Hi all
I'm very new to this hobby and am having problems trying to get a straight thread when tapping. Today I was trying to make a part which had an 8mm male thread at one end and an 8mm female thread at the other. The male thread went OK but when I screwed some rod into the female end you could see that it was skew.
When drilling for the female end I started with a centre drill, followed by 4mm then 6mm and finally 7mm. However when the drill was going in it looks like the tip moves up and to the right (ie away from the operator) slightly. I've checked headstock alignment using a centre in the head and tail stocks and they look to be pretty close but is there anything else likely to cause the tip to wander?
If the tailstock is misaligned slightly is it possible to drill a hole at an angle on the lathe ? I would have thought if anything the hiole might be off centre but still straight ? The hole looked straight to me but my eye is still getting used to machining tolerances as apposed to 'close enough is good enough'
To actually do the tapping I put a centre in the tailstock and pressed this to the end of the tap which I thought would almost guarantee the tap going in straight - am I missing something ?
Any thoughts or suggestions on what else I can try to improve my skill base would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Jim
I'm very new to this hobby and am having problems trying to get a straight thread when tapping. Today I was trying to make a part which had an 8mm male thread at one end and an 8mm female thread at the other. The male thread went OK but when I screwed some rod into the female end you could see that it was skew.
When drilling for the female end I started with a centre drill, followed by 4mm then 6mm and finally 7mm. However when the drill was going in it looks like the tip moves up and to the right (ie away from the operator) slightly. I've checked headstock alignment using a centre in the head and tail stocks and they look to be pretty close but is there anything else likely to cause the tip to wander?
If the tailstock is misaligned slightly is it possible to drill a hole at an angle on the lathe ? I would have thought if anything the hiole might be off centre but still straight ? The hole looked straight to me but my eye is still getting used to machining tolerances as apposed to 'close enough is good enough'
To actually do the tapping I put a centre in the tailstock and pressed this to the end of the tap which I thought would almost guarantee the tap going in straight - am I missing something ?
Any thoughts or suggestions on what else I can try to improve my skill base would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Jim