Knurling:
The exact outer diameter of the working piece does not matter, the profile will adjust automatically. Just make sure to drench everything in coolant or oil or whatever you use to wash the small chips away and preventing them from getting pressed into the profile. Additionally if you have a cheap china-tool like I do lot’s of oil will prevent the knurls from jamming with the axis.
Cheap lubricant/ coolant for machining:
Rapeseed oil. Does wonders if you work with copper, will prolong the live of your tools compared to dry use and isn’t as messy as real coolant.
Indexing with the lathe:
Prepare to cut threads with the same pitch as the lead screw. Let’s say your lead-screw has a pitch of 1.5mm. Then 1/6 turn of the main spindle give you 1/6 turn on the lead screw which means 0.25mm in this example. If you want to mark the position for six holes, then just make a small scratch at the work-piece with the cutting tool at 0mm, 0.25mm, 0.5mm, …, and 1.25mm. The same goes for three markings and so on. It works pretty well and can be handy for multi-emitter lights if you don’t have a rotary table.
That’s an interesting way. I’ve never heard of it.
I ordered up one of these cheapy tacho’s and stuck it to the lathe tonight. It was just a temporary thing to see it work as I haven’t decided on final placement of it. I don’t want to fix it permanently and then have to move it when I get around to making an indexing wheel at the back of the spindle. It’s powered by the 2x 18650’s in the pic. At low mid and high revs it seemed to fluctuate up to 10 rpm. I’m good with that, so long as it’s within cooee. I’m starting to get a feel for speeds and feeds on aluminium now but this tacho would have really helped when I first got the lathe.
There’s a light on the back of the sensor that flashes with every passing of the magnet
That’s neat, I usually clamp it between wood blocks and drill through everything. Hole saws tend to wobble and the wood stabilizes the cut before the metal is reached. My drill press won’t spin nearly that slowly.
thanks pp, surprised the sander didn’t burn out but.
I think i’m building one ,shooters use corn meal and other stuff on brass shells,
be worth a google, would have to be careful on aluminum
I was thinking of how soft it is.
but after a bit of googling it seems to hold up well.
people use plastic triangles and walnut shells,
stainless steel shot and lots of different media.
wow, thx. Currently I can’t even part off w/ my mini-lathe (yeah, yeah, yeah - mostly due to lack of skill from the operator.) I’m going to try w/ this technique. I have always heard of running the lathe in reverse for some operations but it really helps to actually see it in a video.
Interesting video ltp. Moving from a HSS blade parting off tool to a carbide tip parting tool made a big difference to my lathe in its parting off abilities…
I’m not sure which lathes but some use a thread to screw the chuck backplate onto the spindle. Using the lathe in reverse could possibly unscrew the spindle/backplate.
My sieg is a one piece design (spindle/backplate) so no issues with either direction.
MRsDNF which carbide parting tool do you use? I saw one of the cheaper ones and the carbide tip kept falling out.
[quote=pinkpanda3310]
I’m not sure which lathes but some use a thread to screw the chuck backplate onto the spindle. Using the lathe in reverse could possibly unscrew the spindle/backplate.
My sieg is a one piece design (spindle/backplate) so no issues with either direction.
I would think any lathe with a reverse switch as standard equipment would be fine,
good point for older equipment though
I was warned of this by several friends when I got my start. Not a ‘solution’ per se, but they all said that when running in reverse, keep the cross-slide and all hard parts clear with the tool and holder extended, so that if something goes wrong the tool/holder will swing clear or break instead of breaking the main parts of the machine. Made sense to me when explained thiscway but I never had that happen.
