"Doug White" wrote in message
...
Thanks to the suggestions on a machining problem I posed in another
thread,
it looks like I need to buy myself a live center. My lathe is an Emco
Maier Super 11, which has a #2 Morse taper. It was bought new & babied
since, so it's capable of doing very accurate work.

There are quite a few options, with a pretty wide range of prices. I
could
go with a $40 dual bearing model with no specified accuracy, up to a
kilobuck for a Royal toolmakers set with interchangeable points and a TIR
of 0.00005".

I don't mind spending a few hundred bucks but I'd like to make sure I get
the most bang for those bucks. I'm leary of Chinese stuff unless I get
more than annecdotal info that a certain brand is OK. I like the idea of
interchangeable points, but assume you have to pay serious bucks to
maintain accuracy with such a setup.

The floor is open..

Thanks!

Doug White

For the project you asked about I don't think the cheap one will give you
any fits. Any wobble it does have can be quelled with a little rubber* but
you probably don't even need to worry about that.

MSC has a "value" cheapie for about $20, and since you have gone several
years without needing one at all you probably won't get that much use out of
a super expensive one to justify the bigger price.

http://www1.mscdirect.com/CGI/NNSRIT...ode=%50epcode=

This would also give you a balance of $180 to spend on other tools.

Roger Shoaf

About the time I had mastered getting the toothpaste back in the tube, then
they come up with this striped stuff.

* A rubber washer or a piece of sheet rubber placed between the plastic and
the plate will allow a bit of wobble in the live center but the part will
still be concentric with the indexing pin in the driven side of the
equation. All the pusher plate does is hold the blank against the driven
mandrel with enough force to keep it from slipping while you cut. Given the
light cuts you will be taking for this project it will not require that much
pressure.