Something I've been working on

pinkpanda, No big deal. If you have the parts and want to ship them to me, that will be fine. If not, I’ll use the driver ‘As-Is’ when I’m ready to put it into something. I don’t have an immediate use for it, so time is not an issue either. Thanks!

No worries. I’ll try get to the post tomorrow.

Thanks for the update. What sort of switch were you after?

nice light! For the threading issue you can try a few things. One, keep the 1/2 nuts engaged and either reverse the motor (if you can) or reverse the chuck by hand. That will see if it’s an “engaging at the right place” issue. Second, check the leadscrew to make sure it has no play back and forth - that gave me fits until I figured it out. Third, lock the compound and try threading straight in with the cross slide - there may be play in your compound nut which is causing the double tracking.

let us know how you get on!

I was thinking of using a button I had left over from this build but I don’t think it will fit the colour scheme too well - silver head, black body, yellow tail and copper switch…. :question:

Thanks Matt. I’ll definitely be checking play in the lead screw. What type of machine do you have?

I took the suggestions mentioned above and cut every second fin (also I liked the look of the of the edited pic I did). I still haven’t worked on the switch :person_facepalming:

:+1:

:+1:

looks great PP!

looking good pp

I was playing around today powering the head with a bench supply. I noticed this thing get hot really fast. Even with active cooling. It inspired me to take notes. I faced the light into the body tube so it didn’t irritate me.

Starting at room temp 24.9C I turned on turbo. The driver hit thermal overload (a few quick flashes then off) at 1:45 Temp gun read 41.1C I was interrupted by family so it sat for 30s to 1 minute under the fan and when I got back to it the head didn’t feel overly hot (warm yes but not burning). So I turned on max again to hit overload this time reaching 42.0C Leaving it off I measured 35.6C after 30s and 31.7C after 1 minute. I repeated this without the fan on, just sitting on the bench. Starting temp was 23.6C thermal off went at 1:18 and reached 42.3C Thirteen minutes later the temp got down to 35.3C (that took 30s with fan!).

I didn’t realize active cooling could make 13 mins difference :open_mouth: I tried to make a graph so it’s easy to see at a glance but I just got frustrated with it.

Active cooling
0 - 24.9
1:45 - 42
2:15 - 35.6
2:45 - 31.7

Bench cooling
0 - 23.6
1:18 - 42.3
2:18 - 42.3
3:18 - 42.3
4:18 - 41.8
5:18 - 41.2
6:18 - 40.5
7:18 - 39.8
8:18 - 39.1
9:18 - 38.3
10:18 - 37.7
11:18 - 37.3
12:18 - 36.7
13:18 - 36.2
14:18 - 35.3

I also sanded back the legs on the optic in the hope of better focus. I discovered that the optic didn’t like the heat much either…


Note the one at bottom left in the next pic.

Ouch! Do you have another optic, or are you still planning to use that one?

Looking good pp. It would of been interesting to see before and after comparison of the heat difference with the different fins but its a bit late for that. What is the temp probe thingy your using?

I’ve got an old Atlas 618. Not a big lathe but surprisingly capable for its size. Still mostly tinkering with it but I do make occasional non-tool things with it too :slight_smile:

This bugs me, sorry, but ~43C is a bit warm, not hot right? 50C hot, 55+ too hot to handle
What is the temp the driver shuts down? for it must be much warmer thereand this reads like an issue getting the heat to those beauty fins.

Hence why I asked what temp device pp is using as reflective type measuring devices dont like nice shiny aluminium.

Doh! :person_facepalming: You’re absolutely right. I forgot IR guns are unreliable on shiny stuff. The gun is a left over from when I used to play with brushless r/c cars. I hardly ever use it now. For the record the temp gun stayed where you see it in the pic for the duration of the test but I guess that’s irrelevant now. DOH! I don’t feel so bad about not doing the before test.

That was well picked up Miller. Before I had the temp gun I used to go by the 3 second rule for the brushless motors. It’s about as accurate as it sounds. If something (e.g. brushless motor) became too hot to hold at the 3 second mark then the temp was guessed to be about 50C. That’s how I remember it anyway, I might be wrong.

Oh well. It will probably perform differently with batteries anyway.

As for the optic. I have another I can use. I hope it doesn’t keep melting them with batteries.

Was gonna post this, I have a similar “mini lathe”, think mines a 7x12, and slack in the lead screw is most likely the culprit. What I did to “patch” mine was attach a long elastic bungee to my carriage, it pulls and puts positive pressure on the carriage in one direction. It’s ghetto as all get out, but it did help mine. One other thing I’d suggest is to try and avoid disengaging the carriage, just reverse and back up. Have to slow down as much as possible and it’s way more unnerving, but I found these two suggestions help the quality of my threads.

Great work BTW!

I got a little more done on this. It’s almost complete :disguised_face:


I still need to drill and tap some screws to fix the body to the head but, of course, now that it was assembled I had to test it. It’s more floody than I was expecting, even more floody than my meteor and the tint is warmer. After playing for a bit I took it back inside to look at the optics. I suspect what happened is I sanded down the legs to get the leds closer the optic and one of the leds ended up touching the optic, hence the discolouring. That led had brown muck on it (see below), I tried to scrape it clean but ruined the led :weary: I have a new optic but I’ll need to check if I have a spare xhp35.