Show Us Your Lathe

[rake60]

I've had a few hobby lathes in my basement.
The one I have now is this Grizzly 9 X 19

It's the same machine sold by Harbor Freight as a 9 X 20
Grizzly measures to a live center vs. a dead center.
Their made in China!!! :shock: Any REAL machinist knows that means
their nothing but JUNK! Let's keep that mith alive to keep the prices in
line. :wink: A better compound clamp a tweak where and there and I
have NO complaints!!!! It's been a great little machine for the price.

 

[tattoomike68]

I have a smithy 12 X 20. I have the 6" 3 jaw and an 8" 4 jaw. I ordered it new and also bought a live center.

Its fun to run and gets the job done.

Its been a fine machine for home shop work.

Its made in china too.

 

[olcowhand]

Yeah I know....clean that clutter up....but then I couldn't find anything! :lol:
South Bend 10x36. Great lathe, but wish bad it had V-belt instead of flat belt drive. I have a half rest, full rest, knurler, & other stuff I have no idea about!
I bought all for $600, table too. Came with a rig for horizontal milling & 20lbs of cutters, bits, 6" 3jaw,& 8" 4jawchucks & more.

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[lugnut]

My lathe is one of Grizzly’s G0516 Three in one machines. (lathe, mill and drill) I have removed the milling attachment and put it on it’s own table that I got from Little Machine Shop. Best move I’ve done in a long time. I had a little 9” South Bend several years back, but never had any tooling for it, so I never used it. When I retired in 2003 I sold all my stuff in the shop and moved to the Oregon coast. When I decided to get another lathe I made sure I got enough tooling with it to do something. The Grizzly machine came with a lot of tooling. I know that most will say the SB was a better machine, but I didn’t have room to move it here. Self teaching myself to operate a lathe and milling machine has been a real challenge. Sites like this one and Home Shop Machinists have been my savoir. I just wish I had gotten into this stuff earlier when my eyes where better.
Mel

 

[Cedge]

I guess this is as good a place to make a first post as any. I'm far from being an expert at machining, but after 3 years of making some of the nicest chips ever made, I've actually begun making successful projects that do not require 3 or 4 attempts to complete a useable end product.

A lot of the stiff learning process was accomplished by making mods and improvements to my Micromark 7x14 lathe and its evil sister, their mini mill. Yes... there actually is one of those Chinese made Mini lathes hiding somewhere under all of the changes...LOL.

Steve

 

[tattoomike68]

I guess this is as good a place to make a first post as any. I'm far from being an expert at machining, but after 3 years of making some of the nicest chips ever made, I've actually begun making successful projects that do not require 3 or 4 attempts to complete a useable end product.

A lot of the stiff learning process was accomplished by making mods and improvements to my Micromark 7x14 lathe and its evil sister, their mini mill. Yes... there actually is one of those Chinese made Mini lathes hiding somewhere under all of the changes...LOL.

Steve

Wow, steve what is this?

 

[Cedge]

Tattoo...
When I bought the lathe, I already knew my eyesight and the dial marks were not going to get along well. Micromark offered these "Dial Mounted DRO's" for the lathe and I bought them when I ordered the machines. They work pretty well, bu the inherent backlash in thse small machines qucikly degrades their accuracy after a few retractions and plunges.

I recently installed a true DRO system which allows me to share the read out unit between my lathe and my mill. Rather than replace the original dials, I kept these "pseudo" DRO's because they do have the advantage of registering in single digits to a forth decimal. if I need to shave .0001 from the work piece, the DRO will get me in the right spot, even if the machine may not let me hold the tolerance at that level. Surprisingly, I've been able to make a really few good cuts well under .0005. It just takes a steady hand and a good stiff scotch for relaxing afterwards...LOL

Both micromark and LMS offer these as an inexpensive DRO otpion. I enjoyed them when I couldn't afford the jump to digital scales. Now, with The digital scales in place, the back lash problem is simply a minor annoyance, rather than a potential mine field.

Steve

 

[tattoomike68]

Wel ill be darned, that sounds like a handy little deal to have. My eyes are not as good as they used to be.

 

[Hal]

Steve

Is that "dial mounted DRO" something that could be mounted/installed on any dial??

I would like something like that for my tailstock.

Hal

 

[Hal]

Steve

I have to smile when see the bullet holes decal on you lathe. :lol:

Was that put there before you had the bugs worked out of your new lathe.

I also see that you have modified your lathe by adding a indexer head(?) and a stepper motor to accessorize your lathe.

What do you use those for??

If a stepper motor was added to the lead screw on a lathe that was inch only would that enable it to cut metric threads??

Hal

 

[Cedge]

Hal...
The DRO's probably wouldn't work for the tail stock since they are sized to fit the leadscrews used on the cross slide and compound of the 7" x XX" lathes. I'm not sure if they would fit anything larger. You'd have to ask the guys at LMS.

I added the DRO to the tail stock using a cheap, large number display style caliper from Harbor Freight. I cut the tangs off using a dremel and grinding wheel and made up a small clamp to catch the MT2 sleeve. It works like a charm and it "can" be plugged into the main DRO displaly if one wanted to do so. I don't, since the tailstock is on and off the machine so much.

The spindle mounted indexer is something I built to let me drill evenly spaced radial hole patterns in things like small engine cylinders, cylinder heads, small pipe flanges. I've adapted a dremel tool to mount on the cross slide and use it to drill any number of holes concentric to the centerline of whatever I've turned, while it is still in the lathe. The indexer plate has 3 rows of holes, numbering 40, 50 and 60. Those combinations will let you drill quite a number of different patterns.

The small motor is actually from a Sieg powerfeed which was originally meant to fit the mini mill. I had one that malfunctioned and was replaced. They didn't want it back, so it sat on a shelf until a friend who works with electronics fixed it for me.

On a whim, I adapted it to the lead screw on the lathe so that I could control the speed of the saddle travel independently of the normal change gear drive. It allows for smooth slow travel for nice finish cuts and has the advantage of letting me use a carriage stop on the lathe bed. The variable speed controls have a feedback circuit that cuts the motor off when it hits the stop. Less hand cranking is probably the bottom line answer. I would disengage the drive before doing any threading since it is in no way synched to the threading function.

The recently added handwheel has proven to be even better at delivering a smooth finish cut, even if you do have to crank it....LOL. It's a nice mod because there are no hot chips dropping on my hand, way over there.

Bullet holes?... uh... leftovers from the go-cart restoration project I recently did for my grandsons. Still enough kid in me that I couldn't resist the temptation, I guess...LOL.

Steve

 

[gt2ride]

Here is my collection of Lathes

LeBlond Regal 10

SB 10K

Craftsman 6in

Logan 10in

Levin

Atlas f10

Monarch 10EE

SB 10L

Myford

Super Adept

Unimat SL200

Haighton Cadet

 

[Sprocket]

Hi . First post on this forum. I "know" some of you form the HSM board.

Any way, this is my lathe. It's a 1979 SB heavy 10. This is just after I
finished cleaning and painting it. It was a pretty awful green before

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/Sprocket/DSCN0410.jpg

It doesn't look that good any more. That was 3 or 4 years ago.

Sometime I'll figure out how to put in a picture instead of a link.

Doug

 

[rake60]

Welcome Doug
That lathe looks bullet proof. Hard to find them buit like that now.
It looks as solid as the machine olcowhand uses.
Looks GREAT!

 

[rake60]

Welcome to HMEM Ian.

Great looking old machine you have there.
I've had a couple project lathes in my shop. I traded an $89 rifle for this one.
It's a Garvin turret screw machine that was made in about 1889.

I played with it for about a year then sold it to a collector for $500
Rebuilding an old machine not only brings a solid old treasure back to live,
it makes you a better operator of the machine.

Rick

 

[1Kenny]

Welcome Ion,

I always like looking at lathes.

 

[m_kilde]

Hi All

Also I would like to present my lathe, bought this spring.
A chinese sure, bad painting but actually very good proportions and the finish on headstock, and other moving parts is good.

The picture shows my lathe with my homemade milling attachment installed

 

[rake60]

I like the looks of your milling attachment.
Nice machine!

 

[gt2ride]

Here is my 1976 Southbend lathe. It was not cheap.

It came with some assy.

Are there any SB 10K owners on this site?

 

[1Kenny]

Here is my lathe.