"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Harold & Susan Vordos wrote:

snip-----

O.K. A very different machine, then. It may well have been 6",
though I haven't seen one that small.

Considering we worked five
12's and one 6 hour day each week, sitting wasn't all that bad of an
idea.
It had been used as a polishing and junk machine until I came along. It
had
been poorly cared for, almost never wiped or oiled. I was quite
surprised
to have it turn out as well as it did. Once it got wiped and oiled
routinely it had a pretty nice feel. A far cry from the first time I
ran
it, when it was stiff as could be.

I'll bet. Did it have the flame-hardened ways? Mine does, and
I suspect that is one reason that it shows so little wear. (The bed
turret is a second contributing factor, of course.)

Funny, I recall it did have hardened ways, but only when you asked.

Like you, I have a bed turret for my Graziano, but use it only infrequently.
I believe we've had a similar conversation before and I mentioned that my
turret was screwed up from it's first day, so it doesn't perform well. I
like having it and have used it in small production operations. By making
good setups you can even cock die heads, so many sequences of operation can
be accomplished without ever touching anything but the four arms of the hand
wheel. I intend to cast a new head for the turret and re-machine the
body so the indexing pin is concentric. That's the problem I have with it
now, so the holes do not line up properly. As the indexing pin has worn,
it has worsened. Had the pin been on location, it wouldn't have worn
unevenly.

Can't even remember how
fast the spindle ran, but it had the collet setup

What size collets? Perhaps 3C? (good up to 1/2" or perhaps 5/8"
I guess.) Mine handles the 5C comfortably, and has the lever style
closer.

It had the 5C collet. I trained and used the 1J collets at Sperry, so
assumed they were the norm. Even the three Hardinge lathes they had used
the 1J. It was interesting to run into the 5C. Didn't take me long to
figure out that the 1J was the anomaly when I started shopping for collets
for my own machine, though. Interestingly, the only place I've ever seen
the 1J was at Sperry, where they also had the Sjogren collet chucks for the
larger machines, only using the 2J series of collets.

the EE, but I sure do like the Graziano. In a way, it's a better choice
for a guy with only one lathe.

I'm quite happy with my Clausing most of the time. There are
times when I would like to have the continuously-variable speed (which I
will get when I put the three-phase motor and the VFD into it), and
there are times when I would like a bit more swing,

In a nut shell, that's why I like the Graziano. They are built strangely,
with a natural gap, so the Sag 12 (my machine) can swing 17-1/2". It's a
light machine for such a swing, but when used to it's rated capacity, it's
quite a tough machine. For that odd occasion when you must turn something
large, you slow down and take lighter cuts.

but most of the time
it is quite satisfactory. And I have the little Compact-5/CNC for
things like metric threads, and other repetitive small work, and the
Taig and the Unimat SL-1000 for the very small work. Each has its
benefits.

Agreed. I think if a person had a dozen lathes or mills, there would often
be one machine that had features that made it more desirable to use for
specific functions than the others. If I had unlimited funds and could
find one, I'd love to own a little Levin lathe. I was shocked when years
ago I inquired and found that they were much like buying an EE. They made
a nice little turret type machine, obviously table top variety, and cost, as
I recall something like $20,000. So much for that idea.

It was equipped with a KDK tool post, which
has never been a favorite of mine.

Is that the one with the ribbed post and matching ribs on the
tool holders, which can lock up at 15 degree intervals? I've seen
them,
but never used one.

No, and I'm not familiar with the one you describe. The KDK was similar
to
the typical insert type tool post, only it had a small handle that was
thrown (vertically) to lock or unlock the tool blocks. As I recall it
had a
dovetail type lock, and the handle operated the gib, so to speak. At any
rate, when the handle was thrown, the dovetails tightened up.

Did it have two dovetails -- one for turning and one for
facing/boring? The location of the lever suggests that it has only the
one dovetail.

You got my curiosity up, so I did a quick search and found that they are
still in business. Here's a link.
http://www.kdktools.com/

As you suggest, they have only one dovetail. I was never unhappy with the
holder, I just preferred the OK Rubber Welders type.


The Compact-5 has yet another style of quick-change. There are
two male 'V's on the turning and the facing/boring sides of the post,
and corresponding female 'V's on the tool holders. Between the 'V's on
the post there is a T-head on a cam which engages a T-slot in the tool
holder. When you operate the cam, the tool holder is pulled firmly
against the toolpost, so you get a good rigid setup. Of course, each
holder has its own height adjustment, so you can change tools without
having to worry about center height.

That system sounds very much like the one that came with my hydraulic
duplicator for the Graziano. It, too, was made in Italy, and is called a
Duplomatic. I like the head for the tracer, where you don't do any
changing. I used the tracer for production runs so once the setup was
made it rarely got changed until the run was finished. As long as I don't
have to handle the holders, I'm a happy camper.


I prefer a square toolpost (OK Rubber
Welders, specifically), although they tend to be limiting for complex
setups.

And the name does not inspire confidence in their rigidity,
though I suspect that they in reality are very rigid. :-)


Like you, the name always made me come up short. Interestingly, they are a
very nicely built head and very rigid. The body is heat treated well and
the serrations have stayed very sharp. The only complaint I have had with
using them is that it's fairly easy to get fine chips inside, where they can
interfere with indexing precision. Once you know, it's no big deal to make
certain it's clean.


One regular on the newsgroup keeps each tool with the associated
shims in a pill bottle. That makes for fairly quick setup.

Yeah, I recall reading his post, and have communicated with him often. He's
a remarkable guy with considerable talent. I like his idea of storing the
tools and shims as a unit, but I'd have to have one hell of a large cabinet
if I was actively machining. I found it just as easy to trust to memory for
shim size. I guess it's all in what you get used to.

Agreed -- and when I was using the machine at work with the
4-way toolpost -- the shop was new, and we didn't have shims around, so
I had to cut some out of aluminum and whatever else was near the right
thickness, using the DiAcro metal shear. :-) When the machinist in
charge of the shop ordered and got the Aloris quick-change toolpost, I
fell in love with it. :-)

I can see how the Aloris looked pretty good after chasing shims.

One of the great sources for shims is using metal banding. It comes in
various thicknesses and is already a nice width. I have aluminum shims that
are 1/8" and 1/16", then a generous supply of shim stock or feeler gage
shims, and lots of banding shims. In a pinch I'll even use a layer of
paper if I must, although that's not my preferred shim.

O.K. -- with the Aloris style, I normally don't change the
setting of the post (unless I change the compound angle, in which case I
re-square it with the ways and chuck face). For different angles of
cut, I use different tools, pre designed for that angle.

That's one of the advantages of having tool holders. The way I use my tool
block, I never worry about it being square with the ways, although I don't
like the back side to be closer to the chuck than the front side. It's too
easy to be watching the tool and hit the jaws on the head that way.
Because I change tools instead of replace holders, how they mount is
determined at setup time.

I do have one
tool holder with multiple rows of setscrews which would allow mounting a
tool at a strange angle, though what I intend it for is next time I go
into production mode on the microphone adaptors. I should be able to
mount two tools in it -- one to groove the runout groove for the
external threads, and the other to part off the previous workpiece, all
in a single pass.

When involved in production, little steps like that can yield considerable
time savings. That's not a bad idea. I can see that the first cut would
be the parting, the second the groove depth.



Agreed -- though you are still limited to a maximum of four
tools at a given setup. With the Aloris style post, I can have any
length sequence of tools I need. Let's see:

1) Parting (and grooving)

2) Turning OD to shoulder

3) OD threading

4) beveling edge

5) facing end

6) Boring ID

7) ID threading

I can picture using all of these on a single project -- and
making multiples of a given workpiece. And that is ignoring
project-specific form tools.

With some creativity, you can actually mount more than four tools (in a
square head), although one of them may be nothing more than a chamfering
tool.

To get around the above sequence with fewer tools, what you do is call upon
some tools to perform multiple service. For example, I'd turn, face and
chamfer with the same tool. You can do that with the OK type holder because
it is capable of indexing in 3 degree increments.

Where you lose positions is going from OD to ID work, however. Once you've
mounted tools in both directions, unless you have very short shanks, you
often can't use both ends of the block. They have definite negatives
compared to the replaceable types. I can honestly say that there have been
times when I wished I had a KDK or Aloris for a given job. Now that I'm
retired, I don't really much care because time is no longer very important
to me in that regard.

But I guess that you could have two bodies for your four-way,
and swap them in mid project, so you could handle up to eight tools at
once. I would probably put all the boring/facing ones on one turret,
and the OD turning/threading and parting ones on another one.

That would have been the best of all worlds for me, although I'm not sure I
ever considered the idea. It doesn't take very long to change the head,
it's just about four turns of the handle and it's off. I can see that if
one was running a complex part and insisted on using such a head, that would
be a slick way to increase tool positions.


In a nut shell, I like the advantage of having unlimited tool holders,
which
makes a machine much more flexible. I guess the one thing I don't like
is
having to handle them. You do get used to it, though, and it would be
dead
easy to go from a lantern type toolpost to *any* device that allowed you
to
actually make a setup. In all honesty, there's no way in hell you'd
catch
me running with a lantern toolpost. I like the flexibility, but they
suck
when it comes to any kind of repetition, as you well know.

Indeed so. They also have the *dis*advantage of flexibility too.
They are not nearly as rigid as a good block form toolpost. (Though I
guess using a raw HSS tool ground to shape without a holder might offer
a bit more rigidity.

I'd forgotten the lack of rigidity when using the lantern type holders. My
little Craftsman had the lantern type holder, but the tool mounted directly
on top of the rocker, so it was far more rigid than the 1/2-20 spindle,which
I bent trying to part an item. It's pretty easy to see that the evolution
of indexing heads, or multiple heads came only when we were able to use
cutting tools that had longevity. Did it really matter if you couldn't
mark your dials when you were forced to use carbon steel cutting tools? I
dare say that in a production facility, one spent one hell of a lot of time
sharpening tools instead of using them. Where would we be without HSS and
carbide?


Harold