Ed Huntress wrote:
"David Billington" wrote in message
...

Ignoramus14738 wrote:

I was just wondering if anyone who has a lathe capable of using a
quick change toolpost like Aloris, would still have any reason to ever
need a lantern toolpost.
My feeling on this matter, without knowing too much, is that lantern
toolposts are obsolete and quick change is the way to go, and there is
never a reason to use these old style tools.

Would there be anyone who disagrees with this.

i


I've been machining stuff, mostly as an amateur, since about 1977-1978
when I did metal shop in junior high when I was 12- 13 and have only used
lantern tool posts in the US. Been living in the UK since 1982 and the
lantern types always seemed a PITA and have never needed one for anything
I've done in the last 28 years. Apart from indexing 4 way toolposts that
needed shimming I've almost always used Dickson type toolposts in the UK
or IIRC the Swiss type fitted to some UK Hardinges which have a similar
height adjustment. Both my current lathes have Dickson or Bison knock off
toolposts.

The main odd ball toolpost attachment I've run across was a local
machinist that had a Bridgeport M head fitted to the cross-slide of his
lathe. He had the head and had a requirement for a helical passage on a
hydraulic heat exchanger. The heat exchanger comprised a heavy wall tube
with one fluid flowing down the centre and another in the helical outer
passage, it had a shaeth. He used a lathe about 20" - 24" IIRC and mounted
the Bridgeport M head on the carriage and then did thread cutting as
normal, with a very coarse pitch, but with a milling head doing the
cutting. Impressive and worked a treat.


When I was involved with a machine shop, back in '73 - '78, we mounted a
Bridgeport J head, vertically, onto the bed of our Sheldon 1710H NC lathe.
We rigged a table on the cross-slide and used it to mill batches of parts,
24 in a setup, IIRC, under control of the Bendix 5 NC. Programming was an
interesting trick. g But it worked very well, and I wrote an article about
it for _NC Shopowner_ magazine.

We couldn't afford a CNC mill yet. That came a couple of years later.



Shame you don't, or haven't, posted pictures, that would be interesting
to see.

This chap, it was his shop, unfortunately had a bit of a distrust of
things electrickery and had no DROs on any tools, he had a couple of
mills that would have benefited from them. When he was attending one of
my neighbours party, old friends from Stottert & Pitt, he popped round
to check out the Sony DRO reading on my BP against the dials, spot on,
but he had a distrust, a real shame.He was claimed prematurely by
cancer. He specialised in spline cutting, keyways, gears. He ran a
number of Fellows gear shapers. His only foray into CNC that I'm aware
of was the acquisition of an old CNC Beaver mill with Fanuc control and
4th axis that was used to do an order for prime number master gears. I
think he knew his stuff but in that case he was hoping for help from
his computer literate son that helped but didn't want to take on the
business.