yea the problems are chuck vibration and then the bed travel has to be accurate you have to level big lathes or they too are inaccurate machining a taper no matter what you do if the frame is sitting twisted. And that's almost impossible on a table top one its why my one has a huge mother frame who dont twist if you look at construction.
intrade,
Jan 5, 5:44am
brass and aluminum is ok on cheap lathe. problems start when you do tool steel and stainless . My one can do all but only just and i would not bother to try and make a thread with it it could but would probably take me 2 days to make 1 thread as you got to change wheels and who knows if i got them all. never used the thing only manual . you can turn manually as if you had feed with 2 hands .
mechnificent,
Jan 5, 5:53am
My one has heaps of play, and wear.
apollo11,
Jan 5, 6:19am
The cnc lathes at my last workplace were a thing of beauty. Plus the cnc mills, line bores, turret presses, Plasma tables with machine centres. Too busy there for perkies unfortunately.
mechnificent,
Jan 5, 6:28am
droool. " " " l.
mechnificent,
Jan 5, 6:29am
Ah bugger.
That was meant to be drips off the back end of drool. haha
emmerson1,
Jan 5, 7:20am
Its okay. I am certainly not a Maker, but I was a bit disappointed when he welded the first two rails together and they didn't sit flat on the bench. I thought that was a pretty poor foundation for whatever followed.
I am sure that it is better than nothing though, and a good project if you don't have the two and a half grand that the cheapest Topmaq ones cost.
There was probably a lot of other tidy up work that didn't make it to the video. Also the chassis he built looks pretty solid considering the overall light weight & size of the machine AND that none of the chassis system is production mass produced (apart from the chuck & other bolt ons. Personally, I think he did an excellent job of building a metal working lathe from scratch, in what looks to have been a single solid days work (most likely two or three days part time work) All up cost in new materials, probably only cost about $1k & solider then the cheap mass production units
I'd like your big one Marte. That would be handy in the country. Mine's only about a120 throw and 600 travel. And old and worn. I can still do good work on it. It's in how you use them.
kazbanz,
Jan 5, 7:26pm
I reckon good on him but accuracy is the issue. I just can’t see how he could machine straight
apollo11,
Jan 5, 10:09pm
Compare the quality of finish to the one I posted in #15.
mechnificent,
Jan 5, 10:16pm
We can offset the chuck or the tailstock Kaz, and/or position the tool so it tracks parallel, or not, as we wish, to the work.
drog,
Jan 5, 10:40pm
'University of Life'
intrade,
Jan 5, 10:50pm
1 problem that i spotted straight away is in that video normal bearings and a fan-belt as drive. Both items are not designed to be used for that application for long. A lathe has a gearbox and old ones have Lubeable bearings. For that original video. it maybe looking awesome to someone without knowing the problems. When you know a alternator squeeling on a car when there is a propper load .plus there is good reason lathes are 3 phase motors to put some punch turning that chuck. on the above lathe #2 i would say you could cut 4 to 5mm off in one go. my apprentice Final was done on a colchester Triumpf lathe
mechnificent,
Jan 5, 10:53pm
Ha. yes Drog.
ronaldo8,
Jan 6, 5:41am
That thing in the OP post is incapable of accuracy or repeatability, they'd be lucky to be able to hit .5mm consistently. There is no parallelism between rails in any axis on either the carriage or the cross slide, he just eyeballed it. The base was made of two halves tacked together that weren't even flat to each other, and with no heat soak after welding, so they will shift throwing the planarity out even more. The spindle is running in plain bearings ffs, not even tapered rollers let along angular contacts, Good luck maintaining position under even the lightest load.
For the money spent he could have made a decent machine not that piss poor hobbyist excuse if he'd just bothered to read the odd book and do some study first. Thoroughly unimpressive, I'm amazed he didn't break out the hot glue gun.
ronaldo8,
Jan 6, 5:44am
The belts ok, v belts aren't that big a problem, but you are dead right on the bearings, just lazy.
mechnificent,
Jan 6, 5:48am
Crikey. mine's still using flat belts. Will that be Ok ?
mechnificent,
Jan 6, 5:50am
And my brass bushes have play in them, so I guess I shouldn't try doing anything with it ?
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