The Sequel - Oh Blimey I bought a CNC Lathe (Beaver TC 20)

[John Rudd]

   looks like you got your work cut out there Andrew..........Carry on!...

[vtsteam]

Lots of lateral thinking going on 

Plus lateral some shifting!

[awemawson]

Oh yes - some shifting. That's today's task.

Clear the way from the roller shutter (external access) to the lathe and prove that the electric roller shutter still works. I ended up earlier in the year with a massive wasp's nest in / on / and about the roller shutter and the pest controller fellow wasn't sure at the time how much debris had gone inside. I couldn't open it then as the 3D printer and it's gubbins had cables too close to risk moving it.

A late start as this morning I had an interesting talk on Concord(e) at the local U3A but after that cracked on before the next two sets of cottage guests arrive (due 15:00).

The Versatool cabinet with the communications receiver on top was massively heavy as full of tooling and the castors are too small a diameter, but using levers I moved it out of the way along with various other bits of clobber.

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Then moving the desk with the 3D printer on it let me shift the cables so I could try the roller shutter. Apart from getting tangled in the 'Chuck Crane' it amazingly worked fine (not been lifted in perhaps two years) shedding detritus all over the place.

Just need to find a temporary home for two pressure washers.

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Now at least the dog can see the rabbit and I can start rigging the fork lift. Approaching like this leaves full access to the bits that I need to unbolt to remove the heavy bits.

I suppose that I should load up the extended forks and see what droop I get over their considerable length with a heavy lump on the far end!

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So not huge progress but with a little bit each day I should get there. (How do you eat an elephant - one bit at a time!!)

[awemawson]

Today's task - remove the tool disk from the spindle. How hard can it be, I've previously several years ago been able to rotate the disk to align the tool pockets to the curvic coupling so I kow that the eight large cap screws lock them together but what actually fixes them. There is a row of ten smaller cap screws that I feel MUST be involved but are they?

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As eventually I will need to set the alignment of tool pockets to curvic coupling to cam features on the spindle I wanted to resolve this before yanking on the original disk in the lathe.

I dragged out my spare (but busted) tool turret to experiment with to have a look see. Plan was to sit it on it's rear flat casting face with the tool disk upwards and pull it apart. Absolutely no way I could get it in the attitude so I roped in a passing friend. We also failed what is this thing made of, solid uranium to judge by it's weight.

So out comes the engine hoist again and we managed to get it sitting as I wanted it.

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First I slackened the eight big bolts a long way out and did a tentative lift, no the whole turret came up. Then I did the same with the ten slightly smaller bolts with exactly the same null result. So glad that I'm working on the spare and not the one in the lathe!

OK last resort - what does the drawing say ? Well the only drawing that I have is from the Patent Application so may not be 'as built' but here it is:

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Now to me that is clear as mud. I can see the large bolts screwing into the outer half of the front curvic coupling allowing for a bit of rotational adjustment (as I have previously done). But the ten smaller bolts from the way that I'm reading the drawing don't seem to do anything.

I've retreated for more head scratching.