Safety Turning

[Wizard69]

So is this normal for home machining ?. Obviously I've got a lot to learn.
Kpar

Normal? That is hard to say, it is a concern with respect to stainless steels and some other steel alloys. This problem can show up on any size lathe so being in a home shop is nothing special here. In fact there are a few videos on the net where large CNC lathes end up with stringy swarf created problems.

 

[Tim1974]

Allways be careful and use a chicken stick not your hand I do this for a living and I never have a problem with ruffing out but finish turning I love string! I normally finish last 3 cuts at .010 just for easy math and the long swarf is good as I don’t get the burns down my neck and no need for safety glasses so I can see better to form the right radius at end of shoulders
So not allways a problem but I think most at home toy lathes have not the hp to really make carbide tools work well

 

[harborfreight8x12]

Hello all. Andy Munns asked "How do I stop a lathe if I can't get near it". I personally use a momentary foot switch. The foot switches also come in "power on" mode. I prefer the momentary because it acts like a 'dead man' switch. Oh, as soon as I'm finished cutting, I turn the power switch off on the machine so that I don't step on the foot switch by accident.

 

[Jennifer Edwards]

What I do when I am turning a material that makes long strings of swarf is keep a good pair of side cutters in my left hand, when it gets a little long I just quickly snip it off.

I keep my right hand free to stop the feed, back off the cross feed, and roll back the carriage for the next cut.

When I worked in machine shops I would just take super deep cuts with high rates of feed. That way I would get those short chips shaped like a number six.

Unfortunately the little lathe I have here at home would choke, crash, and burn if I tried it.

 

[stragenmitsuko]

I getthis to , chip breaker or not stainless will be problematic unless an agressive feed is used .
As others have mentioned , the lathe must be up to it .
Altough my lathe is , it's very hard on the cutting tools , so I usually just grab an d cut the long chips .

Worst experiance I had was when the long chip was grabbed by the jaws of the chuck , and in no time it emptied the entire chip pan with bit's n pieces flying everywhere . The chuck was not even visible anymore .
Offcourse that chippan hadn't been emptied in months .....

A hook and / or some pliers is my way to deal with long (ss) chips .

 

[kquiggle]

I use a fishing hook extractor to reach in and grab stringy chips.