So another days work and the lathe is slowly being re-assembled. Re-checked the saddle this morning and thought is was done. Lightly moving all the bed back and forth.
So mounted the X-slide and topslide back on as I had to use the machine to make some small adjustments to the new hand wheel for the saddle. The old plastic one had given up. In the following picture the apron is also back on but only lightly fitted as work is ongoing to adjust the leadscrew and its new right-hand end bearing setup.
The new hand wheel has a slightly smaller diameter (80 mm) which actually is good as the distance between the cross-slide ball-handle and the saddle hand-wheel is a bit bigger. Due to this my fingers can now pass between the handles without disturbing any settings.
The new hand-wheel also have a scale ring (still not graduated though) that can be set as required.
Also the lead screw is back in place with its new right hand end bearing. My solution for this is done using the solution from the Tools and Mods site but adapted to a SIEG machine. The bits looks as follows.
When the bearing is assembled it is a compact setup as below.
The additional bits include a short lead screw extension which is both Loctited and pinned to be sure that the bits will not part at the wrong occasion. The pin is hidden under the conical sleeve which also moves the bearing housing to a better position for the handle. The housing has two bearings which lock the lead screw to eliminate any play or back-lash. At the end a new handle of the same type as the saddle handle will be fitted and the scale ring (to be done) will cover the lock ring that locks the lead screw to the bearings.
The picture shows it all in semi-assembled state as there are some bits to be done and some paint to finish the whole thing off.
To finalize the tail stock end of the machine will I also add the same type of handle to the tail stock. The handle will of course also get a scale ring and I am pondering on how to solve the position of the fiducial line, as it is now I think there is something missing between the tail stock and the hand wheel. Hmmmm
Well, so far so good. It all seems to come together in a good way.
Oh, I read through Bogstandards desription of Fixing Darrens Lathe, one of the most informative descriptions so far! Comparing that with how I did I did not do all the measuring to begin with which I really should have done
. Of course I checked straightness and how true the datum faces were, and could find that on my machine it looked fine from start. Also checked the thicknesses of the gib strip surfaces with a mike and found them to be well within limits and consistent.
The saddle had a small play at the head stock end, the same amount front and back. Not much and I took that out by cutting away about half of one of the shims in each pack. In hind-sight this must of course depend on the saddle to be slightly out of square as if it had not been accurately placed in its production jig. A minor detail now fixed.
After doing these relatively easy adjustments and mods I find that the machine feels "tighter" and more stable which in turn will enable better finish and precision. At first it felt a bit scvary to dis-assemble the machine, but having read up on the matters in different places it really was not that difficult.
Work continues ....
/Peter
