Dom wrote:
Easy solution. I just had to grow some balls. I was a little shy
about breaking the tool, and this led me to taking too light a feed.
I discussed the problem with a colleague, (who happens to be a
national workskills champion) and we had some fun experimenting. He
really carved into it, hand feeding, really heavy cuts, you could hear
the motor loading up, no chatter though, and a beautiful finish. We
tried power feed too, this was maybe a little too slow, and could have
been increased at least double. We tried some 1020, 4140, and 316,
all with no problems. 316 gave the best finish. 4140 had the
cleanest chip.
Great, glad you found the solution. I saw our machinist at work
doing some parting off on a whole bunch of 4" discs on the 20"
Harrison we have. He was running at maybe 180 RPM, and feeding
at about .050" radius per turn! This was in aluminum.

The problems I had on my previous lathes were real problems in
the lathe, I think. I found aluminum even worse than steel, the
chips would bind in the cut.

Jon