Is quad boring a Mag body done by placing the boring bar in the chuck and then somehow attaching the Mag body to the tailstock on an offset? Then rinse and repeat for the total of 4 offset bores? If so how do you attach the Mag body to the tailstock on an offset?
Regardless of whether my above assumptions are correct, would say a 7x12 mini lathe be capable of doing a quad bore?
Thanks in advance!
I did a twin bore on a 3d. I used a horizontal boring mill. How you described on a lathe would work. There are many ways to light a cigrit just use what you have available.
Thanks GTamazing. What I have right now won’t get the job done for me. I don’t have a lathe or a milling machine and this isn’t something I want to attempt in a drillpress. I want a mini lathe anyway and if I can do a quad/tri/dual bore on it… that more or less seals the deal.
After thinking about it a little more, I suppose that making an adapter to mount the Mag tube on the toolpost would better than attaching it to the tailstock.
Depending on the size of the lathe and your 4 jaw chuck, you could build a holding fixture that could be indexed by the 4 jaw for each bore using your dial indicator. (the horizontal boring mill would be best but few folks have them)
Adled, I don’t understand (yet, I hope). I’ve seen how a 4 jaw chuck can achieve an offset, but I’ve only seen 4 jaw chucks attached to the spindle. That doesn’t do me any good for a quad/tri/dual bore, right? If I understand what I’d need to do correctly I’d need an offset but stationary workpiece that doesn’t rotate. Then I’d feed that against a boring bar which would be centered in whatever chuck I have attached to the spindle.
Are you suggesting that I install a 4 jaw chuck on my tailstock?
The four jaw chuck attaches to the spindle still. The difference from a three jaw chuck is that each jaw on the four jaw chuck moves independently to each other allowing you to offset round tube allowing it to be bored out with a boring bar like the quad core you are discussing. A long bar would have to be used which in a small lathe would not be very rigid. From the picture and description that lathe did not say that it had a four jaw chuck that l saw.
I see from the photo what you are wanting to bore. I thought it was one of the 4 body lights you want to bore. Perhaps a fixture mounted on your cross slide with an end mill mounted in your chuck. You would still have to rotate each flashlight barrel 90 degrees to get the 4 cuts that you want. The end mill must be the same size as the batteries that go in the light. Oversize would be better than under. Move the cross slide (with your fixture) off center according to the size of the barrel vs battery. Some math involved.
If I were to do a quad bore on my lathe, I would put the tube on the spindle in a 4 jaw chuck or on a faceplate with a fixture that would allow easy indexing of the tube.
But the diameter of the bore (or intermittent bore in this case) he wants is smaller than the diameter of the flashlight. I think.
Gah! I’m getting the picture now. I don’t know why I couldn’t imagine this properly before. For some reason I just couldn’t understand how attaching the mag tube to the spindle on an offset was going to let me achieve the bores. I had to mock it up w/ a little disk on my desk. Now I get it, very simple.
Adled - the bore I want is smaller than the the ID of the flashlight. You were still correct in your first suggestion. The concept is similar to overboring individual tubes on a 4-barrel/body/tube style flashlight. We offset the Mag tube in the 4-jaw chuck until we get to the point where the cutting tool on the boring bar can dig into the side a little. With the 4-body lights you were thinking of you must center the bore on an existing barrel/body/tube; with a quad bore on a Mag you just use a calculated imaginary point to center the bores on.
MRsDNF is correct in that the HF mini lathes do not include a 4 jaw chuck. It’s a commonly purchased accessory for mini lathes though: about $100 from LMS.
That’s about the only way I know it could work. A small light in a 4 jaw could be off set bored, but a 2D Maglite tube off set is so long it would not be very rigid and wouldn’t work while boring, there’s no way to hold the end for rigidness when its off set. Fixing the mag to the cross slide I think would be about the only way. If you could fix a rotary table to the cross slide would be ideal. The lathe maybe a little to small for it to work anyway. With the length of the mag tube plus the need length of the boring bar your probably going to run out of room. I have bored things that where to long in my lathe but its a lot more work and usually doesn’t end up very accurate.
A mill with a off set boring head and a boring bar set to cut the right diameter hole would probably be the easiest. To make it accurate you would all so have to use a rotary table. The off set boring head can adjust the boring bar in and out of the center line off the spindle to make different size holes.
I’am not going to say its impossible to do on a 7x12 but it would take some thought and maybe even have to make a few things and spend some cash for it to even work. I have seen a lot of things made on small lathe that you would never have even thought possible.
I know you probably don’t have the horizontal boring machine or jig bore, but GTamazing’s original description of how he does it is probably is the easiest. He only has to move off center with two of his axis and bore with a bar or properly sized end mill (if it is long enough…and then they chatter). If you had many to do it would pay to have a fixture. You can wrap your lights in masking tape or thin aluminum or copper but 4 jaw chucks can mess up your finish if you are not careful. As you adjust your jaws to offset your cut you are loosening one side and tightening the other… Whoops to much here not enough there. Makes the part slide on the two jaws that are 90 degrees of your movement.
Also, depending on the size of your light… if you are going to have your light er… mag in the 4 jaw chuck on a small lathe, it probably does not have a large enough throat or tube to do much moving around.
The throat on those mini lathes will not fit a D cell Maglite at all. I believe it is 0.75 inches. So the entire body would be protruding from the 4-jaw chuck. That’s why moderator007 says that it would not be rigid enough when offset; I’m confident that he’s correct. 007’s point about the lengths is correct as well, although it’s moot after taking into consideration the rigidity issue. The body tube is over 9in and the required bore is about 6in, together that’s 15in.
Working in the other direction seems more feasible to me. Stick your boring bar in the chuck, remove the tailstock, and make a Maglite-body-clamp for the cross slide. As long as you can securely clamp the Mag body from the tailcap end it seems to me that you can let any extra length hang off the end of the lathe… this should allow boring of up to a 3D body tube I think. I’m not sure exactly how far away from the chuck the carriage assembly can get, but a 3D tube shouldn’t need more than about 8.4in of boring done. Hopefully that leaves enough space for the carriage. I guess a follower rest might be a good thing too, along with a thick and true boring bar…?
Just being able to do a 2D body would be a triumph of course!
Thanks for the suggestions and experience guys.
If you cut the 2D mag down to a 1D size. Now I’am sure the 7x12 could handle that just fine with a independent four jaw chuck.
