On 2008-03-29, Bill Schwab wrote:
Hello all,

It's here; it actually arrived yesterday. The arrival was not nearly
the big deal it could have been, thanks to a terrific driver and a
pallet jack.

I *know* I asked about the dials. They have both imperial and metric
labels on separate "sub-rings" that are staggered, and with staggered
pointers, but I still strongly suspect that it is an imperial machine;

Hmm ... the *nice* way to do this is what Hardinge did.
Planetary gears which cause the metric dial to rotate at a different
rate than the imperial dial, so both can be set up for a full turn of
the dial translating into a convenient figure.

the thread selections are strongly tilted toward imperial. When US
hardware stores switch, I'll _think_ about doing mechanics in metric
units

It is nice to be able to do both -- one of the reasons that I
like the Emco-Maier Compact-5/CNC -- just flip one switch to move from
imperial to metric or back.

BTW, the metric units for heat transfer beat the daylights out
of BTUs and friends - no argument there.

Back to the lathe. I will check the screws against an indicator, but
one thing that is clear is that they are 0.125/rev vs. the 0.1/rev I was
told to expect. Somehow I suspect it won't bother me as much as it
would on a mill. I like being able to pick off the last two digits to
get the dial reading; it seems as though I could easily adapt to
0.2/rev, but 0.125????

O.K. It sounds like an 8 TPI leadscrew. The thing to check is
whether either of the dials have a slight gap between the top-most
figure and zero. An 8 TPI dial is not bad when you are dealing with
fractional inches (it is 1/8" per turn, after all), but easy to make a
mistake in when you are working with decimal inches longer than 0.125".

As I said -- check whether both dials wrap around fully. I've
seen some which were perfect in metric units, but were something a
little over the fractional inch one, which can *really* add errors if
you trust them to add 0.125" per turn. Let's see -- 0.125" should work
out to 3.175mm per turn. 3.125mm (a somewhat more reasonable value)
works out to 0.123" per turn. 3.250mm works out to 0.128" per turn,
0.003" over the 1/8". So -- find out which scale does not wrap fully
and you will know that it is a leadscrew cut in the other system.

If you are going to work exclusively in imperial, I would
seriously complain to the vendor. Was the story that it was 0.100" per
turn over the phone, or in e-mail? If the latter, print it out and save
it for use in your debates with the vendor. It should be possible to
get a replacement dial, leadscrew and nut (if they are made for the
machine) and swap them in.

I know many of you say it comes naturally, and
you are typically bang on right;

No -- I say that this increases the chances of making errors.
You might want to set up a bracket for a dial indicator to measure
crossfeed -- and spend the extra for a dial indicator with a longer
travel than usual. I know that I've got one by Starrett which will
handle 5" travel (or is it 6" -- I would have to go down and check to be
sure.)

I still think it would bother me. No
DROs please. I'm too cheap first offg, and secondly I recently did
some RT work that I probably could not have done had I not practiced
with scales and dials. The manual approach works for me. I admit to
sometimes printing and cutting templates from 1:1 drawings to help
locate features when things get tricky.

The long-travel dial indicators can make a nice substitute for a
DRO -- and a *lot* more affordable. :-) (But, it is more difficult to
zero quickly when touching off on a part.)

Note that my Clausing had been modified by a previous owner with
a mount for the dial indicator near the back, and a bracket for a length
of 1/8" drill rod on the front to make an adjustable pusher. Set it
somewhere close and zero the dial indicator to finish it. This has the
advantage of being working accurately even when the cross-feed leadscrew
is badly worn -- as it was when I received the lathe.

Gently prodding some of the headstock levers, they appear to be a little
stubborn at times. Hopefully I have been clever enough to avoid
breaking it, but let me know if I should be worried about levers that
appear not to want to move to specific positions. I am assuming that
much of it is gear teeth in the way, and that one would move the spindle
to obtain favorable alignment???

Exactly -- or with a lathe too stiff and heavy to move easily by
hand, there would be a "jog" button to start it spinning slowly. So you
hit the jog button, wait for things to slow almost to as top, and shift
the gears.

I have yet to put power to it; there
are wiring puzzles to ponder before I can safely do that. I have
hydraulic oil on hand, but have yet to transfer the 3 GALLONS it is
supposed to hold ~:0

Can you remove the top of the headstock before you do this? it
might let you look for sand and bubbles of paint which might hide sand
before you commit to actually using the hydraulic oil. Better to find
and clean out such things *before* the oil gets poured in. (There is
probably a film of oil there from when it was tested before being
shipped -- and they drained the oil prior to shipping. Maybe they use
the same batch of oil (adding a little to make up for what stayed behind
when it was drained) for each machine they test.

The 4-jaw chuck is quite nice - it looks about as well-made as my
Phase-II RT, which is saying something. Overall, the lathe looks like a
very stocky machine. From the little I have seen of the cross and
compound, they look nicely assembled - cosmoline everywhere, but no
obvious grit yet.

Good -- though the grit normally does not show until you
disassemble things.

What I believe to be the face plate is (if I gave it a fair shake with a
quick inspection) not a thing of beauty, but it should serve. Is that
for the lathe analog of clamping to a mill table?

That depends. It could be a faceplate, or a dog driver plate.
A faceplate would have skinny slots to accept bolts or T-nuts, and would
probably have four or six of them -- perhaps with some T-slots which
extend out to the outside edge as well depending. The dog driver might
have just one slot, or two -- one extending through the outside diameter
and the other going from near the hub about half way out, depending.
These slots are to accept the tail of a bent-tail dog, and are likely to
be wider than would be reasonable to retain bolts or T-nuts.

Dare I ask how to do
precision setups on it?

With toolmaker's buttons. You start on a surface plate and
scribe two intersecting lines at the location of the center of your
desired feature. The drill and tap it for the screw which comes with
the toolmaker's buttons. (They are typically a set containing one tall
button and several shorter ones.) Anyway -- after the button is in
approximate location, it is time to take it back to the surface plate and
move the cylindrical part of the button to the right position -- both
vertical and horizontal -- thus requiring rotating the workpiece on the
surface plate. It also requires you to define two edges at right angles
to be the reference edges, and one or the other of these will be down on
the plate at any time you are setting the button. You then tighten the
screw which holds the button and proceed to the next location. The
extra-tall button is for the situation where there are two features
close together. You work on the taller one first then remove it and
work on the shorter one adjacent to it.

As to *how* you work on it -- you secure the workpiece to the
faceplate with clamps through the slots (similar to clamps used on a
milling machine table, except that you need to bear in mind balance too,
so you wind up adding bolts with a stack of washers to counter-weight
the load already on the plate. Anyway -- the clamps are kept a little
loose, so you can move the workpiece with taps from a soft-headed
hammer. Move the workpiece so the first button is close to on center,
then follow it with a DTI as you rotate the spindle by hand adjusting
the position until the button shows no runout all the way around. Clamp
down firmly, make sure that this has not moved the workpiece, then
remove the button and machine the feature there. You can also use the
buttons in a milling machine, with a DTI rotated with the spindle around
the button to get the button aligned with the axis. When you finish
that feature, loosen the clamps and move the workpiece to bring the next
feature under the DTI and center that one before clamping (and
balancing) again. Remember -- the more out of balance the faceplate
is, the slower you will have to run to keep the lathe from dancing
around the floor.

Note that CNC has replaced toolmaker's buttons for many shops,
so look for them on eBay. Hmm ... not too expensive in the Starrett
catalog. There are two sets -- 494A (0.300" diameter) and 494C (0.500"
diameter). Respective prices in 1998 were $35.45 and $39.70. Tap for
the thread is 5-40. The tall one is 5/8" high, and the other three are
1/2" high.

I suspect that most of my work will start out
held in the chucks. A few years from now, when I start spending money
againg, I will look for a 5C setup of some sort.

O.K. The faceplate work is for awkward shaped castings, which
may also need support blocks under certain parts. It is not often
needed, but when it is, nothing else will work.

That's about all the crowing I have time to do right now - gotta go to
work in the morning. However, I will pick up with questions later. For
now, the lathe is safely in my garage, the crate is removed, and the
lathe sits on a skid (I guess that is what one would call it???) on top
of a pallet. Standing at the headstock end, the lathe is against the
right side of the pallet. So, I am thinking of cribbing the skid just
enough to unload the pallet, at which point I think I will be able to
break away the pallet and straddle the lathe/skid with my hoist and
sling the lathe. I promise not to burn bridges until I measure it. The
only problem I see is that from the tailstock end, the skid is not
sticking out very far, leaving what appears to be an angled bottom
surface. Would you recommend cribbing that end "inside the pallet," or
would you simply crib the pallet enough to get the hoist legs under it.

I don't have enough of a mental picture of this to be able to
offer advice.

Cribbing just the skid would save a fair amount of lifting distance,
provided it works.

How does this give the legs of the engine host access?

However, maybe I need the practice with cribbing
anyway. Having the pallet adds lateral stability (I hope!), so it might
be a good option until the lathe is balanced on the slings.

Yes -- it is a source of stability.

Comments? The lathe (or life - foot for sure) you save could be my own.

I haven't yet read the other followups so I don't know. Perhaps
someone with better experience in moving what you have will have jumped
in.

Good Luck,
DoN.

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