modifications to lathe and mill

[kutzdibutz]

Hi folks,

after one finished project and another almost finished I finally followed the recommendation of a friend and did some useful modifications to my lathe and mill. First off- I have a mini lathe with 300mm between centers and a mill with x/y/z 300mm/150mm/200mm.

The mill was the faster project. There I checked and adjusted the alignment of the z-axis and installed digital calipers. The calipers and readout unit I had sitting in the shelf for more than a year but couldnt motivate myself to install them...

That was fairly easy and straight forward. (And definetly woth the effort!)



Now to the lathe:

Here some more work was waiting to be done- and the harder it was to get going. I dont have so much time for the workshop so I wanted to spend it on actual projects, not on 'just' modifying the machines... But eventually the workarounds became annoying enough...

1) the tailstock

That thing was quite a nightmare to use. It didnt properly sit on the machine bed, had to be tightened with a nut (using a wrench) and was slightly below center. The left and right off center I had to adjust while tightening it...

First I milled the prism groove with a 90° mill. To have the base plate of the tailstock sitting perfect on the machine bed the rear contact face needed some 'metal on' operation. (someone should invent metal-on milling by the way...) So I made a brass bar of the correct height that I bolted to the base plate.
Next thing was the contact face to the upper part of the tailstock. There was no 90° between the face and the prism groove but something else. So I aligned it properly on the mill and milled the contact face. The aligning I did clamping it with some round material in the prism groove and checking with the dial indicator to have the prism groove perfect to the x-axis and then milling the contact face with the y-axis. (infortunately no pictures of that).

Same thing with the upper part of the tailstock. I aligned the tailstock quill to the mills x-axis and milled the contact face in y.
Bolting the tailstock back together I set the correct height with some sheet metal between the base and upper part. For adjustment I turned a pointy cone to get the center of the chuck and aligned the tailstock to that as good as I could get it.

Once on it I also got rid of the stupid nut-wrench clamping thingy which was anyways not rigid enough to get a feeling if it was tight or not. So I made some excenter clamping device. For the tailstock that job was done.

2) the support

The support always had the tendency to drift while facing. So I also made some excenter clamping left and right on the support to clamp it to the machine bed. The most headscratching was to find the proper position. There is really not so much room.

3) digital calipers

Like on the mill I also wanted to have digital calipers displaying the axis position. I tried to hide it as good as possible to prevent damage from chips and swarf. For the straight axis that was fairly easy.

The face axis was a bit more tricky in terms of room. I didnt want to sacrifice any travelling distance of the support or the distance between tailstock and support. But I found a solution I'm quite happy with.

Theoreticly this would have been it on the lathe- but I did a really stupid thing that caused the gear to give in. :wall:

I tried to round some edges of a workpiece while turning. And I thought to myself- watch it carefully with that outside clamping chucks, the file could get caught in it- and 'bang' the file got caught and was 'shortened' a bit... So I thought- this time a bit more careful- and 'bang' there the gear went... :rant:
Luckily I only have a small lathe so it was only the file and the gear that got damaged... :hDe:
But this meant that I had to take the lathe apart COMPLETELY. Now I know EVERY bolt of the late in person and by the name. An experience I didnt neccessarily was after...

But now also the lathe is good to go again!

Sorry, this post got quite long but I thought I share this. Maybe it motivates someone as lazy as me... This kind of modifications are really worth it and I dont know how I could have worked with this machines before!

Cheers, Karsten

PS: hopefully that works with the pictures...

 

[GailInNM]

Dave, I cleaned up the links for the photos.
Gail In NM

 

[steamer]

Thanks Gail!

Nice job on the machines Karsten!

Dave

 

[Don1966]

I think you need to read what this site has to say about the DRO. http://www.shumatech.com/web/products/dro-350
whether it pertains to your unit it might be worth reading.

Regards Don

 

[Blogwitch]

I can see them now Dave, thanks Gail.

Karsten,

Nice interesting post, you have been busy.
It looks like you have got a few bits sorted.

I go around my shop and machines occasionally, just tinkering about, a little fix here, a tweak there.
It keeps everything 'just so'.

John

 

[kutzdibutz]

Thanks!
Yes, it was really worth the effort and maybe I'm not THAT refusing for the furture mods. But the initial step is always the hardest. (and was quite a chunk of work as well- the next things will be smaller jobs I guess)

Gail, Dave, what did I do wrong with the links? Only for the next time that I do it right and nobdy has to clean after me...

Don, thanks for the link. A friend of mine also has the DRO 350 and experiences the named issues. So far I didnt have that at mine but I didnt use it that hard yet... Lets see how it develops in the future. Anyways I might need to improve the connectors at the calipers or just solder the wires to the corresponding pins. Sometimes one axis shuts down, pushing and pressing the connectors usually re-animates them... I will monitor.

Cheers, Karsten