I had two good cutting faces left. Well, a couple of dig-ins later, I didn't have any cutting edges left.  That'll teach me to use the wrong shaped bit incorrectly (I should have set the compound slide to 22.5 degrees & advanced that way, instead of trying to cut corners & use the cross slide). Lesson learned, but now i'm clean out of carbide cutting edges. Doh. Most of the other bits of tooling I've got are either HSS, or brazed carbide - all of the brazed tools have chips or dings.

So; I pick the best shaped piece of HSS I've got & free-hand grind it on the grinding wheel. It cuts OK, not the best finish on the planet, but I've probably not ground it too well; and the pointy bit cut theads just about well enough to screw into the Lister's exhaust pipe, which is what I wanted to try out.

As a result, I really need to find a suitable grinding wheel for my fancy Abwood grinder... so I can cut nice accurate angles without worrying about whether my freehand technique is any good or not (that can come later). I think I need 8" cup-type wheels (so I can grind on the face, rather than the edge), but can I find any? Not likely....

Anyone got any idea where I might get such a wheel? Or have I bought a lemon?

[trevoratxtal]

for large cup wheels Try
http://www.mscjlindustrial.co.uk/CGI/INSRHM
some times expensive but have a huge range,
If you find the item you are after google it to see if someone else does it cheaper.
 

Trev

[AdeV]

Thanks for the link Trev  Unfortunately, they don't seem to do any 8" cup-shaped wheels  

So, I've just gone & taken one of the steel wheels off & measured it.


 

It's 6"!

What an idiot.

I now need to find a 6" cup wheel with what appears to be a 2-5/8" hole for the hub. I suspect this will be a much easier task...

[AdeV]

Only one pic tonight: I've got one carbide tool that sits too high in the toolpost to cut on-centre (even when located in the lowest toolpost slot); so the only option is to reduce the height of the tool holder.

Here it is having 0.005" milled off the base using a shell mill:


Even after 3 trips to the mill, it's still just a sensation high, so I'll whip another 5 thou off it tomorrow. It cuts quite badly at the moment, presumably due to this issue.

[John Stevenson]

Thanks for the link Trev  Unfortunately, they don't seem to do any 8" cup-shaped wheels  

So, I've just gone & taken one of the steel wheels off & measured it.


 

It's 6"!

What an idiot.

I now need to find a 6" cup wheel with what appears to be a 2-5/8" hole for the hub. I suspect this will be a much easier task...

Yup just found a brand new 6" cup wheel, white ali-oxide for HSS tools.

John S.

[trevoratxtal]

Hello John
I thought 8inch was on the big side but kept quiet, someone is bound to have used bigger.
Personal I have never come across any thing more than 4inch cup wheel and even that is ofttimes to big for some tool grinding.
I mostly use the diamond 3 inch cup wheels they seem to do the job well and do not need dressing.
Then I am a lazy b***r.
To my way of thinking, cup wheels have far more centrifugal stress than a similar standard wheel.
Trev 

[AdeV]

Today's task has been to clean and understand the taper turning attachment. Liberal doses of WD40, scrubbing with paper towels, rinse & repeat, and this is the result:



I was mainly concerned with the sliding bits, which is why it's not 100% spotless and sparkling

Here it's set up to do a 5 degree taper (not sure if that's 5 degree included angle, or 10 degree included; when I cut my first taper with it I'll know), with the fat end towards the headstock:


And 5 degrees the other way:


The markings go up to about 8 degrees in each direction.

It took me a while to suss out exactly how it works; partly because it was all stuck fast with grime, and partly because there's a bit missing... Specifically, the bit that locks the taper unit to the lathe bed. As it stands, the whole thing just travels along with the carriage, which is a bit useless when it comes to cutting tapers...

So: 

Along with the QCTP, cam-lock chuck system, morse spindle adapter, now I have the Taper Attachment Missing Piece Project. I can't see anything on the lathe, headstock or tailstock end, which looks suitable for locking the taper slide down. I even took a photo of the back end of the lathe to see if anything showed up under the flash. It didn't:



However, there's provision for a couple of screws in the bottom slide (you can just about see them in the photo), so I'm thinking a couple of bars coming back out of the taper unit, to some kind of clamp device. The thing is, I don't really want to modify the lathe if I don't have to (at least, not permanantly); although ultimately if I have to drill & tap into the tailstock end casting, then that's what I'll do. But... there's no sign of that being done, so presumably Edgwick had a better method.

Can any ex-Edgwick users remember how the taper unit is locked down, John S? 

[Davo J]

From what I have seen on other taper attachments, is that they attach to the ways with a clamp on unit. That way you can move it up and down the bed were ever you are working. The link below shows what they look like.
http://grizzly.com/products/Taper-Attachment-for-G4016-Gear-Head-Lathe/H0775
Dave

[John Stevenson]

My Edgewick never had the taper turning but two of my present lathes have, Ivan the Terrible, a Russian tool room lathe and my CVA.

Not sure what's on Ivan as it's buried [ literally ] but the CVA was also missing it's clamp so I made one very similar to the Grizzly one posted.
Works fine.

John S.

[AdeV]

Thanks Dave, I do believe you're right.  That looks like the best option to me.

I should have thought of it myself really    Obviously, my path to being a machinist is only just beginning....

John - you replied as I was writing the above... I need to go to the workshop now & check how much of that square edge of the ways are available to me. I can then do a c-o-c to check I'm not doing anything stupid.

Then it'll be Miller time Bridgeport, that is...

[Darren]

I should have thought of it myself really    Obviously, my path to being a machinist is only just beginning....

Nobody can think of everything, hardly any of us  can come up with much at all. But what we are good at is looking at what has gone before us and adapting to our present requirements.

Machining and developed ideas have been going on far too long for one brains lifespan 

I have a taper att, but it won't help you much as mine runs on it's own ways. Not that I'd have a clues as how to use it 

[trevoratxtal]

AdeV
Further to your sourcing cup wheels.
this popped into my email, sounds good prices.
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/DRAKETOOLING
http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/DRAKETOOLING_ABRASIVES_W0QQ_fsubZ1428269018QQ_sacatZDRAKETOOLINGQ5fABRASIVESQ5fW0Q51Q51Q5ffsubQ5A1428269018Q51Q51Q5fsidQ5A354194088Q51Q51Q5ftrksidQ5Ap4634Q512ec0Q512em322QQ_sidZ354194088?_nkw=cup&submit=Search
The 150mm one at 9.99 + post.
Trevor