Union Lathe .... Help !!!

[NickG]

Oh right, it is surprising where these things can be found though. Like I say, I saw a few that weren't in the sort of places you'd expect! I think the pure weight and size put a lot of people off but bargains can be had for people that have the room. There was a colchester student I saw the guy wanted £300 for but he couldn't show me it running and it was a hell of a size / weight! He had a really nice chipmaster at the back of his shop too but he wouldn't sell me that!

Keep looking, you'll find something!

Nick

[Darren]

Finally I got around to having another go at this part. Now with the compound slide removed and replaced with a raising block things should be a lot more rigid.

The crosslide gibs nipped up and I added a temporary DRO. This really made a difference as I could retract the tool before winding back the carriage and re-position the tool exactly where I wanted it. The DRO was only temporarily held in place with some clamps but worked perfectly.



And this is the finished article. After all the effort to get this far and considering the lathe I'm using I'm chuffed to bits. about 1" 6tpi thread. The tool was plunged in, if you can call 0.10mm per pass a plunge, reducing to 0.05mm towards the final cuts. The lathe coped fine, a touch of flexing but not enough to worry about.



That should do the job 

[andyf]

That's great! Having just compared it with the original worn out worm shown on your Beaver gearbox repair thread, 

I bet you're feeling 

And it just goes to show what can be done with an old machine.

Andy

[Darren]

Thanks Andy, this lathe is quite sweet to use, it will be interesting to see how it copes with other tasks?

I've added the original part here to show why I made this part

[NickG]

Darren this / that is an excellent thread 

How long did it take to do with those small cuts? Looks like it paid off. The spindle on my harrison is 1.5 x 6 TPI, fancy making me a back plate?! 

[Darren]

Nick, about 3 weeks .... but I did a couple of other things in between 

About half hour or so ... I took light cuts mainly because the tool flexed and was trying to go under the work. This was about as rigid as i could make things with what I had to hand.

I'm beginning to think these small QCTP are a bit small, I see a project coming 

[sbwhart]

Nice going Darren

 

Stew