The checking of the lathe is currently on hold as it still is a bit intimidating. The machine is working for what i need it to do so I have used it a bit lately. A while ago I made a splash cover, after having been sprayed with coolant as the coolant reached the chuck..

It is not very nice. I'll make a better (and transparent) one someday!

A long time ago I started on somethign resembling a ball turner. Those plans were not thought through enough and have been discarded. In the meanwhile I have seen loads of good solutions to make ball turners. With a new lathe on the way, I wanted to make something rigid that would fit both lathes without problems. Therefore I have decided upon a horizontal shaft perpendicular to the lathe axis, holding something like a boring head. By altering the tool height or adjusting the boring head I can make concave and convex radiuses. When removing the boring head I have a ball bearing spindle perpendicular to the lathe axis, add a jacobs chuck and a power drill and it becomes a lathe cross-drill - i hope..

So I started by making a C-o-c

Found a suiting piece

Cut it to length on my beloved bandsaw


It just fitted through the chuck bore

Centre drilled the tip and brought out the live centre

I needed to remove about 12mm of the diameter, so I tried different speeds, feeds and depth of cuts to find the most efficient solution. I was always pushing it close to the point of resonance, but as I got closer to the chuck I could gradually increase the depth of cut

Roughing out the basic shape

When I began some light semi-finishing passes I measured the chuck and tailstock diameter. The difference was 0,12mm, so I moved the tailstock 0,06mm towards me. A few iterations and the diameter was within what I can measure accurately with my digital vernier

Here's how I left it today. Two bearing surfaces turned to 30,03mm, while the bearing has an ID of 30,01 (digital vernier measurements mind you). The black region is where I plan on making a M30x1,0 thread, used for tightening of the angular contact ball bearings that are going to support the shaft. I think it's going to be beefy enough!

I still have a lot to learn on getting beautiful surface finish!
