Someone asked that I publish photos of the Royal 5C collet holder that
came with my Clausing 5914 lathe, to help in the home-shop manufacture
of a replacement. I also measured the major dimensions with a caliper
and documented them in the text file.

I have posted the photos on the dropbox at the following locations:

http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder.txt
http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder_1.JPG
http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder_2.JPG
http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder_3.JPG
http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder_4.JPG
http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder_5.JPG

The photos are 1.7 Mbytes each, and are pretty clear.

Joe Gwinn

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

Someone asked that I publish photos of the Royal 5C collet holder that
came with my Clausing 5914 lathe, to help in the home-shop manufacture
of a replacement. I also measured the major dimensions with a caliper
and documented them in the text file.

I have posted the photos on the dropbox at the following locations:


Thanks Joe, that was me. Yes, I think I'll make mine out of CI or steel.
Thanks for indicating that yours is AL, I kept looking at the pictures and
thinking that isn't cast iron. (Finally I read the notes )

I see your collet pin is missing from your adaptor. Mine is sheared. Have
you toyed with putting a new one in? I've lived with a bridgeport with/out
one for ages so I suspect I'll live w/o one in the lathe too.

So are the threads being damaged pulling out the collet adaptor? From the
looks of things the nose protector is also used to pull the collet adaptor.

A ruler in the picture is priceless!

I made a bit more progress on reparing my driven hub sheave in the last week
for my 6903.

http://wess.freeshell.org/clausing/d...ont_newhub.jpg
http://wess.freeshell.org/clausing/d...ear_newhub.jpg

Thanks again,

Wes

In article , Wes
wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

Someone asked that I publish photos of the Royal 5C collet holder that
came with my Clausing 5914 lathe, to help in the home-shop manufacture
of a replacement. I also measured the major dimensions with a caliper
and documented them in the text file.

I have posted the photos on the dropbox at the following locations: ...

Thanks Joe, that was me. Yes, I think I'll make mine out of CI or steel.
Thanks for indicating that yours is AL, I kept looking at the pictures and
thinking that isn't cast iron. (Finally I read the notes )

Of course not. It's a really really bright kind of steel. And very
light. But weak.


I see your collet pin is missing from your adaptor. Mine is sheared. Have
you toyed with putting a new one in? I've lived with a bridgeport with/out
one for ages so I suspect I'll live w/o one in the lathe too.

There was a sheared-off stub that I punched out when I cleaned things up.

When I suggested to the guy at Royal's Tech Support that I'd do without
the pin (based on my experience with R8 mill spindles), he countered
that it could be a real problem in a lathe if the collet unscrewed and
loosened, releasing the workpiece while being machined. So, I'm tempted
to replace the pin, which he suggested that I make from soft mild steel
wire. It does not look difficult or expensive. Nor is precision
required -- it's almost blacksmithing.

That said, I doubt that I'll be anywhere near aggressive enough to
unscrew the collet anytime soon. But it would make a mess.


So are the threads being damaged pulling out the collet adaptor? From the
looks of things the nose protector is also used to pull the collet adaptor.

Yes, that's exactly the problem. I don't think I'd make the nose out of
cast iron either, as I bet CI threads will also fracture if the nose is
used for forcing the holder out of the spindle taper. CI is just too
brittle. I would also change the design, reducing the space between the
back of the holder and the face of the nose such that more threads are
engaged during the forcing operation. On my unit, the gap is worth at
least one turn of the screw.

The Royal fellow suggested a cylindrical bar and a hammer, applied from
the back, to get the holder out. I used a piece of 1" black iron pipe
as the bar, and banged it with a steel hammer to pop the holder loose.
The 1" pipe has an OD of about 1.25", which is adequate, but a little
loose in the 1-3/8" spindle bore.

Actually, I did both: I tensioned it by using the nose to apply some
force to the holder, and then banged on the back of the holder with the
pipe and hammer.

If one uses a solid bar, it should weigh as much as the hammer head, for
best transfer of momentum upon striking. One wants to do this in a
single hammer strike, so we don't batter the spindle. So no undersized
hammers need apply.


A ruler in the picture is priceless!

Yes. I don't know why people leave the ruler out. It's not like we
don't have many such rulers scattered about our shops.


I made a bit more progress on reparing my driven hub sheave in the last week
for my 6903.

http://wess.freeshell.org/clausing/d...ont_newhub.jpg
http://wess.freeshell.org/clausing/d...ear_newhub.jpg

Did you machine these from raw stock?


Joe Gwinn

On 2008-01-29, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article , Wes
wrote:

[ ... ]

I see your collet pin is missing from your adaptor. Mine is sheared. Have
you toyed with putting a new one in? I've lived with a bridgeport with/out
one for ages so I suspect I'll live w/o one in the lathe too.

There was a sheared-off stub that I punched out when I cleaned things up.

O.K.

When I suggested to the guy at Royal's Tech Support that I'd do without
the pin (based on my experience with R8 mill spindles), he countered
that it could be a real problem in a lathe if the collet unscrewed and
loosened, releasing the workpiece while being machined. So, I'm tempted
to replace the pin, which he suggested that I make from soft mild steel
wire. It does not look difficult or expensive. Nor is precision
required -- it's almost blacksmithing.

That said, I doubt that I'll be anywhere near aggressive enough to
unscrew the collet anytime soon. But it would make a mess.

It probably is not too much of a problem if you have a short
enough headstock so you can hold the collet in place with one hand while
you unscrew the drawbar with the other, but sometimes the collet threads
can be a bit difficult to turn in the drawbar. In particular, I found a
5C-mount 4-jaw chuck (about 4" IIRC) to be particularly tight in my
drawbar. (Chinese manufacture, of course.)

However -- if you have a lever style collet closer, the closer
is locked to a toothed disc on the end of the spindle (once set), and
the assumption is that the collet will also not turn while you're
changing parts. Otherwise, the tightness of the collet when you lock up
will vary -- as well as perhaps the collet being too tight in the
released mode so you can't get stock into it.

My adaptor has the pin, and if it did not, I would make one to
fit it.


So are the threads being damaged pulling out the collet adaptor? From the
looks of things the nose protector is also used to pull the collet adaptor.

Yes, that's exactly the problem. I don't think I'd make the nose out of
cast iron either, as I bet CI threads will also fracture if the nose is
used for forcing the holder out of the spindle taper. CI is just too
brittle. I would also change the design, reducing the space between the
back of the holder and the face of the nose such that more threads are
engaged during the forcing operation. On my unit, the gap is worth at
least one turn of the screw.

I think that mine is about the same -- perhaps a bit less, but
it has shown no problems so far. Perhaps yours was dropped too often in
its prior life, which could start the end threads cracking, and leave
too few for the ejection function later.

The Royal fellow suggested a cylindrical bar and a hammer, applied from
the back, to get the holder out. I used a piece of 1" black iron pipe
as the bar, and banged it with a steel hammer to pop the holder loose.
The 1" pipe has an OD of about 1.25", which is adequate, but a little
loose in the 1-3/8" spindle bore.

Actually, I did both: I tensioned it by using the nose to apply some
force to the holder, and then banged on the back of the holder with the
pipe and hammer.

If one uses a solid bar, it should weigh as much as the hammer head, for
best transfer of momentum upon striking. One wants to do this in a
single hammer strike, so we don't batter the spindle. So no undersized
hammers need apply.

I've only driven it out *once* -- back with the 2-1/4x8 spindle,
before I figured out what the threaded ring with the pin spanner holes
was for. (It only took once. :-) And that ring was steel.

Hmm ... I've seen the draw-up rings with differing lengths.
Perhaps mine has more than yours does, so there is less thread engagement
when you use it to pop the adaptor out.

You could turn up a ring which took up most of the gap between
the collet adaptor and the nose protector when fully tightened, and
either put it on before you put the adapter into the spindle, or cut out
enough of it to leave a 'C' which would slip on the assembled
spindle/adaptor combination, so you would use more of the thread
engagement.

A ruler in the picture is priceless!

Yes. I don't know why people leave the ruler out. It's not like we
don't have many such rulers scattered about our shops.

Ideally, it should be both inch and metric, to cover everyone
who looks at the photos.

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-01-29, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article , Wes
wrote:

[ ... ]

I see your collet pin is missing from your adaptor. Mine is sheared. Have
you toyed with putting a new one in? I've lived with a bridgeport with/out
one for ages so I suspect I'll live w/o one in the lathe too.

There was a sheared-off stub that I punched out when I cleaned things up.

O.K.

When I suggested to the guy at Royal's Tech Support that I'd do without
the pin (based on my experience with R8 mill spindles), he countered
that it could be a real problem in a lathe if the collet unscrewed and
loosened, releasing the workpiece while being machined. So, I'm tempted
to replace the pin, which he suggested that I make from soft mild steel
wire. It does not look difficult or expensive. Nor is precision
required -- it's almost blacksmithing.

That said, I doubt that I'll be anywhere near aggressive enough to
unscrew the collet anytime soon. But it would make a mess.

It probably is not too much of a problem if you have a short
enough headstock so you can hold the collet in place with one hand while
you unscrew the drawbar with the other, but sometimes the collet threads
can be a bit difficult to turn in the drawbar. In particular, I found a
5C-mount 4-jaw chuck (about 4" IIRC) to be particularly tight in my
drawbar. (Chinese manufacture, of course.)

However -- if you have a lever style collet closer, the closer
is locked to a toothed disc on the end of the spindle (once set), and
the assumption is that the collet will also not turn while you're
changing parts. Otherwise, the tightness of the collet when you lock up
will vary -- as well as perhaps the collet being too tight in the
released mode so you can't get stock into it.

My adaptor has the pin, and if it did not, I would make one to
fit it.

I'll probably do that when I get the rest of the stuff fixed.


So are the threads being damaged pulling out the collet adaptor? From the
looks of things the nose protector is also used to pull the collet adaptor.

Yes, that's exactly the problem. I don't think I'd make the nose out of
cast iron either, as I bet CI threads will also fracture if the nose is
used for forcing the holder out of the spindle taper. CI is just too
brittle. I would also change the design, reducing the space between the
back of the holder and the face of the nose such that more threads are
engaged during the forcing operation. On my unit, the gap is worth at
least one turn of the screw.

I think that mine is about the same -- perhaps a bit less, but
it has shown no problems so far. Perhaps yours was dropped too often in
its prior life, which could start the end threads cracking, and leave
too few for the ejection function later.

I don't see any marks that would suggest that the nose was ever dropped
hard enough to bust a 6-tpi thread.


The Royal fellow suggested a cylindrical bar and a hammer, applied from
the back, to get the holder out. I used a piece of 1" black iron pipe
as the bar, and banged it with a steel hammer to pop the holder loose.
The 1" pipe has an OD of about 1.25", which is adequate, but a little
loose in the 1-3/8" spindle bore.

Actually, I did both: I tensioned it by using the nose to apply some
force to the holder, and then banged on the back of the holder with the
pipe and hammer.

If one uses a solid bar, it should weigh as much as the hammer head, for
best transfer of momentum upon striking. One wants to do this in a
single hammer strike, so we don't batter the spindle. So no undersized
hammers need apply.

I've only driven it out *once* -- back with the 2-1/4x8 spindle,
before I figured out what the threaded ring with the pin spanner holes
was for. (It only took once. :-) And that ring was steel.

Hmm ... I've seen the draw-up rings with differing lengths.
Perhaps mine has more than yours does, so there is less thread engagement
when you use it to pop the adaptor out.

The length is 1.875" and the diameter is 3.5" (excluding threads). How
long is your nosepiece?


You could turn up a ring which took up most of the gap between
the collet adaptor and the nose protector when fully tightened, and
either put it on before you put the adapter into the spindle, or cut out
enough of it to leave a 'C' which would slip on the assembled
spindle/adaptor combination, so you would use more of the thread
engagement.

I could, although the threads are probably all weakened, judging by the
busted threads. If I made a new nosepiece, I think I would used steel.


A ruler in the picture is priceless!

Yes. I don't know why people leave the ruler out. It's not like we
don't have many such rulers scattered about our shops.

Ideally, it should be both inch and metric, to cover everyone
who looks at the photos.

I have a ruler like that. Very annoying ruler that - always the wrong
scale on the edge you want to use. Maybe it's destined to be a photo
model, despite the total lack of curves.

And Clausing would object - this 1972 machine is all inches all the time.


Joe Gwinn

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-01-29, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article , Wes
wrote:

[ ... ]

I think that mine is about the same -- perhaps a bit less, but
it has shown no problems so far. Perhaps yours was dropped too often in
its prior life, which could start the end threads cracking, and leave
too few for the ejection function later.

I don't see any marks that would suggest that the nose was ever dropped
hard enough to bust a 6-tpi thread.

O.K. Perhaps just age.

[ ... ]

Hmm ... I've seen the draw-up rings with differing lengths.
Perhaps mine has more than yours does, so there is less thread engagement
when you use it to pop the adaptor out.

The length is 1.875" and the diameter is 3.5" (excluding threads). How
long is your nosepiece?

First off -- the length of the draw-up ring from the face of the
headstock is 1.25" That was what I was talking about the length of --
the ring which is captive on the spindle.

Now -- the protective nosepiece:

3.492" (close enough to 3.5" exclusive of the threads.

1.875" over-all length.

The main difference is probably that mine is only about eight
years old or so. I bought it (and the adaptor) new from Royal through
Scott Logan when I got the L-00 spindle and headstock.


You could turn up a ring which took up most of the gap between
the collet adaptor and the nose protector when fully tightened, and
either put it on before you put the adapter into the spindle, or cut out
enough of it to leave a 'C' which would slip on the assembled
spindle/adaptor combination, so you would use more of the thread
engagement.

I could, although the threads are probably all weakened, judging by the
busted threads. If I made a new nosepiece, I think I would used steel.

As might I if I make one now that I have something to show me
what it should look like. :-)

But I would be likely to line it with aluminum for the part
which contacts the spindle nose, so if I am ever careless enough to trap
some chips in there, it will be the spindle nose protector instead of
the spindle nose itself which will get dinged. :-)


A ruler in the picture is priceless!

Yes. I don't know why people leave the ruler out. It's not like we
don't have many such rulers scattered about our shops.

Ideally, it should be both inch and metric, to cover everyone
who looks at the photos.

I have a ruler like that. Very annoying ruler that - always the wrong
scale on the edge you want to use. Maybe it's destined to be a photo
model, despite the total lack of curves.

The wrong scale, and/or reading from the wrong end. :-)

And Clausing would object - this 1972 machine is all inches all the time.

Well ... I have the metric threading gears for it (really for
the 5900, but they should work here, too), but so far I've been able to
do my metric threading either on the Compact-5/CNC (just flip a switch
to 'mm' from 'inch') or with the proper chasers in a geometric die head
on the Clausing -- no leadscrews involved. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-01-29, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article , Wes
wrote:

[ ... ]

Hmm ... I've seen the draw-up rings with differing lengths.
Perhaps mine has more than yours does, so there is less thread engagement
when you use it to pop the adaptor out.

The length is 1.875" and the diameter is 3.5" (excluding threads). How
long is your nosepiece?

First off -- the length of the draw-up ring from the face of the
headstock is 1.25" That was what I was talking about the length of --
the ring which is captive on the spindle.

Now -- the protective nosepiece:

3.492" (close enough to 3.5" exclusive of the threads.

1.875" over-all length.

The main difference is probably that mine is only about eight
years old or so. I bought it (and the adaptor) new from Royal through
Scott Logan when I got the L-00 spindle and headstock.

They sound identical to me.


You could turn up a ring which took up most of the gap between
the collet adaptor and the nose protector when fully tightened, and
either put it on before you put the adapter into the spindle, or cut out
enough of it to leave a 'C' which would slip on the assembled
spindle/adaptor combination, so you would use more of the thread
engagement.

I could, although the threads are probably all weakened, judging by the
busted threads. If I made a new nosepiece, I think I would used steel.

As might I if I make one now that I have something to show me
what it should look like. :-)

But I would be likely to line it with aluminum for the part
which contacts the spindle nose, so if I am ever careless enough to trap
some chips in there, it will be the spindle nose protector instead of
the spindle nose itself which will get dinged. :-)

The spindle is hardened, so a mild steel nose ought to lose the fight.

I already have lots of such dings on the female taper in the spindle and
the male taper on the 5C collet holder. One thing on my list is to
stone the ding-induced bumps away. I have a few ideas:

1. Tapered cone arkansas stone in hand, used on the female tapers.
Flat stone used on the male tapers. Used with hi-spot blue.

2. Mate the pieces by using very fine Clover grit-in-grease to lap away
whatever sticks up.


A ruler in the picture is priceless!

Yes. I don't know why people leave the ruler out. It's not like we
don't have many such rulers scattered about our shops.

Ideally, it should be both inch and metric, to cover everyone
who looks at the photos.

I have a ruler like that. Very annoying ruler that - always the wrong
scale on the edge you want to use. Maybe it's destined to be a photo
model, despite the total lack of curves.

The wrong scale, and/or reading from the wrong end. :-)

Ayup!


And Clausing would object - this 1972 machine is all inches all the time.

Well ... I have the metric threading gears for it (really for
the 5900, but they should work here, too), but so far I've been able to
do my metric threading either on the Compact-5/CNC (just flip a switch
to 'mm' from 'inch') or with the proper chasers in a geometric die head
on the Clausing -- no leadscrews involved. :-)

I will someday want metric threading gears, but first I will learn how
to thread on this lathe. I engaged this function tonight, generating a
10 tpi left-hand shallow thread, The carriage moves rather faster than
is comfortable if one is moving towards the headstock trying to cut a
right-hand thread. I see why people sometimes thread on the back with
the spindle running in reverse.

Joe Gwinn

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

The length is 1.875" and the diameter is 3.5" (excluding threads). How
long is your nosepiece?

First off -- the length of the draw-up ring from the face of the
headstock is 1.25" That was what I was talking about the length of --
the ring which is captive on the spindle.

Now -- the protective nosepiece:

3.492" (close enough to 3.5" exclusive of the threads.

1.875" over-all length.

The main difference is probably that mine is only about eight
years old or so. I bought it (and the adaptor) new from Royal through
Scott Logan when I got the L-00 spindle and headstock.

They sound identical to me.

Yes -- but I expected them to be identical. It was the length
of the captive pull-up ring on the spindle (and thus its number of
available threads) which I was talking about.

[ ... ]

I could, although the threads are probably all weakened, judging by the
busted threads. If I made a new nosepiece, I think I would used steel.

As might I if I make one now that I have something to show me
what it should look like. :-)

But I would be likely to line it with aluminum for the part
which contacts the spindle nose, so if I am ever careless enough to trap
some chips in there, it will be the spindle nose protector instead of
the spindle nose itself which will get dinged. :-)

The spindle is hardened, so a mild steel nose ought to lose the fight.

Are you *sure* that it is hardened? I know that the taper in
the tailstock yields to a No. 3 Morse Taper reamer to clean it up, as I
have done so.

I already have lots of such dings on the female taper in the spindle and
the male taper on the 5C collet holder. One thing on my list is to
stone the ding-induced bumps away. I have a few ideas:

1. Tapered cone arkansas stone in hand, used on the female tapers.

Hmm ... I think that it is likely to wedge and break in the
taper.

Flat stone used on the male tapers. Used with hi-spot blue.

What I will do when I finally get around to cleaning up the
tapers in my lathe is:

1) Mount the taper attachment.

2) Spend a lot of time tuning it to match the internal taper.

3) Mount the toolpost grinder (along with protecting all of the
ways) and use it to clean the inner surface.

4) go back to (2) above, and reset it for the external taper, and
then repeat (3) as well -- with the key removed of course.

2. Mate the pieces by using very fine Clover grit-in-grease to lap away
whatever sticks up.

Mate *which* two pieces? Remember that you have multiple things
which the spindle taper must match, so match lapping would make one
chuck type object fit the spindle, and leave the rest uncertain.

I wish that I could find a 4-1/2 MT finish reamer, and a
matching set of male and female gauges. Then I could be sure that the
taper attachment is set properly, and also properly test the fit of the
spindle's internal taper. It is no fun that every Morse taper is a
little different. (Though IIRC the MT-4-1/2 is the same as one of the
two adjacent tapers, since it came along after the Morse Taper series
had been around for quite a while. -- Nope -- a quick check in
_Machinery's Handbook_ shows that it is precisely the same as the No 7
Morse taper -- so I can't even get away with using the small end of a
No. 5 MT reamer to clean up a stub 4-1/2 MT. :-(

[ ... ]

Well ... I have the metric threading gears for it (really for
the 5900, but they should work here, too), but so far I've been able to
do my metric threading either on the Compact-5/CNC (just flip a switch
to 'mm' from 'inch') or with the proper chasers in a geometric die head
on the Clausing -- no leadscrews involved. :-)

I will someday want metric threading gears, but first I will learn how
to thread on this lathe. I engaged this function tonight, generating a
10 tpi left-hand shallow thread, The carriage moves rather faster than
is comfortable if one is moving towards the headstock trying to cut a
right-hand thread. I see why people sometimes thread on the back with
the spindle running in reverse.

Yep -- 10 TPI is a bit sudden. The slowest belt speed with back
gear on my 5418 makes it doable -- but only with a bit of practice and a
somewhat wider run-out groove.

Start with the tool disengaged and far enough back to handle
clearing any shoulder you might hit, and practice engaging and releasing
the half-nuts until you feel comfortable with it. IIRC, my slowest
spindle speed is 50 RPM -- at least until I add a three-phase motor and
a VFD to it.

By the time we get to about 20 TPI, I can do it at more
reasonable speeds.

But you can cut away from the headstock by mounting the
threading tool upside down -- you don't need to put it in back.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

The length is 1.875" and the diameter is 3.5" (excluding threads). How
long is your nosepiece?

First off -- the length of the draw-up ring from the face of the
headstock is 1.25" That was what I was talking about the length of --
the ring which is captive on the spindle.

Now -- the protective nosepiece:

3.492" (close enough to 3.5" exclusive of the threads.

1.875" over-all length.

The main difference is probably that mine is only about eight
years old or so. I bought it (and the adaptor) new from Royal through
Scott Logan when I got the L-00 spindle and headstock.

They sound identical to me.

Yes -- but I expected them to be identical. It was the length
of the captive pull-up ring on the spindle (and thus its number of
available threads) which I was talking about.

The ring? Now it makes sense. Not that I want to replace or take the
headstock apart just yet.


[ ... ]

I could, although the threads are probably all weakened, judging by the
busted threads. If I made a new nosepiece, I think I would used steel.

As might I if I make one now that I have something to show me
what it should look like. :-)

But I would be likely to line it with aluminum for the part
which contacts the spindle nose, so if I am ever careless enough to trap
some chips in there, it will be the spindle nose protector instead of
the spindle nose itself which will get dinged. :-)

The spindle is hardened, so a mild steel nose ought to lose the fight.

Are you *sure* that it is hardened? I know that the taper in
the tailstock yields to a No. 3 Morse Taper reamer to clean it up, as I
have done so.

Hmm. No, I have not tested it. But I'd bet that it is hardened, given
its manufacture and age. That isn't to say that the spindle will be
glass hard. It's probably hardened for some optimum combination of
toughness and resistance to surface damage. Like dings.


I already have lots of such dings on the female taper in the spindle and
the male taper on the 5C collet holder. One thing on my list is to
stone the ding-induced bumps away. I have a few ideas:

1. Tapered cone arkansas stone in hand, used on the female tapers.

Hmm ... I think that it is likely to wedge and break in the
taper.

I didn't describe it well enough. I'm thinking one of those tapered
half-round stones used by hand, with the spindle rotated only by hand.
The stone would not fill the taper.


Flat stone used on the male tapers. Used with hi-spot blue.

Or the flat side of the tapered half-round stone.


What I will do when I finally get around to cleaning up the
tapers in my lathe is:

1) Mount the taper attachment.

2) Spend a lot of time tuning it to match the internal taper.

3) Mount the toolpost grinder (along with protecting all of the
ways) and use it to clean the inner surface.

4) go back to (2) above, and reset it for the external taper, and
then repeat (3) as well -- with the key removed of course.

I don't yet have a toolpost grinder.

Well, actually I do, a partial kit inherited from my maternal
grandfather. It's a Dumore model 11G, and is too old for Dumore to have
parts. It gets quite hot when operated at internal grinder speeds, and
seems ready to achieve thermal runaway. I haven't figured out what's
wrong just yet, but I don't know that all the parts I have really go
together. The spindle seems too tight when things are fully seated, but
I don't know what a Dumore spindle is supposed to be like.

Does anybody have the patent numbers for the old Dumore toolpost
grinders? I bet the clue is in those patents. In those days, patent
numbers were likely to be in the manual and/or a label. Alternately,
does anyone know the name of the inventor, perhaps also a founder of
Dumore?


2. Mate the pieces by using very fine Clover grit-in-grease to lap away
whatever sticks up.

Mate *which* two pieces? Remember that you have multiple things
which the spindle taper must match, so match lapping would make one
chuck type object fit the spindle, and leave the rest uncertain.

I didn't fully explain. In this approach, one mates a collection of
items to one another in random pairs, thus forcing them to achieve a
common mating-surface shape. It's an extension of the process that one
uses to originate surface plates by scraping three plates into mutual
conformance.

In the present situation, the pieces are already almost in conformance,
and the theory or hope is that the dings will be preferentially ground
off first.


I wish that I could find a 4-1/2 MT finish reamer, and a
matching set of male and female gauges. Then I could be sure that the
taper attachment is set properly, and also properly test the fit of the
spindle's internal taper. It is no fun that every Morse taper is a
little different. (Though IIRC the MT-4-1/2 is the same as one of the
two adjacent tapers, since it came along after the Morse Taper series
had been around for quite a while. -- Nope -- a quick check in
_Machinery's Handbook_ shows that it is precisely the same as the No 7
Morse taper -- so I can't even get away with using the small end of a
No. 5 MT reamer to clean up a stub 4-1/2 MT. :-(

But a MT #7 reamer would work to clean up the female taper in the
spindle? There is certainly enough room in back, deep in the spindle.


[ ... ]

Well ... I have the metric threading gears for it (really for
the 5900, but they should work here, too), but so far I've been able to
do my metric threading either on the Compact-5/CNC (just flip a switch
to 'mm' from 'inch') or with the proper chasers in a geometric die head
on the Clausing -- no leadscrews involved. :-)

I will someday want metric threading gears, but first I will learn how
to thread on this lathe. I engaged this function tonight, generating a
10 tpi left-hand shallow thread, The carriage moves rather faster than
is comfortable if one is moving towards the headstock trying to cut a
right-hand thread. I see why people sometimes thread on the back with
the spindle running in reverse.

Yep -- 10 TPI is a bit sudden. The slowest belt speed with back
gear on my 5418 makes it doable -- but only with a bit of practice and a
somewhat wider run-out groove.

Start with the tool disengaged and far enough back to handle
clearing any shoulder you might hit, and practice engaging and releasing
the half-nuts until you feel comfortable with it. IIRC, my slowest
spindle speed is 50 RPM -- at least until I add a three-phase motor and
a VFD to it.

I do have a VFD, so that may b my solution. The only disadvantage found
so far is that if I engage the 5914 clutch with the motor running, the
power surge required to quickly spin all that metal up to speed causes
the 3-HP VFD to trip, complaining of overcurrent. This, with a 2-HP
motor.

So, I put the lathe in gear before starting, and let the VFD ramp the
speed up, using the clutch only for stopping. I'm getting a "clutch
kickout" block as well. This clamps to the square clutch rod, and
disengages the clutch if the carriage attempts to run past the block.
This will be used to cut down on crashes.


By the time we get to about 20 TPI, I can do it at more
reasonable speeds.

But you can cut away from the headstock by mounting the
threading tool upside down -- you don't need to put it in back.

Ah. This sounds more practical. The crossfeed on the 5914 doesn't seem
long enough for convenient cutting on the back side, especially with
large workpieces.


Joe Gwinn

I won't go into too mush detail here but...

My 5914 came with the Royal lever closer, but no adaptor or nose ring...

FWIW the Royal lever obviously wasn't original equipment on the machine...
the arm that the lever piviots on is "homebrew" and hooked to one of the
cover studs, not back around to the headstock.... even so it works great.

I got an adaptor (NOS, in the box) on FleaBay for $25 and made the nose
cover.

I made my nose cover out of AL. I just measured the LOO spindle and made the
inside of the ring slightly larger so it dosen't 'grab' the taper. I made
SURE it bottomed out on the threaded spindle ring and then did trial and
error fitting on the front till a 0.010 feeler would fit between face of
the nose cover and the back of the MT4.5 - 3 Adaptor It's worked great for
well over a year.

And trust me that lever will pull a collet AND that adaptor in tighter than
.... well you know.. :-)

Oh and yeah get a Royal lever, hand wheels are a joke...

--.- Dave


"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
Someone asked that I publish photos of the Royal 5C collet holder that
came with my Clausing 5914 lathe, to help in the home-shop manufacture
of a replacement. I also measured the major dimensions with a caliper
and documented them in the text file.

I have posted the photos on the dropbox at the following locations:

http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder.txt
http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder_1.JPG
http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder_2.JPG
http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder_3.JPG
http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder_4.JPG
http://metalworking.com/dropbox/Collet_Holder_5.JPG

The photos are 1.7 Mbytes each, and are pretty clear.

Joe Gwinn

"Dave August" wrote:

And trust me that lever will pull a collet AND that adaptor in tighter than
... well you know.. :-)

Oh and yeah get a Royal lever, hand wheels are a joke...

Levers would be nice but most HSM'ers can get by with a hand wheel. Now in
a production situation, levers rule. Money is time.

Wes

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

Yes -- but I expected them to be identical. It was the length
of the captive pull-up ring on the spindle (and thus its number of
available threads) which I was talking about.

The ring? Now it makes sense. Not that I want to replace or take the
headstock apart just yet.

Understood. I'm just wondering how long a thread your ring can
have. IIRC, I measured mine at 1-1/4" OAL from the face of the
headstock, so possibly 1" of thread engagement.

[ ... ]

But I would be likely to line it with aluminum for the part
which contacts the spindle nose, so if I am ever careless enough to trap
some chips in there, it will be the spindle nose protector instead of
the spindle nose itself which will get dinged. :-)

The spindle is hardened, so a mild steel nose ought to lose the fight.

Are you *sure* that it is hardened? I know that the taper in
the tailstock yields to a No. 3 Morse Taper reamer to clean it up, as I
have done so.

Hmm. No, I have not tested it. But I'd bet that it is hardened, given
its manufacture and age. That isn't to say that the spindle will be
glass hard. It's probably hardened for some optimum combination of
toughness and resistance to surface damage. Like dings.

I suspect that it is turned (and finish ground) from a rather
tough steel, but that no attempts to harden it after turning have been
done. That risks warping too much. So -- it should be harder than
12L14, but probably something like 1040 I think.

[ ... ]

1. Tapered cone arkansas stone in hand, used on the female tapers.

Hmm ... I think that it is likely to wedge and break in the
taper.

I didn't describe it well enough. I'm thinking one of those tapered
half-round stones used by hand, with the spindle rotated only by hand.
The stone would not fill the taper.

O.K. Better than I feared. I was reading it as the stone being
a tapered cone.

Flat stone used on the male tapers. Used with hi-spot blue.

Or the flat side of the tapered half-round stone.

O.K.


What I will do when I finally get around to cleaning up the
tapers in my lathe is:

1) Mount the taper attachment.

2) Spend a lot of time tuning it to match the internal taper.

3) Mount the toolpost grinder (along with protecting all of the
ways) and use it to clean the inner surface.

4) go back to (2) above, and reset it for the external taper, and
then repeat (3) as well -- with the key removed of course.

I don't yet have a toolpost grinder.

Well, actually I do, a partial kit inherited from my maternal
grandfather. It's a Dumore model 11G, and is too old for Dumore to have
parts.

Do you have a manual? I do, in PDF format. Mine is a "Series 11"
model 8119.

No patent numbers visible -- either in the manual or on the
machine's motor label.

Do you have the collet for the end of the spindle for the
internal stones? I had to make one of my own.

It gets quite hot when operated at internal grinder speeds, and
seems ready to achieve thermal runaway. I haven't figured out what's
wrong just yet, but I don't know that all the parts I have really go
together. The spindle seems too tight when things are fully seated, but
I don't know what a Dumore spindle is supposed to be like.

My spindle takes almost no effort to turn. I suspect that I
could breathe on the edge of the larger pulley and move it.

I also discovered that my motor bearings are really stiff right
now, but the whole shop is quite cold at present.

Does anybody have the patent numbers for the old Dumore toolpost
grinders? I bet the clue is in those patents. In those days, patent
numbers were likely to be in the manual and/or a label.

Neither in what I have. But there is an exploded drawing of the
spindle in the manual.

I did make (aside from the collet) a new T-nut to fit the
Clausing toolpost.

While I was about it, I also made a collar to speed setting the
grinder at the proper height above the compound. It is stored in the
box with the grinder, of course.

Alternately,
does anyone know the name of the inventor, perhaps also a founder of
Dumore?

I think that the DuMore company has been around a lot longer than
my Series 11 grinder at least -- and *it* is too old to get manuals or
parts from DuMore.


2. Mate the pieces by using very fine Clover grit-in-grease to lap away
whatever sticks up.

Mate *which* two pieces? Remember that you have multiple things
which the spindle taper must match, so match lapping would make one
chuck type object fit the spindle, and leave the rest uncertain.

I didn't fully explain. In this approach, one mates a collection of
items to one another in random pairs, thus forcing them to achieve a
common mating-surface shape. It's an extension of the process that one
uses to originate surface plates by scraping three plates into mutual
conformance.

Note that with the surface plates, you are also expected to
rotate them 90 degrees from time to time during the process. The
orientation here is fixed by the design, so you could wind up with a
concavity or convexity to the spindle nose which would be fine with all
of the mating parts which you have made -- but which would not work
properly with any new acquisitions, requiring you to start the lapping
process from the beginning with each new acquisition. I would not do it
this way.

In the present situation, the pieces are already almost in conformance,
and the theory or hope is that the dings will be preferentially ground
off first.

I would go for a known good reference, and scrape everything to
fit it. This would require finding a MT-4-1/2 gauge pair. I have yet
to see those on eBay -- or I would already have them. :-)

I wish that I could find a 4-1/2 MT finish reamer, and a
matching set of male and female gauges. Then I could be sure that the
taper attachment is set properly, and also properly test the fit of the
spindle's internal taper. It is no fun that every Morse taper is a
little different. (Though IIRC the MT-4-1/2 is the same as one of the
two adjacent tapers, since it came along after the Morse Taper series
had been around for quite a while. -- Nope -- a quick check in
_Machinery's Handbook_ shows that it is precisely the same as the No 7
Morse taper -- so I can't even get away with using the small end of a
No. 5 MT reamer to clean up a stub 4-1/2 MT. :-(

But a MT #7 reamer would work to clean up the female taper in the
spindle? There is certainly enough room in back, deep in the spindle.

I don't think so. Look at your _Machinery's Handbook_.
According to mine, (looking at the dimensions of the gauges for the
different sizes):
Diameter at Diameter at
Taper Large end Small end
==================================================
MT 4-1/2 1.50000" 1.26600
MT-7 3.27000 2.75000

So -- the small end of the MT-7 gauge is 1.250" larger than the
large end of the MT 4-1/2. For that matter, the small end of the MT-7
is closer to the OD of the nose protector instead of the spindle
internal taper. :-)

If the MT-5 taper were the same as the MT-4-1/2, then you could
probably get away with the trick. But a MT-7 is just too big. The
taper alone is 10" long. :-) Frankly, I don't think that I would want to
have to lift a MT-7 gauge -- male or female. I think that the female
would be something like 6" diameter, and add to that the 10" length, and
even with the tapered hole, it would weigh a lot. The weight of the
male gauge would be similar, when you take into account the length and
diameter of the knurled handle.

[ ... ]

I will someday want metric threading gears, but first I will learn how
to thread on this lathe. I engaged this function tonight, generating a
10 tpi left-hand shallow thread, The carriage moves rather faster than
is comfortable if one is moving towards the headstock trying to cut a
right-hand thread. I see why people sometimes thread on the back with
the spindle running in reverse.

Yep -- 10 TPI is a bit sudden. The slowest belt speed with back
gear on my 5418 makes it doable -- but only with a bit of practice and a
somewhat wider run-out groove.

Start with the tool disengaged and far enough back to handle
clearing any shoulder you might hit, and practice engaging and releasing
the half-nuts until you feel comfortable with it. IIRC, my slowest
spindle speed is 50 RPM -- at least until I add a three-phase motor and
a VFD to it.

I do have a VFD, so that may b my solution. The only disadvantage found
so far is that if I engage the 5914 clutch with the motor running, the
power surge required to quickly spin all that metal up to speed causes
the 3-HP VFD to trip, complaining of overcurrent. This, with a 2-HP
motor.

So, I put the lathe in gear before starting, and let the VFD ramp the
speed up, using the clutch only for stopping. I'm getting a "clutch
kickout" block as well. This clamps to the square clutch rod, and
disengages the clutch if the carriage attempts to run past the block.
This will be used to cut down on crashes.

O.K. But try to stop with the half-nuts, not the clutch. That
way you can keep the spindle turning. The only time I have to stop the
spindle is when tapping with a releasing tap holder in the bed turret --
and this is because I need to reverse the spindle to back the tap out.

Having the clutch kickout sounds like a really nice feature.

By the time we get to about 20 TPI, I can do it at more
reasonable speeds.

But you can cut away from the headstock by mounting the
threading tool upside down -- you don't need to put it in back.

Ah. This sounds more practical. The crossfeed on the 5914 doesn't seem
long enough for convenient cutting on the back side, especially with
large workpieces.

Unless you have the cross-slide made for turret work, which has
multiple T-slots for mounting alternate toolposts on the back. This is
usually used for mounting a parting tool upside down, so the chips pour
out of the slot instead of potentially jamming.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

Yes -- but I expected them to be identical. It was the length
of the captive pull-up ring on the spindle (and thus its number of
available threads) which I was talking about.

The ring? Now it makes sense. Not that I want to replace or take the
headstock apart just yet.

Understood. I'm just wondering how long a thread your ring can
have. IIRC, I measured mine at 1-1/4" OAL from the face of the
headstock, so possibly 1" of thread engagement.

I'll measure it next time I have the collet holder out.


But I would be likely to line it with aluminum for the part
which contacts the spindle nose, so if I am ever careless enough to trap
some chips in there, it will be the spindle nose protector instead of
the spindle nose itself which will get dinged. :-)

The spindle is hardened, so a mild steel nose ought to lose the fight.

Are you *sure* that it is hardened? I know that the taper in
the tailstock yields to a No. 3 Morse Taper reamer to clean it up, as I
have done so.

Hmm. No, I have not tested it. But I'd bet that it is hardened, given
its manufacture and age. That isn't to say that the spindle will be
glass hard. It's probably hardened for some optimum combination of
toughness and resistance to surface damage. Like dings.

I suspect that it is turned (and finish ground) from a rather
tough steel, but that no attempts to harden it after turning have been
done. That risks warping too much. So -- it should be harder than
12L14, but probably something like 1040 I think.

Or rough machined, hardened, and ground to final size? But ~1040 steel
is likely in either case.


[snip]

I [Joe] don't yet have a toolpost grinder.

Well, actually I do, a partial kit inherited from my maternal
grandfather. It's a Dumore model 11G, and is too old for Dumore to have
parts.

Do you have a manual? I do, in PDF format. Mine is a "Series 11"
model 8119.

I don't know the model number - the block on the tag is blank.

I'd be interested in a copy of your Model 11 manual. The email above is
real, but this would be a nice addition to the dropbox (if it isn't
already there). Thanks.


No patent numbers visible -- either in the manual or on the
machine's motor label.

Ditto.


Do you have the collet for the end of the spindle for the
internal stones? I had to make one of my own.

It came with at least one collet.


It gets quite hot when operated at internal grinder speeds, and
seems ready to achieve thermal runaway. I haven't figured out what's
wrong just yet, but I don't know that all the parts I have really go
together. The spindle seems too tight when things are fully seated, but
I don't know what a Dumore spindle is supposed to be like.

My spindle takes almost no effort to turn. I suspect that I
could breathe on the edge of the larger pulley and move it.

Mine is a bit stiff to turn, which is probably why it heats up. I
haven't figured out why it is so stiff. If I tighten the bearing caps
down until they seat, the spindle is too tight. If I leave them
unscrewed, they walk off. I suspect that a bearing was not pressed
quite home on the spindle shaft.


I also discovered that my motor bearings are really stiff right
now, but the whole shop is quite cold at present.

Does anybody have the patent numbers for the old Dumore toolpost
grinders? I bet the clue is in those patents. In those days, patent
numbers were likely to be in the manual and/or a label.

Neither in what I have. But there is an exploded drawing of the
spindle in the manual.

OK.


I did make (aside from the collet) a new T-nut to fit the
Clausing toolpost.

While I was about it, I also made a collar to speed setting the
grinder at the proper height above the compound. It is stored in the
box with the grinder, of course.

I'll also have to do this too.

I'm making a new T-nut and spacer for the Dickson style toolpost that
came with the lathe.


Alternately,
does anyone know the name of the inventor, perhaps also a founder of
Dumore?

I think that the DuMore company has been around a lot longer than
my Series 11 grinder at least -- and *it* is too old to get manuals or
parts from DuMore.

I suppose I could ask DuMore. Perhaps some oltdtimer will recall.


2. Mate the pieces by using very fine Clover grit-in-grease to lap away
whatever sticks up.

Mate *which* two pieces? Remember that you have multiple things
which the spindle taper must match, so match lapping would make one
chuck type object fit the spindle, and leave the rest uncertain.

I didn't fully explain. In this approach, one mates a collection of
items to one another in random pairs, thus forcing them to achieve a
common mating-surface shape. It's an extension of the process that one
uses to originate surface plates by scraping three plates into mutual
conformance.

Note that with the surface plates, you are also expected to
rotate them 90 degrees from time to time during the process. The
orientation here is fixed by the design, so you could wind up with a
concavity or convexity to the spindle nose which would be fine with all
of the mating parts which you have made -- but which would not work
properly with any new acquisitions, requiring you to start the lapping
process from the beginning with each new acquisition. I would not do it
this way.

Right. The 90-degree rotations are to prevent the plates from coming to
a common cylindrical surface, versus a plane. The underlying
mathematical trick is to choose motions that collectively exclude all
but the desired surface. This is the key to origination of specified
shapes.


In the present situation, the pieces are already almost in conformance,
and the theory or hope is that the dings will be preferentially ground
off first.

I would go for a known good reference, and scrape everything to
fit it. This would require finding a MT-4-1/2 gauge pair. I have yet
to see those on eBay -- or I would already have them. :-)

I think I'll do hi-spot blue and a hand stone to de-ding the spindle
female taper and the mating collet holder male taper, rotating the
collet in the spindle so the dings cannot nest.

For the female 5C taper, I can use a brand new 5C collet of good
manufacture as a reference.


I wish that I could find a 4-1/2 MT finish reamer, and a
matching set of male and female gauges. Then I could be sure that the
taper attachment is set properly, and also properly test the fit of the
spindle's internal taper. It is no fun that every Morse taper is a
little different. (Though IIRC the MT-4-1/2 is the same as one of the
two adjacent tapers, since it came along after the Morse Taper series
had been around for quite a while. -- Nope -- a quick check in
_Machinery's Handbook_ shows that it is precisely the same as the No 7
Morse taper -- so I can't even get away with using the small end of a
No. 5 MT reamer to clean up a stub 4-1/2 MT. :-(

But a MT #7 reamer would work to clean up the female taper in the
spindle? There is certainly enough room in back, deep in the spindle.

I don't think so. Look at your _Machinery's Handbook_.
According to mine, (looking at the dimensions of the gauges for the
different sizes):
Diameter at Diameter at
Taper Large end Small end
==================================================
MT 4-1/2 1.50000" 1.26600
MT-7 3.27000 2.75000

So -- the small end of the MT-7 gauge is 1.250" larger than the
large end of the MT 4-1/2. For that matter, the small end of the MT-7
is closer to the OD of the nose protector instead of the spindle
internal taper. :-)

That explains it -- it was a cost-saving exercise -- they can use the
cutoffs from making MT #7 males for MT #4.5.


If the MT-5 taper were the same as the MT-4-1/2, then you could
probably get away with the trick. But a MT-7 is just too big. The
taper alone is 10" long. :-) Frankly, I don't think that I would want to
have to lift a MT-7 gauge -- male or female. I think that the female
would be something like 6" diameter, and add to that the 10" length, and
even with the tapered hole, it would weigh a lot. The weight of the
male gauge would be similar, when you take into account the length and
diameter of the knurled handle.

The only solution is to get a taper attachment and make your own.


[snip]

I do have a VFD, so that may be my solution [to scary threading]. The only disadvantage found
so far is that if I engage the 5914 clutch with the motor running, the
power surge required to quickly spin all that metal up to speed causes
the 3-HP VFD to trip, complaining of overcurrent. This, with a 2-HP
motor.

So, I put the lathe in gear before starting, and let the VFD ramp the
speed up, using the clutch only for stopping. I'm getting a "clutch
kickout" block as well. This clamps to the square clutch rod, and
disengages the clutch if the carriage attempts to run past the block.
This will be used to cut down on crashes.

O.K. But try to stop with the half-nuts, not the clutch. That
way you can keep the spindle turning. The only time I have to stop the
spindle is when tapping with a releasing tap holder in the bed turret --
and this is because I need to reverse the spindle to back the tap out.

Having the clutch kickout sounds like a really nice feature.

Especially during early education exercises.


By the time we get to about 20 TPI, I can do it at more
reasonable speeds.

But you can cut away from the headstock by mounting the
threading tool upside down -- you don't need to put it in back.

Ah. This sounds more practical. The crossfeed on the 5914 doesn't seem
long enough for convenient cutting on the back side, especially with
large workpieces.

Unless you have the cross-slide made for turret work, which has
multiple T-slots for mounting alternate toolposts on the back. This is
usually used for mounting a parting tool upside down, so the chips pour
out of the slot instead of potentially jamming.

Ah. I always wondered why upside down helped.

I also wondered what was different about a cross-slide meant for turret
work.


Joe Gwinn

On 2008-02-02, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

The ring? Now it makes sense. Not that I want to replace or take the
headstock apart just yet.

Understood. I'm just wondering how long a thread your ring can
have. IIRC, I measured mine at 1-1/4" OAL from the face of the
headstock, so possibly 1" of thread engagement.

I'll measure it next time I have the collet holder out.

O.K. But you don't need the collet holder out to duplicate the
measurement that I did. I measured the length from the face of the
headstock to the end of the ring, not the internal thread length.

[ ... ]

Are you *sure* that it is hardened? I know that the taper in
the tailstock yields to a No. 3 Morse Taper reamer to clean it up, as I
have done so.

Hmm. No, I have not tested it. But I'd bet that it is hardened, given
its manufacture and age. That isn't to say that the spindle will be
glass hard. It's probably hardened for some optimum combination of
toughness and resistance to surface damage. Like dings.

I suspect that it is turned (and finish ground) from a rather
tough steel, but that no attempts to harden it after turning have been
done. That risks warping too much. So -- it should be harder than
12L14, but probably something like 1040 I think.

Or rough machined, hardened, and ground to final size? But ~1040 steel
is likely in either case.

Yep. Lots of places to grind -- starting with the OD of the
bearing seats. BTW -- I've got evidence that the spindle is *not*
hardened. When you pull the spindle (to change belts) you have to file
off the ding left by the setscrew on the bull gear before re-assembling
it.

[snip]

I [Joe] don't yet have a toolpost grinder.

Well, actually I do, a partial kit inherited from my maternal
grandfather. It's a Dumore model 11G, and is too old for Dumore to have
parts.

Do you have a manual? I do, in PDF format. Mine is a "Series 11"
model 8119.

I don't know the model number - the block on the tag is blank.

Same on mine, FWIW.

I'd be interested in a copy of your Model 11 manual. The email above is
real, but this would be a nice addition to the dropbox (if it isn't
already there). Thanks.

Try going to:

http://www.d-and-d.com/misc/MANUALS/...der_Manual.pdf

Note, BTW, that it is old enough so it has a two-pin power plug and a
separate ground wire. This should give some idea of the age. :-)

[ ... ]

Do you have the collet for the end of the spindle for the
internal stones? I had to make one of my own.

It came with at least one collet.

Good. There was only one for this one, based on the manual. It
is a split collet which screws onto the end of the spindle and accepts a
1/8" shank "point".

[ ... ]

My spindle takes almost no effort to turn. I suspect that I
could breathe on the edge of the larger pulley and move it.

Mine is a bit stiff to turn, which is probably why it heats up. I
haven't figured out why it is so stiff. If I tighten the bearing caps
down until they seat, the spindle is too tight. If I leave them
unscrewed, they walk off. I suspect that a bearing was not pressed
quite home on the spindle shaft.

That is possible. or a bearing is dying.

[ ... ]

I did make (aside from the collet) a new T-nut to fit the
Clausing toolpost.

While I was about it, I also made a collar to speed setting the
grinder at the proper height above the compound. It is stored in the
box with the grinder, of course.

I've just noticed that it is suggested in the manual. :-)

I'll also have to do this too.

I'm making a new T-nut and spacer for the Dickson style toolpost that
came with the lathe.

O.K. So make a spare to fit the rod which comes with the
toolpost grinder. (BTW -- the manual says that it is for up to an 11"
lathe, but I feel quite happy with it on my 12" Clausing.)

Alternately,
does anyone know the name of the inventor, perhaps also a founder of
Dumore?

I think that the DuMore company has been around a lot longer than
my Series 11 grinder at least -- and *it* is too old to get manuals or
parts from DuMore.

I suppose I could ask DuMore. Perhaps some oltdtimer will recall.

Perhaps -- though I think that a few years ago (shortly after I
got the manual for my DuMore Drill grinder) they cleared out the old
manuals -- and perhaps the older employees as well.

[ ... ]

Note that with the surface plates, you are also expected to
rotate them 90 degrees from time to time during the process. The
orientation here is fixed by the design, so you could wind up with a
concavity or convexity to the spindle nose which would be fine with all
of the mating parts which you have made -- but which would not work
properly with any new acquisitions, requiring you to start the lapping
process from the beginning with each new acquisition. I would not do it
this way.

Right. The 90-degree rotations are to prevent the plates from coming to
a common cylindrical surface, versus a plane. The underlying
mathematical trick is to choose motions that collectively exclude all
but the desired surface. This is the key to origination of specified
shapes.

And since you can't rotate the orientation you may wind up with
a negative or positive bow to the taper even with multiple chucks
against one spindle.

In the present situation, the pieces are already almost in conformance,
and the theory or hope is that the dings will be preferentially ground
off first.

I would go for a known good reference, and scrape everything to
fit it. This would require finding a MT-4-1/2 gauge pair. I have yet
to see those on eBay -- or I would already have them. :-)

I think I'll do hi-spot blue and a hand stone to de-ding the spindle
female taper and the mating collet holder male taper, rotating the
collet in the spindle so the dings cannot nest.

Note that the collet adaptor *is* hardened, even though the
spindle is not. So, you should have minimal dings in the adaptor.

For the female 5C taper, I can use a brand new 5C collet of good
manufacture as a reference.

What has happened to the female taper of the adaptor? Given how
hardened they are, I would not expect dings there. Have you checked and
found any? (Granted, mine was acquired new.

I wish that I could find a 4-1/2 MT finish reamer, and a
matching set of male and female gauges. Then I could be sure that the

[ ... ]

But a MT #7 reamer would work to clean up the female taper in the
spindle? There is certainly enough room in back, deep in the spindle.

I don't think so. Look at your _Machinery's Handbook_.

[ ... ]

So -- the small end of the MT-7 gauge is 1.250" larger than the
large end of the MT 4-1/2. For that matter, the small end of the MT-7
is closer to the OD of the nose protector instead of the spindle
internal taper. :-)

That explains it -- it was a cost-saving exercise -- they can use the
cutoffs from making MT #7 males for MT #4.5.

:-)


If the MT-5 taper were the same as the MT-4-1/2, then you could
probably get away with the trick. But a MT-7 is just too big. The
taper alone is 10" long. :-) Frankly, I don't think that I would want to
have to lift a MT-7 gauge -- male or female. I think that the female
would be something like 6" diameter, and add to that the 10" length, and
even with the tapered hole, it would weigh a lot. The weight of the
male gauge would be similar, when you take into account the length and
diameter of the knurled handle.

The only solution is to get a taper attachment and make your own.

I have the taper attachment. The trick is setting the
attachment to the degree of precision suggested by the number if digits
after the decimal point in the Morse taper specs. :-)

[ ... ]

Having the clutch kickout sounds like a really nice feature.

Especially during early education exercises.

:-)

By the time we get to about 20 TPI, I can do it at more
reasonable speeds.

But you can cut away from the headstock by mounting the
threading tool upside down -- you don't need to put it in back.

Ah. This sounds more practical. The crossfeed on the 5914 doesn't seem
long enough for convenient cutting on the back side, especially with
large workpieces.

Unless you have the cross-slide made for turret work, which has
multiple T-slots for mounting alternate toolposts on the back. This is
usually used for mounting a parting tool upside down, so the chips pour
out of the slot instead of potentially jamming.

Ah. I always wondered why upside down helped.

Of course, it also allows a rear-mounted parting tool to work
without having to run the spindle in reverse.

I also wondered what was different about a cross-slide meant for turret
work.

That is is. Typically the parting tool is kept on the rear
toolpost, and some other tool (perhaps a bevel tool or whatever is
needed -- perhaps multiple ones in a turret toolpost -- kept on the
front toolpost. (For a large enough production run, a turret style
toolpost can be worth the time to set it up. In the meanwhile, the bed
turret can carry an amazing array of tools doing things which you would
normally do with the normal toolpost. You can even have it turning two
diameter steps on the workpiece at the same time with the right tools.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-02, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

The ring? Now it makes sense. Not that I want to replace or take the
headstock apart just yet.

Understood. I'm just wondering how long a thread your ring can
have. IIRC, I measured mine at 1-1/4" OAL from the face of the
headstock, so possibly 1" of thread engagement.

I'll measure it next time I have the collet holder out.

O.K. But you don't need the collet holder out to duplicate the
measurement that I did. I measured the length from the face of the
headstock to the end of the ring, not the internal thread length.

It's a hair under 15/16 of an inch: 0.926".


Are you *sure* that it is hardened? I know that the taper in
the tailstock yields to a No. 3 Morse Taper reamer to clean it up, as I
have done so.

Hmm. No, I have not tested it. But I'd bet that it is hardened, given
its manufacture and age. That isn't to say that the spindle will be
glass hard. It's probably hardened for some optimum combination of
toughness and resistance to surface damage. Like dings.

I suspect that it is turned (and finish ground) from a rather
tough steel, but that no attempts to harden it after turning have been
done. That risks warping too much. So -- it should be harder than
12L14, but probably something like 1040 I think.

Or rough machined, hardened, and ground to final size? But ~1040 steel
is likely in either case.

Yep. Lots of places to grind -- starting with the OD of the
bearing seats. BTW -- I've got evidence that the spindle is *not*
hardened. When you pull the spindle (to change belts) you have to file
off the ding left by the setscrew on the bull gear before re-assembling
it.

I now have a set of new belts, so I'll soon have a report.

I would be tempted to file a small flat, so the setscrew ding doesn't
interfere with future removal of the bull gear.


I [Joe] don't yet have a toolpost grinder.

Well, actually I do, a partial kit inherited from my maternal
grandfather. It's a Dumore model 11G, and is too old for Dumore to have
parts.

Do you have a manual? I do, in PDF format. Mine is a "Series 11"
model 8119.

I don't know the model number - the block on the tag is blank.

Same on mine, FWIW.

I'd be interested in a copy of your Model 11 manual. The email above is
real, but this would be a nice addition to the dropbox (if it isn't
already there). Thanks.

Try going to:

http://www.d-and-d.com/misc/MANUALS/DuMore/DuMore_Series-11_TP_Grinder_Manual.pdf

Got it. Thanks.


Note, BTW, that it is old enough so it has a two-pin power plug and a
separate ground wire. This should give some idea of the age. :-)

Mine came without power plug; don't know why.


Do you have the collet for the end of the spindle for the
internal stones? I had to make one of my own.

It came with at least one collet.

Good. There was only one for this one, based on the manual. It
is a split collet which screws onto the end of the spindle and accepts a
1/8" shank "point".

That's what I have, if memory serves.


My spindle takes almost no effort to turn. I suspect that I
could breathe on the edge of the larger pulley and move it.

Mine is a bit stiff to turn, which is probably why it heats up. I
haven't figured out why it is so stiff. If I tighten the bearing caps
down until they seat, the spindle is too tight. If I leave them
unscrewed, they walk off. I suspect that a bearing was not pressed
quite home on the spindle shaft.

That is possible. Or a bearing is dying.

I will take the whole thing apart and see. I don't recall any bearing
being hard to turn when I had the caps off. My suspicion is that a
bearing was replaced, and for some reason they didn't or couldn't fully
seat the bearing race on the spindle shaft. With the lathe, I ought to
be able to make a pusher tool.


I did make (aside from the collet) a new T-nut to fit the
Clausing toolpost.

While I was about it, I also made a collar to speed setting the
grinder at the proper height above the compound. It is stored in the
box with the grinder, of course.

I've just noticed that it is suggested in the manual. :-)

I'll also have to do this too.

I'm making a new T-nut and spacer for the Dickson style toolpost that
came with the lathe.

O.K. So make a spare to fit the rod which comes with the
toolpost grinder. (BTW -- the manual says that it is for up to an 11"
lathe, but I feel quite happy with it on my 12" Clausing.)

Close enough, given that I will need to make the spacer. I may already
have the post, attached to a brass plate. The Dumore appears to have
been used on a bench.


Alternately,
does anyone know the name of the inventor, perhaps also a founder of
Dumore?

I think that the DuMore company has been around a lot longer than
my Series 11 grinder at least -- and *it* is too old to get manuals or
parts from DuMore.

I suppose I could ask DuMore. Perhaps some oltdtimer will recall.

Perhaps -- though I think that a few years ago (shortly after I
got the manual for my DuMore Drill grinder) they cleared out the old
manuals -- and perhaps the older employees as well.

Right. I do know that they were polite, but didn't really want to talk
to me about something that old.


Note that with the surface plates, you are also expected to
rotate them 90 degrees from time to time during the process. The
orientation here is fixed by the design, so you could wind up with a
concavity or convexity to the spindle nose which would be fine with all
of the mating parts which you have made -- but which would not work
properly with any new acquisitions, requiring you to start the lapping
process from the beginning with each new acquisition. I would not do it
this way.

Right. The 90-degree rotations are to prevent the plates from coming to
a common cylindrical surface, versus a plane. The underlying
mathematical trick is to choose motions that collectively exclude all
but the desired surface. This is the key to origination of specified
shapes.

And since you can't rotate the orientation you may wind up with
a negative or positive bow to the taper even with multiple chucks
against one spindle.

Yes, if one goes that far. But for planing dings flat, it should work.


In the present situation, the pieces are already almost in conformance,
and the theory or hope is that the dings will be preferentially ground
off first.

I would go for a known good reference, and scrape everything to
fit it. This would require finding a MT-4-1/2 gauge pair. I have yet
to see those on eBay -- or I would already have them. :-)

I think I'll do hi-spot blue and a hand stone to de-ding the spindle
female taper and the mating collet holder male taper, rotating the
collet in the spindle so the dings cannot nest.

Note that the collet adaptor *is* hardened, even though the
spindle is not. So, you should have minimal dings in the adaptor.

The collet adapter has many dings in it. The lathe was carelessly used
for awhile.


For the female 5C taper, I can use a brand new 5C collet of good
manufacture as a reference.

What has happened to the female taper of the adaptor? Given how
hardened they are, I would not expect dings there. Have you checked and
found any? (Granted, mine was acquired new.)

It has some dings there too.


If the MT-5 taper were the same as the MT-4-1/2, then you could
probably get away with the trick. But a MT-7 is just too big. The
taper alone is 10" long. :-) Frankly, I don't think that I would want to
have to lift a MT-7 gauge -- male or female. I think that the female
would be something like 6" diameter, and add to that the 10" length, and
even with the tapered hole, it would weigh a lot. The weight of the
male gauge would be similar, when you take into account the length and
diameter of the knurled handle.

The only solution is to get a taper attachment and make your own.

I have the taper attachment. The trick is setting the
attachment to the degree of precision suggested by the number of digits
after the decimal point in the Morse taper specs. :-)

Five significant digits. I'm sure that Morse hit that all the time.

Actually, if the female taper in your spindle isn't too worn (versus
dinged), you can indicate the taper and use this to adjust the taper
attachment to exactly match that of the spindle, allowing a light
cleanup grind to eliminate dings et al.


Having the clutch kickout sounds like a really nice feature.

Especially during early education exercises.

:-)

By the time we get to about 20 TPI, I can do it at more
reasonable speeds.

But you can cut away from the headstock by mounting the
threading tool upside down -- you don't need to put it in back.

Ah. This sounds more practical. The crossfeed on the 5914 doesn't seem
long enough for convenient cutting on the back side, especially with
large workpieces.

Unless you have the cross-slide made for turret work, which has
multiple T-slots for mounting alternate toolposts on the back. This is
usually used for mounting a parting tool upside down, so the chips pour
out of the slot instead of potentially jamming.

Ah. I always wondered why upside down helped.

I tried the cutoff tool for the first time yesterday. The blade is
mounted in a Hardinge C31 holder which is in turn clamped in a Dickson
toolholder. The setup does work, but the force caused the entire
toolpost assembly to rotate slowly, causing all manner of problems until
I realized what was happening. I suspect that the crooked T-Nut is
preventing me from tightening things adequately.

I am almost done making the new T-Nut. If this fails to prevent
rotation, I'll need to modify the 3/4" spacer plate to have a shallow
ridge that nests in the cross-feed's T-slot below and accepts the
locator pin from the toolpost above.

Part of the problem is that the blade is far from the center of the
toolpost, giving the cutoff forces considerable leverage to rotate the
toolholder.

And I did have chips catching as I tried to cut a 5/8" rod off, and the
rod grabbed and spun in the old 5C collet. No damage done, despite the
drama.

But there was no squealing or other drama otherwise, so the setup is
rigid enough, and the lathe strong enough.


Of course, it also allows a rear-mounted parting tool to work
without having to run the spindle in reverse.

Yes. And given that the 5814 is reversible, this sounds like the ticket.

It's also a reason to buy a cutoff blade holder that is useable with
reverse rotation.


I also wondered what was different about a cross-slide meant for turret
work.

That is it. Typically the parting tool is kept on the rear
toolpost, and some other tool (perhaps a bevel tool or whatever is
needed -- perhaps multiple ones in a turret toolpost -- kept on the
front toolpost. (For a large enough production run, a turret style
toolpost can be worth the time to set it up. In the meanwhile, the bed
turret can carry an amazing array of tools doing things which you would
normally do with the normal toolpost. You can even have it turning two
diameter steps on the workpiece at the same time with the right tools.

Sounds worthwhile in production, but a pain to get set up correctly.


Setup. I recently fitted my Millrite MVI vertical mill with X and Y
DROs (Jenix). What a difference that makes. Before, I was having
endless trouble hitting a dimension because of the large backlash of an
aged machine. Now, I am hitting things to within 0.001" or so. I will
soon add the quill Z axis. (I have the scale for the table Z. but it
will be a pain to fit it, and the quill is turning out to be the more
immediate need.)


Joe Gwinn

On 2008-02-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-02, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

Understood. I'm just wondering how long a thread your ring can
have. IIRC, I measured mine at 1-1/4" OAL from the face of the
headstock, so possibly 1" of thread engagement.

I'll measure it next time I have the collet holder out.

O.K. But you don't need the collet holder out to duplicate the
measurement that I did. I measured the length from the face of the
headstock to the end of the ring, not the internal thread length.

It's a hair under 15/16 of an inch: 0.926".

O.K. That makes the difference -- your ring puts the stress on
fewer threads.

[ ... ]

I suspect that it is turned (and finish ground) from a rather
tough steel, but that no attempts to harden it after turning have been
done. That risks warping too much. So -- it should be harder than
12L14, but probably something like 1040 I think.

Or rough machined, hardened, and ground to final size? But ~1040 steel
is likely in either case.

Yep. Lots of places to grind -- starting with the OD of the
bearing seats. BTW -- I've got evidence that the spindle is *not*
hardened. When you pull the spindle (to change belts) you have to file
off the ding left by the setscrew on the bull gear before re-assembling
it.

I now have a set of new belts, so I'll soon have a report.

O.K. I thought that the 5900 had the belts outboard of the
headstock (under the gear cover), so you don't have to remove the
spindle to change that. My 5418 has three belts in parallel between the
spindle and the layshaft in the pedestal.

I would be tempted to file a small flat, so the setscrew ding doesn't
interfere with future removal of the bull gear.

Sort of a tradeoff. You don't want it too deep or you won't get
as much grip. (Hmm ... do I remember a key in there?)

O.K. According to the manual, there is a Woodruff key both in
the bull gear and in the pickoff gear at the outboard end of the
spindle.

And step (1) of "RE-ASSEMBLING THE HEADSTOCK SPINDLE" says:

"Clean all parts thoroughly, including the bearings,
and lightly file off all burrs from the spindle"

therefore -- not hardened. :-)

Also -- there is a brass plug under the setscrew holding the
preload collar adjustment onto the spindle. (It engages the threads, so
it must have that brass plug to avoid damage to the threads.)

[ ... ]

Note, BTW, that it is old enough so it has a two-pin power plug and a
separate ground wire. This should give some idea of the age. :-)

Mine came without power plug; don't know why.

Mine had a replaced power cord with the modern 3-pin plug, but
note the illustration on the front page of the manual.

[ ... ]

Good. There was only one for this one, based on the manual. It
is a split collet which screws onto the end of the spindle and accepts a
1/8" shank "point".

That's what I have, if memory serves.

O.K. Easier to have one than to make one. :-)

My spindle takes almost no effort to turn. I suspect that I
could breathe on the edge of the larger pulley and move it.

Mine is a bit stiff to turn, which is probably why it heats up. I
haven't figured out why it is so stiff. If I tighten the bearing caps
down until they seat, the spindle is too tight. If I leave them
unscrewed, they walk off. I suspect that a bearing was not pressed
quite home on the spindle shaft.

That is possible. Or a bearing is dying.

I will take the whole thing apart and see. I don't recall any bearing
being hard to turn when I had the caps off. My suspicion is that a
bearing was replaced, and for some reason they didn't or couldn't fully
seat the bearing race on the spindle shaft. With the lathe, I ought to
be able to make a pusher tool.

Yep.

[ ... ]

I'm making a new T-nut and spacer for the Dickson style toolpost that
came with the lathe.

O.K. So make a spare to fit the rod which comes with the
toolpost grinder. (BTW -- the manual says that it is for up to an 11"
lathe, but I feel quite happy with it on my 12" Clausing.)

Close enough, given that I will need to make the spacer. I may already
have the post, attached to a brass plate. The Dumore appears to have
been used on a bench.

Mine was attached to a steel plate, about 1/8" thick IIRC, and
it bent when I tightened up the nut to lock the grinder column onto the
compound.

[ ... ]

I suppose I could ask DuMore. Perhaps some oltdtimer will recall.

Perhaps -- though I think that a few years ago (shortly after I
got the manual for my DuMore Drill grinder) they cleared out the old
manuals -- and perhaps the older employees as well.

Right. I do know that they were polite, but didn't really want to talk
to me about something that old.

They want to forget about them, which is why I feel comfortable
posting the scans of the manuals.

[ ... ]

Right. The 90-degree rotations are to prevent the plates from coming to
a common cylindrical surface, versus a plane. The underlying
mathematical trick is to choose motions that collectively exclude all
but the desired surface. This is the key to origination of specified
shapes.

Hmm ... IIRC, it is a "saddle" surface in which any would mate
with any other in some rotation.

And since you can't rotate the orientation you may wind up with
a negative or positive bow to the taper even with multiple chucks
against one spindle.

Yes, if one goes that far. But for planing dings flat, it should work.

O.K.

[ ... ]

Note that the collet adaptor *is* hardened, even though the
spindle is not. So, you should have minimal dings in the adaptor.

The collet adapter has many dings in it. The lathe was carelessly used
for awhile.

Oops!

For the female 5C taper, I can use a brand new 5C collet of good
manufacture as a reference.

What has happened to the female taper of the adaptor? Given how
hardened they are, I would not expect dings there. Have you checked and
found any? (Granted, mine was acquired new.)

It has some dings there too.

O.K. I would then set up the toolpost grinder and re-grind the
taper there -- *after* fixing the external taper of the adaptor and the
internal taper of the spindle.

[ ... ]

The only solution is to get a taper attachment and make your own.

I have the taper attachment. The trick is setting the
attachment to the degree of precision suggested by the number of digits
after the decimal point in the Morse taper specs. :-)

Five significant digits. I'm sure that Morse hit that all the time.

:-)

They probably set it to a sine bar which might work out to a convenient
gauge size. O.K. 0.62400"/' is 0.05200"/", or 0.26000" for a 5" sine
bar. Actually -- half of that, 0.13000" for half of the taper for
setting a taper attachment. (Start with a test bar in the spindle or
between centers, set the taper attachment to match a sine bar with the
spacer held against it, then lock things down and use the taper
attachment to cut and grind your taper.

Actually, if the female taper in your spindle isn't too worn (versus
dinged), you can indicate the taper and use this to adjust the taper
attachment to exactly match that of the spindle, allowing a light
cleanup grind to eliminate dings et al.

Yes -- but for making a master taper for a different lathe (one
which you don't have to hand) the setting is a bit more tricky. When
cutting a Morse 2 or a Morse 3 on the lathe (with a Morse 4-1/2 in the
spindle), I set up a stop and a test bar, with a digital dial indicator
reading the movement of the carriage. (Someone had installed a mount for
the dial indicator long ago, and before I replaced the leadscrew and nut
with unworn ones.) Zero the indicator with the carriage against the
stop, then move it to clamp a 3" gauge between the carriage and the stop
and check the shift of the cross-slide. Adjust until it is right for
the taper which I want to turn (as close as I could read it with a
0.0001" digital dial indicator). I did this to set up both the 4-1/2
taper Which was backwards from the direction I was cutting) and to set
up the MT-3 and MT-2 bores for the inside of the spindle adaptors prior
to finishing with Morse Taper finish reamers. I have MT-0 through MT-5,
but not MT-4-1/2. 1-5 were in a set I got from eBay in a nice fitted
wooden box. 0 was one which I bought years ago to make tuning pegs for
an Appalachian Dulcimer which I was making. :-) A recent acquisition at a
local metalworking club meeting was a MT-2 roughing reamer.

I've got Morse taper gauges (both male and female) for 1, 2, and
3, and (so far) a female only for MT-4, but nothing for MT-4-1/2. I may
have to actually set up and make that and harden both sides and use the
surface grinder to finish.

BTW I have an interesting sine micrometer. it has a tiny captive
1" sine bar, with a micrometer spindle controlling one end, and
a T-shaped anvil for the other side of the workpiece. Pity it
isn't a full 5" sine bar.

[ ... ]

Ah. This sounds more practical. The crossfeed on the 5914 doesn't seem
long enough for convenient cutting on the back side, especially with
large workpieces.

Unless you have the cross-slide made for turret work, which has
multiple T-slots for mounting alternate toolposts on the back. This is
usually used for mounting a parting tool upside down, so the chips pour
out of the slot instead of potentially jamming.

Ah. I always wondered why upside down helped.

It also helps with a plain bearing lathe in that the wear
normally allows the spindle to lift, and it is pretty much un-worn in
the opposite direction which is where the forces are with an inverted
parting tool coming from the back.

I tried the cutoff tool for the first time yesterday. The blade is
mounted in a Hardinge C31 holder which is in turn clamped in a Dickson
toolholder. The setup does work, but the force caused the entire
toolpost assembly to rotate slowly, causing all manner of problems until
I realized what was happening. I suspect that the crooked T-Nut is
preventing me from tightening things adequately.

I have this problem from time to time on the Compact-5/CNC.

Put some paper between the toolpost and the plate and more
between the plate and the top of the compound. This resists sliding a
bit better than than nicely ground surface on the bottom of the
toolpost. The paper deforms into every tiny imperfection in the
surface, and thus grips better.

The Phase-II clone of the Aloris is not so nicely finished on
the bottom and is better at resisting slipping. I presume that the
genuine Aloris is similar.

I am almost done making the new T-Nut. If this fails to prevent
rotation, I'll need to modify the 3/4" spacer plate to have a shallow
ridge that nests in the cross-feed's T-slot below and accepts the
locator pin from the toolpost above.

Try the paper, first. That may be all that you need. It is
often used to keep workpieces from slipping in milling vises.

Part of the problem is that the blade is far from the center of the
toolpost, giving the cutoff forces considerable leverage to rotate the
toolholder.

Of course.

And I did have chips catching as I tried to cut a 5/8" rod off, and the
rod grabbed and spun in the old 5C collet. No damage done, despite the
drama.

With only a 5/8" rod? perhaps the drawbar was not set tight
enough before locking it against rotation? (IIRC, you do have the lever
style drawbar, don't you?)

But there was no squealing or other drama otherwise, so the setup is
rigid enough, and the lathe strong enough.

Indeed. Now I did hit problems trying to part off some 6"
diameter 12L14. The parting tool was just not strong enough with the
amount of extension needed to reach the center of the workpiece.

Of course, it also allows a rear-mounted parting tool to work
without having to run the spindle in reverse.

Yes. And given that the 5814 is reversible, this sounds like the ticket.

A problem with the original spindle, since that was a 2-1/4x8
threaded spindle. However, I did change it out for a L-00 which does
not have that problem.

It's also a reason to buy a cutoff blade holder that is useable with
reverse rotation.

Yep. But you don't need reverse with a back-mounted parting
tool.

I also wondered what was different about a cross-slide meant for turret
work.

That is it. Typically the parting tool is kept on the rear
toolpost, and some other tool (perhaps a bevel tool or whatever is
needed -- perhaps multiple ones in a turret toolpost -- kept on the
front toolpost. (For a large enough production run, a turret style
toolpost can be worth the time to set it up. In the meanwhile, the bed
turret can carry an amazing array of tools doing things which you would
normally do with the normal toolpost. You can even have it turning two
diameter steps on the workpiece at the same time with the right tools.

Sounds worthwhile in production, but a pain to get set up correctly.

Exactly. I haven't ever set up the compound tooling (turning to
two diameters in a single pass), but I have set up the bed turret with
all six stations in service, and with one serving double -- both as a
stop for setting workpiece rod stock extension, and as a centerdrill
(which extends out of the center of the stop). I don't have the ability
to extend the workpiece with it still rotating, so I did not need to
make the stop a bearing mounted one. :-) The stations were as follows:

1) Stop/center drill

2) tap drill

3) releasing tap holder

4) OD knurling tool (T-shaped, with rolls coming in from opposite
sides)

5) turn to diameter in a single pass (roller box tool -- turning
tool with built-in steady rest.)

6) Geometric die head, to thread reduced part of workpiece.

In the meanwhile, I am also using the cross slide to cut a
runout groove (because the threads are not full depth to the
face, and the things which it mates need to screw up to the
face) and to part the workpiece off. While it is parting off, I
am using a file to bevel the end, and both sides of the
remaining knurled full OD.

Next time I set up, I'm going to try two changes:

3) Form tap instead of gun tap in the holder. No chips, so
I don't need to tap drill as deeply, and can do a fresh start of
the center hole for each piece. As it was, after about six or
eight pieces, the hole would walk far enough off center to need
to cut off an undrilled inch of waste stock to let me re-start
the center drilling.

4) Cut style knurling tool -- looks like a 3-jaw chuck but with
the angled cut style knurling cutters. Should produce sharper
knurling.

Setup. I recently fitted my Millrite MVI vertical mill with X and Y
DROs (Jenix). What a difference that makes. Before, I was having
endless trouble hitting a dimension because of the large backlash of an
aged machine. Now, I am hitting things to within 0.001" or so. I will
soon add the quill Z axis. (I have the scale for the table Z. but it
will be a pain to fit it, and the quill is turning out to be the more
immediate need.)

Some of these days I'll get around to mounting the Shooting Star
DRO on my Clausing lathe. I've had it for a few years now, but never
taken the time to do it right.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-02, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-01, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

Understood. I'm just wondering how long a thread your ring can
have. IIRC, I measured mine at 1-1/4" OAL from the face of the
headstock, so possibly 1" of thread engagement.

I'll measure it next time I have the collet holder out.

O.K. But you don't need the collet holder out to duplicate the
measurement that I did. I measured the length from the face of the
headstock to the end of the ring, not the internal thread length.

It's a hair under 15/16 of an inch: 0.926".

O.K. That makes the difference -- your ring puts the stress on
fewer threads.

An added 1/4" is almost two whole threads at 6 tpi.


I suspect that it is turned (and finish ground) from a rather
tough steel, but that no attempts to harden it after turning have been
done. That risks warping too much. So -- it should be harder than
12L14, but probably something like 1040 I think.

Or rough machined, hardened, and ground to final size? But ~1040 steel
is likely in either case.

Yep. Lots of places to grind -- starting with the OD of the
bearing seats. BTW -- I've got evidence that the spindle is *not*
hardened. When you pull the spindle (to change belts) you have to file
off the ding left by the setscrew on the bull gear before re-assembling
it.

I now have a set of new belts, so I'll soon have a report.

O.K. I thought that the 5900 had the belts outboard of the
headstock (under the gear cover), so you don't have to remove the
spindle to change that. My 5418 has three belts in parallel between the
spindle and the layshaft in the pedestal.

According to the manual, belt replacement on the 6914 does not require
dismantling the headstock or removing the spindle. What it does require
is removal of the countershaft assembly (clutch and brake), but this is
far less trouble.


I would be tempted to file a small flat, so the setscrew ding doesn't
interfere with future removal of the bull gear.

Sort of a tradeoff. You don't want it too deep or you won't get
as much grip. (Hmm ... do I remember a key in there?)

Why? The setscrew then bites into a flat.


O.K. According to the manual, there is a Woodruff key both in
the bull gear and in the pickoff gear at the outboard end of the
spindle.

And step (1) of "RE-ASSEMBLING THE HEADSTOCK SPINDLE" says:

"Clean all parts thoroughly, including the bearings,
and lightly file off all burrs from the spindle"

therefore -- not hardened. :-)

Well, not glass hard. I have lots of stuff that was hardened, but can
be filed.


Also -- there is a brass plug under the setscrew holding the
preload collar adjustment onto the spindle. (It engages the threads, so
it must have that brass plug to avoid damage to the threads.)

[ ... ]

Note, BTW, that it is old enough so it has a two-pin power plug and a
separate ground wire. This should give some idea of the age. :-)

Mine came without power plug; don't know why.

Mine had a replaced power cord with the modern 3-pin plug, but
note the illustration on the front page of the manual.

OK. I'll probably use a 3-wire cordset.


Good. There was only one for this one, based on the manual. It
is a split collet which screws onto the end of the spindle and accepts a
1/8" shank "point".

That's what I have, if memory serves.

O.K. Easier to have one than to make one. :-)

Yep.


I'm making a new T-nut and spacer for the Dickson style toolpost that
came with the lathe.

O.K. So make a spare to fit the rod which comes with the
toolpost grinder. (BTW -- the manual says that it is for up to an 11"
lathe, but I feel quite happy with it on my 12" Clausing.)

Close enough, given that I will need to make the spacer. I may already
have the post, attached to a brass plate. The Dumore appears to have
been used on a bench.

Mine was attached to a steel plate, about 1/8" thick IIRC, and
it bent when I tightened up the nut to lock the grinder column onto the
compound.

Enh? Bent? This does not sound like Dumore.


I suppose I could ask DuMore. Perhaps some oltdtimer will recall.

Perhaps -- though I think that a few years ago (shortly after I
got the manual for my DuMore Drill grinder) they cleared out the old
manuals -- and perhaps the older employees as well.

Right. I do know that they were polite, but didn't really want to talk
to me about something that old.

They want to forget about them, which is why I feel comfortable
posting the scans of the manuals.

Seems likely.


Right. The 90-degree rotations are to prevent the plates from coming to
a common cylindrical surface, versus a plane. The underlying
mathematical trick is to choose motions that collectively exclude all
but the desired surface. This is the key to origination of specified
shapes.

Hmm ... IIRC, it is a "saddle" surface in which any would mate
with any other in some rotation.

I don't think that saddle surfaces can be generated this way. Toroids
perhaps.


For the female 5C taper, I can use a brand new 5C collet of good
manufacture as a reference.

What has happened to the female taper of the adaptor? Given how
hardened they are, I would not expect dings there. Have you checked and
found any? (Granted, mine was acquired new.)

It has some dings there too.

O.K. I would then set up the toolpost grinder and re-grind the
taper there -- *after* fixing the external taper of the adaptor and the
internal taper of the spindle.

[ ... ]

The only solution is to get a taper attachment and make your own.

I have the taper attachment. The trick is setting the
attachment to the degree of precision suggested by the number of digits
after the decimal point in the Morse taper specs. :-)

Five significant digits. I'm sure that Morse hit that all the time.

:-)

They probably set it to a sine bar which might work out to a convenient
gauge size. O.K. 0.62400"/' is 0.05200"/", or 0.26000" for a 5" sine
bar. Actually -- half of that, 0.13000" for half of the taper for
setting a taper attachment. (Start with a test bar in the spindle or
between centers, set the taper attachment to match a sine bar with the
spacer held against it, then lock things down and use the taper
attachment to cut and grind your taper.

Actually, if the female taper in your spindle isn't too worn (versus
dinged), you can indicate the taper and use this to adjust the taper
attachment to exactly match that of the spindle, allowing a light
cleanup grind to eliminate dings et al.

Yes -- but for making a master taper for a different lathe (one
which you don't have to hand) the setting is a bit more tricky. When
cutting a Morse 2 or a Morse 3 on the lathe (with a Morse 4-1/2 in the
spindle), I set up a stop and a test bar, with a digital dial indicator
reading the movement of the carriage. (Someone had installed a mount for
the dial indicator long ago, and before I replaced the leadscrew and nut
with unworn ones.) Zero the indicator with the carriage against the
stop, then move it to clamp a 3" gauge between the carriage and the stop
and check the shift of the cross-slide. Adjust until it is right for
the taper which I want to turn (as close as I could read it with a
0.0001" digital dial indicator). I did this to set up both the 4-1/2
taper Which was backwards from the direction I was cutting) and to set
up the MT-3 and MT-2 bores for the inside of the spindle adaptors prior
to finishing with Morse Taper finish reamers. I have MT-0 through MT-5,
but not MT-4-1/2. 1-5 were in a set I got from eBay in a nice fitted
wooden box. 0 was one which I bought years ago to make tuning pegs for
an Appalachian Dulcimer which I was making. :-) A recent acquisition at a
local metalworking club meeting was a MT-2 roughing reamer.

I've got Morse taper gauges (both male and female) for 1, 2, and
3, and (so far) a female only for MT-4, but nothing for MT-4-1/2. I may
have to actually set up and make that and harden both sides and use the
surface grinder to finish.

BTW I have an interesting sine micrometer. it has a tiny captive
1" sine bar, with a micrometer spindle controlling one end, and
a T-shaped anvil for the other side of the workpiece. Pity it
isn't a full 5" sine bar.

Cute. But how accurate can so short a sine bar be?


Ah. This sounds more practical. The crossfeed on the 5914 doesn't
seem
long enough for convenient cutting on the back side, especially with
large workpieces.

Unless you have the cross-slide made for turret work, which has
multiple T-slots for mounting alternate toolposts on the back. This is
usually used for mounting a parting tool upside down, so the chips pour
out of the slot instead of potentially jamming.

Ah. I always wondered why upside down helped.

It also helps with a plain bearing lathe in that the wear
normally allows the spindle to lift, and it is pretty much un-worn in
the opposite direction which is where the forces are with an inverted
parting tool coming from the back.

So less chatter et al.


I tried the cutoff tool for the first time yesterday. The blade is
mounted in a Hardinge C31 holder which is in turn clamped in a Dickson
toolholder. The setup does work, but the force caused the entire
toolpost assembly to rotate slowly, causing all manner of problems until
I realized what was happening. I suspect that the crooked T-Nut is
preventing me from tightening things adequately.

The new square T-Nut is far better, but the toolpost can still be forced
to rotate.

That said, I have been able to do cutoff after cutoff, after sharpening
the blade and clamping things down firmly.


I have this problem from time to time on the Compact-5/CNC.

Put some paper between the toolpost and the plate and more
between the plate and the top of the compound. This resists sliding a
bit better than than nicely ground surface on the bottom of the
toolpost. The paper deforms into every tiny imperfection in the
surface, and thus grips better.

The Phase-II clone of the Aloris is not so nicely finished on
the bottom and is better at resisting slipping. I presume that the
genuine Aloris is similar.

Paper. OK. But I think I'll fit a plate and pin, for positive
anti-rotation.


I am almost done making the new T-Nut. If this fails to prevent
rotation, I'll need to modify the 3/4" spacer plate to have a shallow
ridge that nests in the cross-feed's T-slot below and accepts the
locator pin from the toolpost above.

Try the paper, first. That may be all that you need. It is
often used to keep workpieces from slipping in milling vises.

Part of the problem is that the blade is far from the center of the
toolpost, giving the cutoff forces considerable leverage to rotate the
toolholder.

Of course.

The problem is that the Dickson cutoff blade holder was not included, so
we have something of a Rube Goldberg setup.


And I did have chips catching as I tried to cut a 5/8" rod off, and the
rod grabbed and spun in the old 5C collet. No damage done, despite the
drama.

With only a 5/8" rod? perhaps the drawbar was not set tight
enough before locking it against rotation? (IIRC, you do have the lever
style drawbar, don't you?)

I do have the lever closer. I did tighten it, so it doesn't spin so
often, but if the blade catches, the rod spins but the blade survives.
The rod is zinc plated.


But there was no squealing or other drama otherwise, so the setup is
rigid enough, and the lathe strong enough.

Indeed. Now I did hit problems trying to part off some 6"
diameter 12L14. The parting tool was just not strong enough with the
amount of extension needed to reach the center of the workpiece.

How wide was the blade? I'm using 3/32".


Of course, it also allows a rear-mounted parting tool to work
without having to run the spindle in reverse.

Yes. And given that the 5814 is reversible, this sounds like the ticket.

A problem with the original spindle, since that was a 2-1/4x8
threaded spindle. However, I did change it out for a L-00 which does
not have that problem.

It's also a reason to buy a cutoff blade holder that is useable with
reverse rotation.

Yep. But you don't need reverse with a back-mounted parting
tool.

But you do need a different cross-slide than what I have.


I also wondered what was different about a cross-slide meant for turret
work.

That is it. Typically the parting tool is kept on the rear
toolpost, and some other tool (perhaps a bevel tool or whatever is
needed -- perhaps multiple ones in a turret toolpost -- kept on the
front toolpost. (For a large enough production run, a turret style
toolpost can be worth the time to set it up. In the meanwhile, the bed
turret can carry an amazing array of tools doing things which you would
normally do with the normal toolpost. You can even have it turning two
diameter steps on the workpiece at the same time with the right tools.

Sounds worthwhile in production, but a pain to get set up correctly.

Exactly. I haven't ever set up the compound tooling (turning to
two diameters in a single pass), but I have set up the bed turret with
all six stations in service, and with one serving double -- both as a
stop for setting workpiece rod stock extension, and as a centerdrill
(which extends out of the center of the stop). I don't have the ability
to extend the workpiece with it still rotating, so I did not need to
make the stop a bearing mounted one. :-) The stations were as follows:

1) Stop/center drill

2) tap drill

3) releasing tap holder

4) OD knurling tool (T-shaped, with rolls coming in from opposite
sides)

5) turn to diameter in a single pass (roller box tool -- turning
tool with built-in steady rest.)

Roller Box tool. I could have used one of these today. Does anyone
make this anymore?

Nor did the lathe come with a follow rest, although I did get the
stationary rest.


6) Geometric die head, to thread reduced part of workpiece.

In the meanwhile, I am also using the cross slide to cut a
runout groove (because the threads are not full depth to the
face, and the things which it mates need to screw up to the
face) and to part the workpiece off. While it is parting off, I
am using a file to bevel the end, and both sides of the
remaining knurled full OD.

Next time I set up, I'm going to try two changes:

3) Form tap instead of gun tap in the holder. No chips, so
I don't need to tap drill as deeply, and can do a fresh start of
the center hole for each piece. As it was, after about six or
eight pieces, the hole would walk far enough off center to need
to cut off an undrilled inch of waste stock to let me re-start
the center drilling.

I use form taps in aluminum all the time. Haven't attempted steel yet.


4) Cut style knurling tool -- looks like a 3-jaw chuck but with
the angled cut style knurling cutters. Should produce sharper
knurling.

Got a knurler. It's the push-from-side variety, but does seem to work.


Setup. I recently fitted my Millrite MVI vertical mill with X and Y
DROs (Jenix). What a difference that makes. Before, I was having
endless trouble hitting a dimension because of the large backlash of an
aged machine. Now, I am hitting things to within 0.001" or so. I will
soon add the quill Z axis. (I have the scale for the table Z. but it
will be a pain to fit it, and the quill is turning out to be the more
immediate need.)

Some of these days I'll get around to mounting the Shooting Star
DRO on my Clausing lathe. I've had it for a few years now, but never
taken the time to do it right.

It's probably worthwhile. Although fitting the DRO to the MVI required
me to hand-scrape an aluminum post to a flattish but still curved part
of the knee, to achieve the correct height and perpendicular at the same
time. It's a slow process, but always works.

Joe Gwinn

On 2008-02-04, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

O.K. But you don't need the collet holder out to duplicate the
measurement that I did. I measured the length from the face of the
headstock to the end of the ring, not the internal thread length.

It's a hair under 15/16 of an inch: 0.926".

O.K. That makes the difference -- your ring puts the stress on
fewer threads.

An added 1/4" is almost two whole threads at 6 tpi.

Yep -- quite enough to make the difference.

[ ... ]

I now have a set of new belts, so I'll soon have a report.

O.K. I thought that the 5900 had the belts outboard of the
headstock (under the gear cover), so you don't have to remove the
spindle to change that. My 5418 has three belts in parallel between the
spindle and the layshaft in the pedestal.

According to the manual, belt replacement on the 6914 does not require
dismantling the headstock or removing the spindle. What it does require
is removal of the countershaft assembly (clutch and brake), but this is
far less trouble.

O.K. That is what I remembered -- a timing belt outside the
headstock casting, but under the gear cover, IIRC.

I would be tempted to file a small flat, so the setscrew ding doesn't
interfere with future removal of the bull gear.

Sort of a tradeoff. You don't want it too deep or you won't get
as much grip. (Hmm ... do I remember a key in there?)

Why? The setscrew then bites into a flat.

But -- it has more threads exposed, letting it bend instead of
prevent rotation. (Though the Woodruff key should prevent the
rotation.)

O.K. According to the manual, there is a Woodruff key both in
the bull gear and in the pickoff gear at the outboard end of the
spindle.

And step (1) of "RE-ASSEMBLING THE HEADSTOCK SPINDLE" says:

"Clean all parts thoroughly, including the bearings,
and lightly file off all burrs from the spindle"

therefore -- not hardened. :-)

Well, not glass hard. I have lots of stuff that was hardened, but can
be filed.

Hardened but could get burrs from setscrews?
Also -- there is a brass plug under the setscrew holding the
preload collar adjustment onto the spindle. (It engages the threads, so
it must have that brass plug to avoid damage to the threads.)

[ ... ]

Note, BTW, that it is old enough so it has a two-pin power plug and a
separate ground wire. This should give some idea of the age. :-)

Mine came without power plug; don't know why.

Mine had a replaced power cord with the modern 3-pin plug, but
note the illustration on the front page of the manual.

OK. I'll probably use a 3-wire cordset.

As someone else did for mine before I got it. Beware that you
will probably need to get some new grommets -- one for where the power
cord enters the motor casting, and four for the anti-vibration
hold-downs inside the lid of the box (if yours is like mine.)

[ ... ]

I'm making a new T-nut and spacer for the Dickson style toolpost that
came with the lathe.

O.K. So make a spare to fit the rod which comes with the
toolpost grinder. (BTW -- the manual says that it is for up to an 11"
lathe, but I feel quite happy with it on my 12" Clausing.)

Close enough, given that I will need to make the spacer. I may already
have the post, attached to a brass plate. The Dumore appears to have
been used on a bench.

Mine was attached to a steel plate, about 1/8" thick IIRC, and
it bent when I tightened up the nut to lock the grinder column onto the
compound.

Enh? Bent? This does not sound like Dumore.

Not a true T-nut. Just a plate thick enough to go into the
wider portion of the T-slot, with no meat in the narrower portion. I
don't know whether this was original DuMore or somebody's replacement to
fit it to his lathe. I do notice that the design in the manual
illustrations appears to be a bar with two rounded corners so you can
drop it in, then start to tighten and this will rotate the T-plate under
the steps of the T-slot. I forget whether it showed any meat above
that to make it more rigid. (And, of course, it was made for smaller
lathes than our 12" machines.)

[ ... ]

Right. The 90-degree rotations are to prevent the plates from coming to
a common cylindrical surface, versus a plane. The underlying
mathematical trick is to choose motions that collectively exclude all
but the desired surface. This is the key to origination of specified
shapes.

Hmm ... IIRC, it is a "saddle" surface in which any would mate
with any other in some rotation.

I don't think that saddle surfaces can be generated this way. Toroids
perhaps.

Torroids would not fit from plate 1 to plate 3. Saddle surfaces
could fit between all three plates, if the proper rotation was peformed
before joining them each time.

[ ... ]

The only solution is to get a taper attachment and make your own.

I have the taper attachment. The trick is setting the
attachment to the degree of precision suggested by the number of digits
after the decimal point in the Morse taper specs. :-)

Five significant digits. I'm sure that Morse hit that all the time.

:-)

[ ... ]

BTW I have an interesting sine micrometer. it has a tiny captive
1" sine bar, with a micrometer spindle controlling one end, and
a T-shaped anvil for the other side of the workpiece. Pity it
isn't a full 5" sine bar.

Cute. But how accurate can so short a sine bar be?

Well ... most accuracy will be with two surfaces almost
precisely parallel. A quick punching of keys on the HP-15C says that
the maximum resolution with a tenths vernier on the micrometer thimble
would be 0.005730 degrees, or 0 degrees, 0 minutes, 20.63 seconds.
Better than the vernier on a Starrett Bevel protractor, but still not
nearly as much as is needed for the true taper of a Morse taper. Hmm
.... let's see what would happen with a 5" sine bar and a cheap grade of
gauge blocks (within 0.000050"). O.K. 0.000573" or 0 degrees 0 minutes,
2.06 seconds. A ten inch sine bar would be down to about 1 second, and
go for gauge blocks which are good to 0.000002" with that 10" sine bar,
and you get: 0.0000011 degrees, or 0 degrees 0 minutes 0.04 seconds, so
that should be good enough for a Morse taper standard. (Love having
that rectangular-polar converison on the HP-15C, as well as the decimal
degrees to D.M.S conversion.

[ ... ]

Ah. I always wondered why upside down helped.

It also helps with a plain bearing lathe in that the wear
normally allows the spindle to lift, and it is pretty much un-worn in
the opposite direction which is where the forces are with an inverted
parting tool coming from the back.

So less chatter et al.

Yes. Less significant with roller or ball bearings, of course.

I tried the cutoff tool for the first time yesterday. The blade is
mounted in a Hardinge C31 holder which is in turn clamped in a Dickson
toolholder. The setup does work, but the force caused the entire
toolpost assembly to rotate slowly, causing all manner of problems until
I realized what was happening. I suspect that the crooked T-Nut is
preventing me from tightening things adequately.

The new square T-Nut is far better, but the toolpost can still be forced
to rotate.

O.K.

That said, I have been able to do cutoff after cutoff, after sharpening
the blade and clamping things down firmly.

Good enough.

I have this problem from time to time on the Compact-5/CNC.

Put some paper between the toolpost and the plate and more
between the plate and the top of the compound. This resists sliding a
bit better than than nicely ground surface on the bottom of the
toolpost. The paper deforms into every tiny imperfection in the
surface, and thus grips better.

The Phase-II clone of the Aloris is not so nicely finished on
the bottom and is better at resisting slipping. I presume that the
genuine Aloris is similar.

Paper. OK. But I think I'll fit a plate and pin, for positive
anti-rotation.

Just as I would add a drilled hole for a pin in the mounting
plate on the Compact-5/CNC if there were a drilled hole for a pin
through the base. It feels pretty well hardened, so I'm not to sure
about being able to drill my own hole. :-) And if I *can*, it really
should be metric, and I don't have any metric reamers, yet. :-)

[ ... ]

Part of the problem is that the blade is far from the center of the
toolpost, giving the cutoff forces considerable leverage to rotate the
toolholder.

Of course.

The problem is that the Dickson cutoff blade holder was not included, so
we have something of a Rube Goldberg setup.

Ouch. The cutoff blade holder is a nice design. Not as
convenient for shifting the extension of the blade on the Aloris style
parting tool holders, but very good grip.


And I did have chips catching as I tried to cut a 5/8" rod off, and the
rod grabbed and spun in the old 5C collet. No damage done, despite the
drama.

With only a 5/8" rod? perhaps the drawbar was not set tight
enough before locking it against rotation? (IIRC, you do have the lever
style drawbar, don't you?)

I do have the lever closer. I did tighten it, so it doesn't spin so
often, but if the blade catches, the rod spins but the blade survives.
The rod is zinc plated.

O.K. Zinc plated suggests that it is Home Depot gummy mystery
metal, and the zinc plating adds a bit more lubrication. But I had no
such problems on mine with 3/8" mystery metal rod. (But I'm using the
offical parting tool holder, and the T-profile parting tool bit.

But there was no squealing or other drama otherwise, so the setup is
rigid enough, and the lathe strong enough.

Indeed. Now I did hit problems trying to part off some 6"
diameter 12L14. The parting tool was just not strong enough with the
amount of extension needed to reach the center of the workpiece.

How wide was the blade? I'm using 3/32".

1/8" IIRC. Width selected because the narrower one takes less
force to part. It has to be 11/16" high to fit the holder. I'm not
sure whether wider was available at all except in taller blades. The
ones which I got before are no longer available form MSC -- at least
based on their web site catalog.

[ ... ]

It's also a reason to buy a cutoff blade holder that is useable with
reverse rotation.

Yep. But you don't need reverse with a back-mounted parting
tool.

But you do need a different cross-slide than what I have.

And with the one which I have.

[ ... ]

That is it. Typically the parting tool is kept on the rear
toolpost, and some other tool (perhaps a bevel tool or whatever is
needed -- perhaps multiple ones in a turret toolpost -- kept on the

[ ... ]

5) turn to diameter in a single pass (roller box tool -- turning
tool with built-in steady rest.)

Roller Box tool. I could have used one of these today. Does anyone
make this anymore?

I suspect so -- since they are still part of the tooling for
automatic screw machines. And you can find them on eBay still, I think.

Hmm ... the only three which come up look rather strange.

Aha -- a different search found:

170190939785

which looks a lot more reasonable. It is even a good size for my
turret, and it has an example tool in it to show the rather strange
grind needed for such tools.

Nor did the lathe come with a follow rest, although I did get the
stationary rest.

Look for a steady rest which mounts to the flats on the
left-side arms of the carriage. There should be a pair of tapped holes,
and likely studs in the holes for mounting the follower.

[ ... ]

3) Form tap instead of gun tap in the holder. No chips, so
I don't need to tap drill as deeply, and can do a fresh start of
the center hole for each piece. As it was, after about six or
eight pieces, the hole would walk far enough off center to need
to cut off an undrilled inch of waste stock to let me re-start
the center drilling.

I use form taps in aluminum all the time. Haven't attempted steel yet.

O.K. This is 360 brass.

4) Cut style knurling tool -- looks like a 3-jaw chuck but with
the angled cut style knurling cutters. Should produce sharper
knurling.

Got a knurler. It's the push-from-side variety, but does seem to work.

The style which maximizes the stress and wear on the lathe. My
favorite for the carriage is one my Aloris which mounts on the BXA sized
toolpost and has a vertical dovetail with two arms on it. There is a
leadscrew which is left-hand on one end and right-hand on the other,
with a knob to bring the arms together or apart at need. once you've
set the height once, it is right for all sizes.

But in the turret, The T-style head is better. It looks sort of
like this (Courier or other fixed pitch font for viewing to avoid
distortion):
+----+ +----+
+---| |------| |------| |---+
| | | [##### #####] | | | - knurl holders which can be rotated to present
+---| |------| |------| |---+ the knurl at different angles so a straight
| | | | knurl pair can cut diamond knurls or angled
| \___________________/ | knurls. . Length of projection adjustable
\ / for workpiece diameter
\_____________________________/
| |
| |
| | -- Round hollow shank to fit into the turret

This feeds on over the end of the rotating workpiece. For small
diameter workpieces, it can feed through the hollow shank. Larger
diameters are more limited in length of knurl.

[ ... ]

Some of these days I'll get around to mounting the Shooting Star
DRO on my Clausing lathe. I've had it for a few years now, but never
taken the time to do it right.

It's probably worthwhile. Although fitting the DRO to the MVI required
me to hand-scrape an aluminum post to a flattish but still curved part
of the knee, to achieve the correct height and perpendicular at the same
time. It's a slow process, but always works.

My main problem is that I'll need to sacrifice a bit of how
close the base of the tailstock or turret can get to the carriage to
give room for the sender.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-04, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

I would be tempted to file a small flat, so the setscrew ding doesn't
interfere with future removal of the bull gear.

Sort of a tradeoff. You don't want it too deep or you won't get
as much grip. (Hmm ... do I remember a key in there?)

Why? The setscrew then bites into a flat.

But -- it has more threads exposed, letting it bend instead of
prevent rotation. (Though the Woodruff key should prevent the
rotation.)

The flat does not need to be deep.


O.K. According to the manual, there is a Woodruff key both in
the bull gear and in the pickoff gear at the outboard end of the
spindle.

And step (1) of "RE-ASSEMBLING THE HEADSTOCK SPINDLE" says:

"Clean all parts thoroughly, including the bearings,
and lightly file off all burrs from the spindle"

therefore -- not hardened. :-)

Well, not glass hard. I have lots of stuff that was hardened, but can
be filed.

Hardened but could get burrs from setscrews?

Oh, sure. Setscrews are pretty damn hard.


Note, BTW, that it is old enough so it has a two-pin power plug and a
separate ground wire. This should give some idea of the age. :-)

Mine came without power plug; don't know why.

Mine had a replaced power cord with the modern 3-pin plug, but
note the illustration on the front page of the manual.

OK. I'll probably use a 3-wire cordset.

As someone else did for mine before I got it. Beware that you
will probably need to get some new grommets -- one for where the power
cord enters the motor casting, and four for the anti-vibration
hold-downs inside the lid of the box (if yours is like mine.)

OK.


I'm making a new T-nut and spacer for the Dickson style toolpost that
came with the lathe.

O.K. So make a spare to fit the rod which comes with the
toolpost grinder. (BTW -- the manual says that it is for up to an 11"
lathe, but I feel quite happy with it on my 12" Clausing.)

Close enough, given that I will need to make the spacer. I may already
have the post, attached to a brass plate. The Dumore appears to have
been used on a bench.

Mine was attached to a steel plate, about 1/8" thick IIRC, and
it bent when I tightened up the nut to lock the grinder column onto the
compound.

Enh? Bent? This does not sound like Dumore.

Not a true T-nut. Just a plate thick enough to go into the
wider portion of the T-slot, with no meat in the narrower portion. I
don't know whether this was original DuMore or somebody's replacement to
fit it to his lathe.

Replacement by someone lacking a mill. Dumore does not do flimsy.


I do notice that the design in the manual
illustrations appears to be a bar with two rounded corners so you can
drop it in, then start to tighten and this will rotate the T-plate under
the steps of the T-slot. I forget whether it showed any meat above
that to make it more rigid. (And, of course, it was made for smaller
lathes than our 12" machines.)

It will have been thick enough that bending is unlikely before the
T-Slots tear out.


Right. The 90-degree rotations are to prevent the plates from coming
to a common cylindrical surface, versus a plane. The underlying
mathematical trick is to choose motions that collectively exclude all
but the desired surface. This is the key to origination of specified
shapes.

Hmm ... IIRC, it is a "saddle" surface in which any would mate
with any other in some rotation.

I don't think that saddle surfaces can be generated this way. Toroids
perhaps.

Toroids would not fit from plate 1 to plate 3. Saddle surfaces
could fit between all three plates, if the proper rotation was peformed
before joining them each time.

Nested saddle surfaces cannot be slid in any direction, while toroids
can be slid.

This is the traditional saddle surface:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HyperbolicParaboloid.html.

Here is the more general page:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Saddle.html.

And : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_surface.

And the toroid: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RingTorus.html.


BTW I have an interesting sine micrometer. it has a tiny captive
1" sine bar, with a micrometer spindle controlling one end, and
a T-shaped anvil for the other side of the workpiece. Pity it
isn't a full 5" sine bar.

Cute. But how accurate can so short a sine bar be?

Well ... most accuracy will be with two surfaces almost
precisely parallel. A quick punching of keys on the HP-15C says that
the maximum resolution with a tenths vernier on the micrometer thimble
would be 0.005730 degrees, or 0 degrees, 0 minutes, 20.63 seconds.
Better than the vernier on a Starrett Bevel protractor, but still not
nearly as much as is needed for the true taper of a Morse taper. Hmm
... let's see what would happen with a 5" sine bar and a cheap grade of
gauge blocks (within 0.000050"). O.K. 0.000573" or 0 degrees 0 minutes,
2.06 seconds. A ten inch sine bar would be down to about 1 second, and
go for gauge blocks which are good to 0.000002" with that 10" sine bar,
and you get: 0.0000011 degrees, or 0 degrees 0 minutes 0.04 seconds, so
that should be good enough for a Morse taper standard. (Love having
that rectangular-polar converison on the HP-15C, as well as the decimal
degrees to D.M.S conversion.

I also have a 15C. The advantage is that nobody borrows your calculator.

The disadvanatge is that you have to speak Polish backwards.


I tried the cutoff tool for the first time yesterday. The blade is
mounted in a Hardinge C31 holder which is in turn clamped in a Dickson
toolholder. The setup does work, but the force caused the entire
toolpost assembly to rotate slowly, causing all manner of problems until
I realized what was happening. I suspect that the crooked T-Nut is
preventing me from tightening things adequately.

The new square T-Nut is far better, but the toolpost can still be forced
to rotate.

O.K.

That said, I have been able to do cutoff after cutoff, after sharpening
the blade and clamping things down firmly.

Good enough.

I have this problem from time to time on the Compact-5/CNC.

Put some paper between the toolpost and the plate and more
between the plate and the top of the compound. This resists sliding a
bit better than than nicely ground surface on the bottom of the
toolpost. The paper deforms into every tiny imperfection in the
surface, and thus grips better.

The bottom of the Dickson type toolpost is machined smooth. Perhaps I
need to sandpaper it. Or provide a pin.


The Phase-II clone of the Aloris is not so nicely finished on
the bottom and is better at resisting slipping. I presume that the
genuine Aloris is similar.

Paper. OK. But I think I'll fit a plate and pin, for positive
anti-rotation.

Just as I would add a drilled hole for a pin in the mounting
plate on the Compact-5/CNC if there were a drilled hole for a pin
through the base. It feels pretty well hardened, so I'm not to sure
about being able to drill my own hole. :-) And if I *can*, it really
should be metric, and I don't have any metric reamers, yet. :-)

A metric carbide drill will work in hard steel.


Part of the problem is that the blade is far from the center of the
toolpost, giving the cutoff forces considerable leverage to rotate the
toolholder.

Of course.

The problem is that the Dickson cutoff blade holder was not included, so
we have something of a Rube Goldberg setup.

Ouch. The cutoff blade holder is a nice design. Not as
convenient for shifting the extension of the blade on the Aloris style
parting tool holders, but very good grip.

Which cutoff blade holder is nice? I don't understand the comment.


And I did have chips catching as I tried to cut a 5/8" rod off, and the
rod grabbed and spun in the old 5C collet. No damage done, despite the
drama.

With only a 5/8" rod? perhaps the drawbar was not set tight
enough before locking it against rotation? (IIRC, you do have the lever
style drawbar, don't you?)

I do have the lever closer. I did tighten it, so it doesn't spin so
often, but if the blade catches, the rod spins but the blade survives.
The rod is zinc plated.

O.K. Zinc plated suggests that it is Home Depot gummy mystery
metal, and the zinc plating adds a bit more lubrication. But I had no
such problems on mine with 3/8" mystery metal rod. (But I'm using the
offical parting tool holder, and the T-profile parting tool bit.

I think it came from a local hardware store, but it's still mystery
metal.


But there was no squealing or other drama otherwise, so the setup is
rigid enough, and the lathe strong enough.

Indeed. Now I did hit problems trying to part off some 6"
diameter 12L14. The parting tool was just not strong enough with the
amount of extension needed to reach the center of the workpiece.

How wide was the blade? I'm using 3/32".

1/8" IIRC. Width selected because the narrower one takes less
force to part. It has to be 11/16" high to fit the holder. I'm not
sure whether wider was available at all except in taller blades. The
ones which I got before are no longer available form MSC -- at least
based on their web site catalog.

I assume that there is some kind of max ratio of stock diameter to blade
width.



5) turn to diameter in a single pass (roller box tool -- turning
tool with built-in steady rest.)

Roller Box tool. I could have used one of these today. Does anyone
make this anymore?

I suspect so -- since they are still part of the tooling for
automatic screw machines. And you can find them on eBay still, I think.

Hmm ... the only three which come up look rather strange.

Aha -- a different search found:

170190939785

which looks a lot more reasonable. It is even a good size for my
turret, and it has an example tool in it to show the rather strange
grind needed for such tools.

Nor did the lathe come with a follow rest, although I did get the
stationary rest.

Look for a steady rest which mounts to the flats on the
left-side arms of the carriage. There should be a pair of tapped holes,
and likely studs in the holes for mounting the follower.

The carriage has four tapped holes that one uses to attach a follower
rest. If one has a single diameter to handle, it would be easy to make
a special-purpose follower rest.


4) Cut style knurling tool -- looks like a 3-jaw chuck but with
the angled cut style knurling cutters. Should produce sharper
knurling.

Got a knurler. It's the push-from-side variety, but does seem to work.

The style which maximizes the stress and wear on the lathe.

Yes, but it's traditional. I tried it yesterday. Worked fine. I think
the 5914 is strong enough that the strain won't soon kill it.


My favorite for the carriage is one my Aloris which mounts on the BXA sized
toolpost and has a vertical dovetail with two arms on it. There is a
leadscrew which is left-hand on one end and right-hand on the other,
with a knob to bring the arms together or apart at need. once you've
set the height once, it is right for all sizes.

A kind of scissors knurler.


But in the turret, The T-style head is better. It looks sort of
like this (Courier or other fixed pitch font for viewing to avoid
distortion):
+----+ +----+
+---| |------| |------| |---+
| | | [##### #####] | | | - knurl holders which can be
| | | rotated to present
+---| |------| |------| |---+ the knurl at different
angles so a straight
| | | | knurl pair can cut diamond
| | knurls or angled
| \___________________/ | knurls. . Length of
| projection adjustable
\ / for workpiece diameter
\_____________________________/
| |
| |
| | -- Round hollow shank to fit into the turret

This feeds on over the end of the rotating workpiece. For small
diameter workpieces, it can feed through the hollow shank. Larger
diameters are more limited in length of knurl.

For the future, I think First acquisition will be an Aloris toolpost.


Some of these days I'll get around to mounting the Shooting Star
DRO on my Clausing lathe. I've had it for a few years now, but never
taken the time to do it right.

It's probably worthwhile. Although fitting the DRO to the MVI required
me to hand-scrape an aluminum post to a flattish but still curved part
of the knee, to achieve the correct height and perpendicular at the same
time. It's a slow process, but always works.

My main problem is that I'll need to sacrifice a bit of how
close the base of the tailstock or turret can get to the carriage to
give room for the sender.

My impression is that the tailstock side is less often critical. I
suppose one can remove the sender on the occasion that it is in the way.
One can design things so that removal and reinstallation of the sender
is easy.


Joe Gwinn

On 2008-02-05, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-04, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:


[ ... ]

Sort of a tradeoff. You don't want it too deep or you won't get
as much grip. (Hmm ... do I remember a key in there?)

Why? The setscrew then bites into a flat.

But -- it has more threads exposed, letting it bend instead of
prevent rotation. (Though the Woodruff key should prevent the
rotation.)

The flat does not need to be deep.

That depends on how high the burrs raise. :-)

[ ... ]

And step (1) of "RE-ASSEMBLING THE HEADSTOCK SPINDLE" says:

"Clean all parts thoroughly, including the bearings,
and lightly file off all burrs from the spindle"

therefore -- not hardened. :-)

Well, not glass hard. I have lots of stuff that was hardened, but can
be filed.

Hardened but could get burrs from setscrews?

Oh, sure. Setscrews are pretty damn hard.

I've been seriously cranking down on the setscrews in the Aloris
toolholders, and the Kennametal insert tool shanks barely show finish
roughening -- no burrs. Some other shanks do show burrs, however, but I
don't consider them to be truly hardened.

[ ... ]

Mine was attached to a steel plate, about 1/8" thick IIRC, and
it bent when I tightened up the nut to lock the grinder column onto the
compound.

Enh? Bent? This does not sound like Dumore.

Not a true T-nut. Just a plate thick enough to go into the
wider portion of the T-slot, with no meat in the narrower portion. I
don't know whether this was original DuMore or somebody's replacement to
fit it to his lathe.

Replacement by someone lacking a mill. Dumore does not do flimsy.

:-)

Lacking a mill, or too lazy to use one. Of course, I would not
expect it to bend significantly in a smaller T-slot such as would be
found on the smaller end of the size range that it was specified for.

I do notice that the design in the manual
illustrations appears to be a bar with two rounded corners so you can
drop it in, then start to tighten and this will rotate the T-plate under
the steps of the T-slot. I forget whether it showed any meat above
that to make it more rigid. (And, of course, it was made for smaller
lathes than our 12" machines.)

It will have been thick enough that bending is unlikely before the
T-Slots tear out.

With the T-slot spanning a narrower gap it would require a lot
more force to bend the plate.

Right. The 90-degree rotations are to prevent the plates from coming
to a common cylindrical surface, versus a plane. The underlying
mathematical trick is to choose motions that collectively exclude all
but the desired surface. This is the key to origination of specified
shapes.

Hmm ... IIRC, it is a "saddle" surface in which any would mate
with any other in some rotation.

I don't think that saddle surfaces can be generated this way. Toroids
perhaps.

Toroids would not fit from plate 1 to plate 3. Saddle surfaces
could fit between all three plates, if the proper rotation was performed
before joining them each time.

Nested saddle surfaces cannot be slid in any direction, while toroids
can be slid.

This is the traditional saddle surface:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HyperbolicParaboloid.html.

Is this supposed to show an image of the saddle surface, or only
the formulae for generating it?

Here is the more general page:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Saddle.html.

Similar lack of visuals.

And : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_surface.

That one does have a visual.

And the toroid: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RingTorus.html.

Again -- no visual.

Is it perhaps expecting you to have a display program for the
Mathematica program? If so -- are they available (free) for anything
other than Windows?

[ ... ]

I also have a 15C. The advantage is that nobody borrows your calculator.

The disadvanatge is that you have to speak Polish backwards.

I don't consider that a disadvantage -- as long as I don't have
to *spell* Polish -- or to pronounce it from their spelling. :-)

[ ... ]

The new square T-Nut is far better, but the toolpost can still be forced
to rotate.

O.K.

That said, I have been able to do cutoff after cutoff, after sharpening
the blade and clamping things down firmly.

Good enough.

I have this problem from time to time on the Compact-5/CNC.

Put some paper between the toolpost and the plate and more
between the plate and the top of the compound. This resists sliding a
bit better than than nicely ground surface on the bottom of the
toolpost. The paper deforms into every tiny imperfection in the
surface, and thus grips better.

The bottom of the Dickson type toolpost is machined smooth. Perhaps I
need to sandpaper it. Or provide a pin.

My Dickson type toolpost (marked "(Emco)" in a circle) has an
increased diameter at the bottom of the hold-down screw hole which has a
taper -- hardened, ground, and polished. If I had a mating surface
firmly bolted to the plate and pinned against rotation, I would not
expect the toolpost to rotate on it under even very serious load.

[ ... ]

Just as I would add a drilled hole for a pin in the mounting
plate on the Compact-5/CNC if there were a drilled hole for a pin
through the base. It feels pretty well hardened, so I'm not to sure
about being able to drill my own hole. :-) And if I *can*, it really
should be metric, and I don't have any metric reamers, yet. :-)

A metric carbide drill will work in hard steel.

Maybe -- but one of appropriate diameter is unlikely to be long
enough go go through it. And drills always drill oversized, so I would
also need a metric carbide reamer to finish the hole to proper size.

I've used carbide circuit board drills to drill out the web of a
broken-off tap.

[ ... ]

The problem is that the Dickson cutoff blade holder was not included, so
we have something of a Rube Goldberg setup.

Ouch. The cutoff blade holder is a nice design. Not as
convenient for shifting the extension of the blade on the Aloris style
parting tool holders, but very good grip.

Which cutoff blade holder is nice? I don't understand the comment.

The Dickson style -- at least based on the Austrian example
which I have.

[ ... ]

With only a 5/8" rod? perhaps the drawbar was not set tight
enough before locking it against rotation? (IIRC, you do have the lever
style drawbar, don't you?)

I do have the lever closer. I did tighten it, so it doesn't spin so
often, but if the blade catches, the rod spins but the blade survives.
The rod is zinc plated.

O.K. Zinc plated suggests that it is Home Depot gummy mystery
metal, and the zinc plating adds a bit more lubrication. But I had no
such problems on mine with 3/8" mystery metal rod. (But I'm using the
official parting tool holder, and the T-profile parting tool bit.

I think it came from a local hardware store, but it's still mystery
metal.

Soft and gummy, with the zinc as lubricant for easier slipping. :-)

[ ... ]

Indeed. Now I did hit problems trying to part off some 6"
diameter 12L14. The parting tool was just not strong enough with the
amount of extension needed to reach the center of the workpiece.

How wide was the blade? I'm using 3/32".

1/8" IIRC. Width selected because the narrower one takes less
force to part. It has to be 11/16" high to fit the holder. I'm not
sure whether wider was available at all except in taller blades. The
ones which I got before are no longer available form MSC -- at least
based on their web site catalog.

I assume that there is some kind of max ratio of stock diameter to blade
width.

No doubt -- but also a function of the material as well.

A V-groove in the top of the parting tool tends to bend chips
narrower so they don't tend to get stuck in the parting slot.

[ ... ]

Roller Box tool. I could have used one of these today. Does anyone
make this anymore?

[ ... ]

Aha -- a different search found:

170190939785

which looks a lot more reasonable. It is even a good size for my
turret, and it has an example tool in it to show the rather strange
grind needed for such tools.

Search for Boyer-Shultz (which may be shown as "B&S". :-)

Nor did the lathe come with a follow rest, although I did get the
stationary rest.

Look for a steady rest which mounts to the flats on the
left-side arms of the carriage. There should be a pair of tapped holes,
and likely studs in the holes for mounting the follower.

The carriage has four tapped holes that one uses to attach a follower
rest. If one has a single diameter to handle, it would be easy to make
a special-purpose follower rest.

Agreed. I found one on eBay with telescoping fingers which was
shown simply as for a specific height above the cross-slide arms. It
turned out to be just a bit too low, so I screwed 1/8" thick pads on the
bottoms of the feet to bring it to the proper height.

I later got the genuine one from Clausing -- but for smaller
work I prefer to use the first one.

4) Cut style knurling tool -- looks like a 3-jaw chuck but with
the angled cut style knurling cutters. Should produce sharper
knurling.

Got a knurler. It's the push-from-side variety, but does seem to work.

The style which maximizes the stress and wear on the lathe.

Yes, but it's traditional. I tried it yesterday. Worked fine. I think
the 5914 is strong enough that the strain won't soon kill it.

What about when you are trying to knurl the full length of an
18" length of 3/4" stock between centers? Your knurl depth will be
shallower in the middle than near the ends. :-)

Or in my case, knurling a 3/4" brass rod sticking out about six
inches from the collet to reach the turret tooling over the carriage?

My favorite for the carriage is one my Aloris which mounts on the BXA sized
toolpost and has a vertical dovetail with two arms on it. There is a
leadscrew which is left-hand on one end and right-hand on the other,
with a knob to bring the arms together or apart at need. once you've
set the height once, it is right for all sizes.

A kind of scissors knurler.

Except that the arms don't pivot or swing.

But in the turret, The T-style head is better. It looks sort of
like this (Courier or other fixed pitch font for viewing to avoid
distortion):
+----+ +----+
+---| |------| |------| |---+
| | | [##### #####] | | | - knurl holders which can be
| | | rotated to present
+---| |------| |------| |---+ the knurl at different
| | | | angles so a straight
| | | | knurl pair can cut diamond
| | | | knurls or angled
| \___________________/ | knurls. . Length of
| | projection adjustable
\ / for workpiece diameter
\_____________________________/
| |
| |
| | -- Round hollow shank to fit into the turret

This feeds on over the end of the rotating workpiece. For small
diameter workpieces, it can feed through the hollow shank. Larger
diameters are more limited in length of knurl.

For the future, I think First acquisition will be an Aloris toolpost.

Understood.

Some of these days I'll get around to mounting the Shooting Star
DRO on my Clausing lathe. I've had it for a few years now, but never
taken the time to do it right.

It's probably worthwhile. Although fitting the DRO to the MVI required
me to hand-scrape an aluminum post to a flattish but still curved part
of the knee, to achieve the correct height and perpendicular at the same
time. It's a slow process, but always works.

My main problem is that I'll need to sacrifice a bit of how
close the base of the tailstock or turret can get to the carriage to
give room for the sender.

My impression is that the tailstock side is less often critical.

It is more clear of the chips, and allows the carriage to move
quite close to the headstock, but it can be a problem when the turret
ram has to move full length and the carriage needs to move as far as
possible to get the cross-slide into position for certain operations.

I
suppose one can remove the sender on the occasion that it is in the way.
One can design things so that removal and reinstallation of the sender
is easy.

That may be the way to do it.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-05, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-04, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:


[ ... ]

Sort of a tradeoff. You don't want it too deep or you won't get
as much grip. (Hmm ... do I remember a key in there?)

Why? The setscrew then bites into a flat.

But -- it has more threads exposed, letting it bend instead of
prevent rotation. (Though the Woodruff key should prevent the
rotation.)

The flat does not need to be deep.

That depends on how high the burrs raise. :-)

Enh.



And step (1) of "RE-ASSEMBLING THE HEADSTOCK SPINDLE" says:

"Clean all parts thoroughly, including the bearings,
and lightly file off all burrs from the spindle"

therefore -- not hardened. :-)

Well, not glass hard. I have lots of stuff that was hardened, but can
be filed.

Hardened but could get burrs from setscrews?

Oh, sure. Setscrews are pretty damn hard.

I've been seriously cranking down on the setscrews in the Aloris
toolholders, and the Kennametal insert tool shanks barely show finish
roughening -- no burrs. Some other shanks do show burrs, however, but I
don't consider them to be truly hardened.

Metal that will support carbide inserts had better be pretty hard.


Mine was attached to a steel plate, about 1/8" thick IIRC, and
it bent when I tightened up the nut to lock the grinder column onto the
compound.

Enh? Bent? This does not sound like Dumore.

Not a true T-nut. Just a plate thick enough to go into the
wider portion of the T-slot, with no meat in the narrower portion. I
don't know whether this was original DuMore or somebody's replacement to
fit it to his lathe.

Replacement by someone lacking a mill. Dumore does not do flimsy.

:-)

Lacking a mill, or too lazy to use one. Of course, I would not
expect it to bend significantly in a smaller T-slot such as would be
found on the smaller end of the size range that it was specified for.

OK.


I do notice that the design in the manual
illustrations appears to be a bar with two rounded corners so you can
drop it in, then start to tighten and this will rotate the T-plate under
the steps of the T-slot. I forget whether it showed any meat above
that to make it more rigid. (And, of course, it was made for smaller
lathes than our 12" machines.)

It will have been thick enough that bending is unlikely before the
T-Slots tear out.

With the T-slot spanning a narrower gap it would require a lot
more force to bend the plate.

Yes.


Right. The 90-degree rotations are to prevent the plates from
coming
to a common cylindrical surface, versus a plane. The underlying
mathematical trick is to choose motions that collectively exclude
all
but the desired surface. This is the key to origination of
specified
shapes.

Hmm ... IIRC, it is a "saddle" surface in which any would mate
with any other in some rotation.

I don't think that saddle surfaces can be generated this way. Toroids
perhaps.

Toroids would not fit from plate 1 to plate 3. Saddle surfaces
could fit between all three plates, if the proper rotation was performed
before joining them each time.

Nested saddle surfaces cannot be slid in any direction, while toroids
can be slid.

This is the traditional saddle surface:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HyperbolicParaboloid.html.

Is this supposed to show an image of the saddle surface, or only
the formulae for generating it?

Here is the more general page:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Saddle.html.

Similar lack of visuals.

And : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_surface.

That one does have a visual.

And the toroid: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RingTorus.html.

Again -- no visual.

Is it perhaps expecting you to have a display program for the
Mathematica program? If so -- are they available (free) for anything
other than Windows?

In all cases above, the visuals require only a web browser. I use
Firefox.

One can also download MathReader and view the Mathematica notebooks
directly, at no cost. Mathreader is available for Windows, MacOS, and
Linux. Mathematica notebooks are platform-independent.


I also have a 15C. The advantage is that nobody borrows your calculator.

The disadvanatge is that you have to speak Polish backwards.

I don't consider that a disadvantage -- as long as I don't have
to *spell* Polish -- or to pronounce it from their spelling. :-)

I'm sure that true Poles will say that it's easy...


The new square T-Nut is far better, but the toolpost can still be forced
to rotate.

O.K.

That said, I have been able to do cutoff after cutoff, after sharpening
the blade and clamping things down firmly.

Good enough.

I have this problem from time to time on the Compact-5/CNC.

Put some paper between the toolpost and the plate and more
between the plate and the top of the compound. This resists sliding a
bit better than than nicely ground surface on the bottom of the
toolpost. The paper deforms into every tiny imperfection in the
surface, and thus grips better.

The bottom of the Dickson type toolpost is machined smooth. Perhaps I
need to sandpaper it. Or provide a pin.

My Dickson type toolpost (marked "(Emco)" in a circle) has an
increased diameter at the bottom of the hold-down screw hole which has a
taper -- hardened, ground, and polished. If I had a mating surface
firmly bolted to the plate and pinned against rotation, I would not
expect the toolpost to rotate on it under even very serious load.

I don't see anything like this. The hole appears to be a cylinder. A
0.272" diameter letter drill just fits.


Just as I would add a drilled hole for a pin in the mounting
plate on the Compact-5/CNC if there were a drilled hole for a pin
through the base. It feels pretty well hardened, so I'm not to sure
about being able to drill my own hole. :-) And if I *can*, it really
should be metric, and I don't have any metric reamers, yet. :-)

A metric carbide drill will work in hard steel.

Maybe -- but one of appropriate diameter is unlikely to be long
enough go go through it. And drills always drill oversized, so I would
also need a metric carbide reamer to finish the hole to proper size.

I've used carbide circuit board drills to drill out the web of a
broken-off tap.

Drill undersize and lap to size? Or use EDM? There must be a way to
get a tool out of this.


The problem is that the Dickson cutoff blade holder was not included, so
we have something of a Rube Goldberg setup.

Ouch. The cutoff blade holder is a nice design. Not as
convenient for shifting the extension of the blade on the Aloris style
parting tool holders, but very good grip.

Which cutoff blade holder is nice? I don't understand the comment.

The Dickson style -- at least based on the Austrian example
which I have.

Ahh. I don't have one of these.


Indeed. Now I did hit problems trying to part off some 6"
diameter 12L14. The parting tool was just not strong enough with the
amount of extension needed to reach the center of the workpiece.

How wide was the blade? I'm using 3/32".

1/8" IIRC. Width selected because the narrower one takes less
force to part. It has to be 11/16" high to fit the holder. I'm not
sure whether wider was available at all except in taller blades. The
ones which I got before are no longer available from MSC -- at least
based on their web site catalog.

I assume that there is some kind of max ratio of stock diameter to blade
width.

No doubt -- but also a function of the material as well.

3/(1/8)= 24:1

Minor misalignments have to matter at such ratios.


A V-groove in the top of the parting tool tends to bend chips
narrower so they don't tend to get stuck in the parting slot.

I've seen this, but my parting blade has a flat top.


Roller Box tool. I could have used one of these today. Does anyone
make this anymore?

[ ... ]

Aha -- a different search found:

170190939785

which looks a lot more reasonable. It is even a good size for my
turret, and it has an example tool in it to show the rather strange
grind needed for such tools.

Search for Boyer-Shultz (which may be shown as "B&S". :-)

The eBay listed item appears to be B&S.


Nor did the lathe come with a follow rest, although I did get the
stationary rest.

Look for a steady rest which mounts to the flats on the
left-side arms of the carriage. There should be a pair of tapped holes,
and likely studs in the holes for mounting the follower.

The carriage has four tapped holes that one uses to attach a follower
rest. If one has a single diameter to handle, it would be easy to make
a special-purpose follower rest.

Agreed. I found one on eBay with telescoping fingers which was
shown simply as for a specific height above the cross-slide arms. It
turned out to be just a bit too low, so I screwed 1/8" thick pads on the
bottoms of the feet to bring it to the proper height.

I later got the genuine one from Clausing -- but for smaller
work I prefer to use the first one.

I'm afraid to ask what the Clausing unit cost.


4) Cut style knurling tool -- looks like a 3-jaw chuck but with
the angled cut style knurling cutters. Should produce sharper
knurling.

Got a knurler. It's the push-from-side variety, but does seem to work.

The style which maximizes the stress and wear on the lathe.

Yes, but it's traditional. I tried it yesterday. Worked fine. I think
the 5914 is strong enough that the strain won't soon kill it.

What about when you are trying to knurl the full length of an
18" length of 3/4" stock between centers? Your knurl depth will be
shallower in the middle than near the ends. :-)

Yep. I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.


Or in my case, knurling a 3/4" brass rod sticking out about six
inches from the collet to reach the turret tooling over the carriage?

Eliminate the turret tooling?


My favorite for the carriage is one my Aloris which mounts on the BXA
sized
toolpost and has a vertical dovetail with two arms on it. There is a
leadscrew which is left-hand on one end and right-hand on the other,
with a knob to bring the arms together or apart at need. once you've
set the height once, it is right for all sizes.

A kind of scissors knurler.

Except that the arms don't pivot or swing.

The is the $300 Aloris BXA unit?


Some of these days I'll get around to mounting the Shooting Star
DRO on my Clausing lathe. I've had it for a few years now, but never
taken the time to do it right.

It's probably worthwhile. Although fitting the DRO to the MVI required
me to hand-scrape an aluminum post to a flattish but still curved part
of the knee, to achieve the correct height and perpendicular at the same
time. It's a slow process, but always works.

My main problem is that I'll need to sacrifice a bit of how
close the base of the tailstock or turret can get to the carriage to
give room for the sender.

My impression is that the tailstock side is less often critical.

It is more clear of the chips, and allows the carriage to move
quite close to the headstock, but it can be a problem when the turret
ram has to move full length and the carriage needs to move as far as
possible to get the cross-slide into position for certain operations.

How often does this come up?


I suppose one can remove the sender on the occasion that it is in the way.
One can design things so that removal and reinstallation of the sender
is easy.

That may be the way to do it.

Otherwise one is forced into a compromise one way or the other, all to
serve a pretty rare situation.

Joe Gwinn

On 2008-02-06, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-05, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

Well, not glass hard. I have lots of stuff that was hardened, but can
be filed.

Hardened but could get burrs from setscrews?

Oh, sure. Setscrews are pretty damn hard.

I've been seriously cranking down on the setscrews in the Aloris
toolholders, and the Kennametal insert tool shanks barely show finish
roughening -- no burrs. Some other shanks do show burrs, however, but I
don't consider them to be truly hardened.

Metal that will support carbide inserts had better be pretty hard.

But it does not support carbide inserts -- it supports carbide
*anvils* which then support the carbide inserts. This is the way that
*good* insert tooling is made. And I have been able to reduce the
height (from 3/4" to 5/8" to fit my BXA size tooling) using my Nichols
horizontal mill and a slab milling cutter and lots of high sulfur
threading oil. :-) Boy did that stink. :-)

[ ... ]

Toroids would not fit from plate 1 to plate 3. Saddle surfaces
could fit between all three plates, if the proper rotation was performed
before joining them each time.

Nested saddle surfaces cannot be slid in any direction, while toroids
can be slid.

This is the traditional saddle surface:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HyperbolicParaboloid.html.

Is this supposed to show an image of the saddle surface, or only
the formulae for generating it?

Here is the more general page:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Saddle.html.

Similar lack of visuals.

And : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_surface.

That one does have a visual.

And the toroid: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RingTorus.html.

Again -- no visual.

Is it perhaps expecting you to have a display program for the
Mathematica program? If so -- are they available (free) for anything
other than Windows?

In all cases above, the visuals require only a web browser. I use
Firefox.

I'm using Opera -- on a Sun system running Solaris 10. Nothing
-- even when I turned on javascript and the Flash plugin.

Same when I tried Mozilla (which came with the Solaris 10).

I wonder whether it is doing something which requires some
Windows-only stuff such as Active-X.

One can also download MathReader and view the Mathematica notebooks
directly, at no cost. Mathreader is available for Windows, MacOS, and
Linux. Mathematica notebooks are platform-independent.

Mathreader is however apparently *not* available for Sun's
Solaris or for OpenBSD.


I also have a 15C. The advantage is that nobody borrows your calculator.

The disadvanatge is that you have to speak Polish backwards.

I don't consider that a disadvantage -- as long as I don't have
to *spell* Polish -- or to pronounce it from their spelling. :-)

I'm sure that true Poles will say that it's easy...

Of course -- but I'm not one. :-) And the ones that I grew up
with in South Texas probably could do no better. :-)

[ ... ]

The bottom of the Dickson type toolpost is machined smooth. Perhaps I
need to sandpaper it. Or provide a pin.

My Dickson type toolpost (marked "(Emco)" in a circle) has an
increased diameter at the bottom of the hold-down screw hole which has a
taper -- hardened, ground, and polished. If I had a mating surface
firmly bolted to the plate and pinned against rotation, I would not
expect the toolpost to rotate on it under even very serious load.

I don't see anything like this. The hole appears to be a cylinder. A
0.272" diameter letter drill just fits.

Certainly different. I find myself wondering just what system
the ground and polished taper is for. perhaps I should try making one
for my system to see what it does.

[ ... ]

A metric carbide drill will work in hard steel.

Maybe -- but one of appropriate diameter is unlikely to be long
enough go go through it. And drills always drill oversized, so I would
also need a metric carbide reamer to finish the hole to proper size.

I've used carbide circuit board drills to drill out the web of a
broken-off tap.

Drill undersize and lap to size?

Undersized means that the drill will be even shorter. :-)

Or use EDM? There must be a way to
get a tool out of this.

I think that I'll try measuring the taper and making a matching
taper which *will* be pinned to the plate. (A rectangular plate secured
to the cross-slide with four Allen-head cap screws (metric of course),
and providing two tapped holes -- one for turning larger diameter
workpieces, the other for smaller diameter ones. (The travel of the
cross-slide is rather limited on this.

[ ... ]

I assume that there is some kind of max ratio of stock diameter to blade
width.

No doubt -- but also a function of the material as well.

3/(1/8)= 24:1

Minor misalignments have to matter at such ratios.

But also -- harder materials are more likely to break off the
parting tool.


A V-groove in the top of the parting tool tends to bend chips
narrower so they don't tend to get stuck in the parting slot.

I've seen this, but my parting blade has a flat top.

As does mine -- though I should try grinding the groove in the
top.


Roller Box tool. I could have used one of these today. Does anyone
make this anymore?

[ ... ]

Aha -- a different search found:

170190939785

which looks a lot more reasonable. It is even a good size for my
turret, and it has an example tool in it to show the rather strange
grind needed for such tools.

Search for Boyer-Shultz (which may be shown as "B&S". :-)

The eBay listed item appears to be B&S.

The first line of the description reads (in part):

"(B88) Boyar-Schultz Model #2 RT roller box turning tool
with 1" shank."

I don't see B&S "Brown and Sharpe" anywhere in the listing. But
sometimes the vendors will see "BS" and label the auction "B&S" not
knowing the difference. And, of course, B&S *did* make a lot of automatic
screw machine tooling, so some of them can be true B&S. :-)

[ ... ]

The carriage has four tapped holes that one uses to attach a follower
rest. If one has a single diameter to handle, it would be easy to make
a special-purpose follower rest.

Agreed. I found one on eBay with telescoping fingers which was
shown simply as for a specific height above the cross-slide arms. It
turned out to be just a bit too low, so I screwed 1/8" thick pads on the
bottoms of the feet to bring it to the proper height.

I later got the genuine one from Clausing -- but for smaller
work I prefer to use the first one.

I'm afraid to ask what the Clausing unit cost.

That's O.K. I couldn't tell you -- except that I am unlikely to
have bid more than $100.00 for it -- and more likely in the $60-80$
range tops.

[ ... ]

Or in my case, knurling a 3/4" brass rod sticking out about six
inches from the collet to reach the turret tooling over the carriage?

Eliminate the turret tooling?

When I have six or seven tool changes per part, and am making
80+ parts from a single 6' rod of 3/4" brass in a single day? No thank
you. Among other things, the turret tooling can do a clean turn down
from 3/4" to just over 5/8" prior to feeding it into the Geometric die
head for threading 5/8-27. One pass for the turn down, retract the
turret ram and let the Geometric die head index into place, and cut the
thread in a single pass at 850 RPM. The only time I need to stop and
reverse is to extract the tap in the releasing tap head, since they
don't make collapsing taps down in the 1/4-20 size range. :-)

My favorite for the carriage is one my Aloris which mounts on the BXA
sized
toolpost and has a vertical dovetail with two arms on it. There is a
leadscrew which is left-hand on one end and right-hand on the other,
with a knob to bring the arms together or apart at need. once you've
set the height once, it is right for all sizes.

A kind of scissors knurler.

Except that the arms don't pivot or swing.

The is the $300 Aloris BXA unit?

I would have to dig out my MSC "Big Book" to be sure, but that
is likely. I got it from an eBay auction where there was not much
competition, and am *very* glad that I did.

[ ... ]

My main problem is that I'll need to sacrifice a bit of how
close the base of the tailstock or turret can get to the carriage to
give room for the sender.

My impression is that the tailstock side is less often critical.

It is more clear of the chips, and allows the carriage to move
quite close to the headstock, but it can be a problem when the turret
ram has to move full length and the carriage needs to move as far as
possible to get the cross-slide into position for certain operations.

How often does this come up?

Whenever I set up for a production run of about 80 of those
parts from six feet of 3/4" brass rod. :-)

I suppose one can remove the sender on the occasion that it is in the way.
One can design things so that removal and reinstallation of the sender
is easy.

That may be the way to do it.

Otherwise one is forced into a compromise one way or the other, all to
serve a pretty rare situation.

Indeed. (Hmm ... I *could* extend the cross-slide sender out
behind the carriage -- except that would probably get in the way of the
taper attachment when *it* is mounted. Maybe mount it *past* the taper
attachment?

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-06, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-05, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

Oh, sure. Setscrews are pretty damn hard.

I've been seriously cranking down on the setscrews in the Aloris
toolholders, and the Kennametal insert tool shanks barely show finish
roughening -- no burrs. Some other shanks do show burrs, however, but I
don't consider them to be truly hardened.

Metal that will support carbide inserts had better be pretty hard.

But it does not support carbide inserts -- it supports carbide
*anvils* which then support the carbide inserts. This is the way that
*good* insert tooling is made.

Yes, but even so the steel under the anvil has to be pretty hard, or the
seat will deform, the anvil will crack, followed shortly by the insert.
I suppose a very thick anvil could allow a softer seat to succeed.


And I have been able to reduce the
height (from 3/4" to 5/8" to fit my BXA size tooling) using my Nichols
horizontal mill and a slab milling cutter and lots of high sulfur
threading oil. :-) Boy did that stink. :-)

The cutter was HSS? From the setscrew story, this steel is pretty hard.


[ ... ]

Toroids would not fit from plate 1 to plate 3. Saddle surfaces
could fit between all three plates, if the proper rotation was
performed
before joining them each time.

Nested saddle surfaces cannot be slid in any direction, while toroids
can be slid.

This is the traditional saddle surface:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HyperbolicParaboloid.html.

Is this supposed to show an image of the saddle surface, or only
the formulae for generating it?

Here is the more general page:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Saddle.html.

Similar lack of visuals.

And : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_surface.

That one does have a visual.

And the toroid: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RingTorus.html.

Again -- no visual.

Is it perhaps expecting you to have a display program for the
Mathematica program? If so -- are they available (free) for anything
other than Windows?

In all cases above, the visuals require only a web browser. I use
Firefox.

I'm using Opera -- on a Sun system running Solaris 10. Nothing
-- even when I turned on javascript and the Flash plugin.

Same when I tried Mozilla (which came with the Solaris 10).

I wonder whether it is doing something which requires some
Windows-only stuff such as Active-X.

Not a chance that this is needed, as I run Firefox on MacOS. Perhaps
Opera needs to tell a different lie?


One can also download MathReader and view the Mathematica notebooks
directly, at no cost. Mathreader is available for Windows, MacOS, and
Linux. Mathematica notebooks are platform-independent.

Mathreader is however apparently *not* available for Sun's
Solaris or for OpenBSD.

Solaris on SPARC is supported, but not on Intel. At least used to be,
ending at MMA version 2.2 (current is 6.0). Oh well.

Try these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torus and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_surface.


I also have a 15C. The advantage is that nobody borrows your
calculator.

The disadvanatge is that you have to speak Polish backwards.

I don't consider that a disadvantage -- as long as I don't have
to *spell* Polish -- or to pronounce it from their spelling. :-)

I'm sure that true Poles will say that it's easy...

Of course -- but I'm not one. :-) And the ones that I grew up
with in South Texas probably could do no better. :-)

Ply them with kielbasa and beer...


A metric carbide drill will work in hard steel.

Maybe -- but one of appropriate diameter is unlikely to be long
enough go go through it. And drills always drill oversized, so I would
also need a metric carbide reamer to finish the hole to proper size.

I've used carbide circuit board drills to drill out the web of a
broken-off tap.

Drill undersize and lap to size?

Undersized means that the drill will be even shorter. :-)

Or use EDM? There must be a way to
get a tool out of this.

I think that I'll try measuring the taper and making a matching
taper which *will* be pinned to the plate. (A rectangular plate secured
to the cross-slide with four Allen-head cap screws (metric of course),
and providing two tapped holes -- one for turning larger diameter
workpieces, the other for smaller diameter ones. (The travel of the
cross-slide is rather limited on this.

I can't imagine how the taper can work, unless the pin is individually
fitted to tapers in body and plate.


I assume that there is some kind of max ratio of stock diameter to blade
width.

No doubt -- but also a function of the material as well.

3/(1/8)= 24:1

Minor misalignments have to matter at such ratios.

But also -- harder materials are more likely to break off the
parting tool.

Time for a carbide insert cutoff tool?


A V-groove in the top of the parting tool tends to bend chips
narrower so they don't tend to get stuck in the parting slot.

I've seen this, but my parting blade has a flat top.

As does mine -- though I should try grinding the groove in the
top.

Mine was hand ground at a slant at the very tip, probably to make a
cleaner cutoff on one side. But I ground it straight, and sharp.


Roller Box tool. I could have used one of these today. Does anyone
make this anymore?

[ ... ]

Aha -- a different search found:

170190939785

which looks a lot more reasonable. It is even a good size for my
turret, and it has an example tool in it to show the rather strange
grind needed for such tools.

Search for Boyer-Shultz (which may be shown as "B&S". :-)

The eBay listed item appears to be B&S.

The first line of the description reads (in part):

"(B88) Boyar-Schultz Model #2 RT roller box turning tool
with 1" shank."

I don't see B&S "Brown and Sharpe" anywhere in the listing. But
sometimes the vendors will see "BS" and label the auction "B&S" not
knowing the difference. And, of course, B&S *did* make a lot of automatic
screw machine tooling, so some of them can be true B&S. :-)

Some research is in order. Browne & Sharpe is more common than
Boyar-Schultz on eBay. Are there any other names than "roller box tool"?


The carriage has four tapped holes that one uses to attach a follower
rest. If one has a single diameter to handle, it would be easy to make
a special-purpose follower rest.

Agreed. I found one on eBay with telescoping fingers which was
shown simply as for a specific height above the cross-slide arms. It
turned out to be just a bit too low, so I screwed 1/8" thick pads on the
bottoms of the feet to bring it to the proper height.

I later got the genuine one from Clausing -- but for smaller
work I prefer to use the first one.

I'm afraid to ask what the Clausing unit cost.

That's O.K. I couldn't tell you -- except that I am unlikely to
have bid more than $100.00 for it -- and more likely in the $60-80$
range tops.

Not from Clausing - that's what saved your retirement.


Or in my case, knurling a 3/4" brass rod sticking out about six
inches from the collet to reach the turret tooling over the carriage?

Eliminate the turret tooling?

When I have six or seven tool changes per part, and am making
80+ parts from a single 6' rod of 3/4" brass in a single day? No thank
you. Among other things, the turret tooling can do a clean turn down
from 3/4" to just over 5/8" prior to feeding it into the Geometric die
head for threading 5/8-27. One pass for the turn down, retract the
turret ram and let the Geometric die head index into place, and cut the
thread in a single pass at 850 RPM. The only time I need to stop and
reverse is to extract the tap in the releasing tap head, since they
don't make collapsing taps down in the 1/4-20 size range. :-)

My favorite for the carriage is one my Aloris which mounts on the BXA
sized
toolpost and has a vertical dovetail with two arms on it. There is a
leadscrew which is left-hand on one end and right-hand on the other,
with a knob to bring the arms together or apart at need. once you've
set the height once, it is right for all sizes.

A kind of scissors knurler.

Except that the arms don't pivot or swing.

The is the $300 Aloris BXA unit?

I would have to dig out my MSC "Big Book" to be sure, but that
is likely. I got it from an eBay auction where there was not much
competition, and am *very* glad that I did.

OK


My main problem is that I'll need to sacrifice a bit of how
close the base of the tailstock or turret can get to the carriage to
give room for the sender.

My impression is that the tailstock side is less often critical.

It is more clear of the chips, and allows the carriage to move
quite close to the headstock, but it can be a problem when the turret
ram has to move full length and the carriage needs to move as far as
possible to get the cross-slide into position for certain operations.

How often does this come up?

Whenever I set up for a production run of about 80 of those
parts from six feet of 3/4" brass rod. :-)

So it better be easy to remove the scale.


I suppose one can remove the sender on the occasion that it is in the way.
One can design things so that removal and reinstallation of the sender
is easy.

That may be the way to do it.

Otherwise one is forced into a compromise one way or the other, all to
serve a pretty rare situation.

Indeed. (Hmm ... I *could* extend the cross-slide sender out
behind the carriage -- except that would probably get in the way of the
taper attachment when *it* is mounted. Maybe mount it *past* the taper
attachment?

A puzzle for sure. I went through the same drama figuring out how to
fit the DRO scales to my mill. I've got X and Y done, but not yet Z
(the knee). I may do the quill first.

Joe Gwinn

On 2008-02-08, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-06, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-05, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

Oh, sure. Setscrews are pretty damn hard.

I've been seriously cranking down on the setscrews in the Aloris
toolholders, and the Kennametal insert tool shanks barely show finish
roughening -- no burrs. Some other shanks do show burrs, however, but I
don't consider them to be truly hardened.

Metal that will support carbide inserts had better be pretty hard.

But it does not support carbide inserts -- it supports carbide
*anvils* which then support the carbide inserts. This is the way that
*good* insert tooling is made.

Yes, but even so the steel under the anvil has to be pretty hard, or the
seat will deform, the anvil will crack, followed shortly by the insert.
I suppose a very thick anvil could allow a softer seat to succeed.

The steel on a *quality* insert tool is tough -- but certainly
not fully hard. The anvil (and the insert) are thicker than the inserts
on the cheap tooling (where once you have bought the cheap set of five
holders, you discover that the inserts cost more each than the ones for
the quality tools -- which have the advantage that the industrial users
are buying them in sufficient quantity to keep the price down. :-)

And I have been able to reduce the
height (from 3/4" to 5/8" to fit my BXA size tooling) using my Nichols
horizontal mill and a slab milling cutter and lots of high sulfur
threading oil. :-) Boy did that stink. :-)

The cutter was HSS? From the setscrew story, this steel is pretty hard.

The cutter was HHS -- or perhaps a Cobalt steel. The horizontal
mill has both excellent support for the milling cutter (bearing at the
far end of the arbor) and very slow speeds -- plus lever feed which lets
you tune the feed to what feels right. You don't get much tactile
feedback from a leadscrew and crank.

[ ... ]

Is it perhaps expecting you to have a display program for the
Mathematica program? If so -- are they available (free) for anything
other than Windows?

In all cases above, the visuals require only a web browser. I use
Firefox.

I'm using Opera -- on a Sun system running Solaris 10. Nothing
-- even when I turned on javascript and the Flash plugin.

Same when I tried Mozilla (which came with the Solaris 10).

I wonder whether it is doing something which requires some
Windows-only stuff such as Active-X.

Not a chance that this is needed, as I run Firefox on MacOS. Perhaps
Opera needs to tell a different lie?

O.K. I do have a Mac Mini (Intel based) for income tax software
and a few other things which require a mass-media system.

As for the lie -- normally I let Opera tell the truth. Perhaps
I should try some of the lies -- but right now there is too much else to
do, so I'll let it drop for the moment.


One can also download MathReader and view the Mathematica notebooks
directly, at no cost. Mathreader is available for Windows, MacOS, and
Linux. Mathematica notebooks are platform-independent.

Mathreader is however apparently *not* available for Sun's
Solaris or for OpenBSD.

Solaris on SPARC is supported, but not on Intel.

That's O.K. I'm running it on UltraSPARC III Cu CPUs. Two Sun
Blade 1000s and one Sun Fire 280R (Plus a lot of older systems still in
service, going back to a Sun LX serving as a DNS server and not much
else. :-)

At least used to be,
ending at MMA version 2.2 (current is 6.0). Oh well.

Try these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torus and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_surface.

Later.

I also have a 15C. The advantage is that nobody borrows your
calculator.

The disadvanatge is that you have to speak Polish backwards.

I don't consider that a disadvantage -- as long as I don't have
to *spell* Polish -- or to pronounce it from their spelling. :-)

I'm sure that true Poles will say that it's easy...

Of course -- but I'm not one. :-) And the ones that I grew up
with in South Texas probably could do no better. :-)

Ply them with kielbasa and beer...

Not sure that I could have *found* kielbasa in South Texas in
the 1950s. Beer was there in plenty, but I couldn't buy it, as I wasn't
old enough. :-)

[ ... ]

I think that I'll try measuring the taper and making a matching
taper which *will* be pinned to the plate. (A rectangular plate secured
to the cross-slide with four Allen-head cap screws (metric of course),
and providing two tapped holes -- one for turning larger diameter
workpieces, the other for smaller diameter ones. (The travel of the
cross-slide is rather limited on this.

I can't imagine how the taper can work, unless the pin is individually
fitted to tapers in body and plate.

That taper is out to a max diameter of perhaps 75% of the
dimension between opposite sides of the toolpost. The mating male taper
which I would make would be pinned to the plate.


I assume that there is some kind of max ratio of stock diameter to blade
width.

No doubt -- but also a function of the material as well.

3/(1/8)= 24:1

Minor misalignments have to matter at such ratios.

But also -- harder materials are more likely to break off the
parting tool.

Time for a carbide insert cutoff tool?

For some things -- but this was 6" diameter 12L14, which should
not need carbides. :-)

[ ... ]

Roller Box tool. I could have used one of these today. Does anyone
make this anymore?

[ ... ]

Aha -- a different search found:

170190939785

which looks a lot more reasonable. It is even a good size for my
turret, and it has an example tool in it to show the rather strange
grind needed for such tools.

Search for Boyer-Shultz (which may be shown as "B&S". :-)

The eBay listed item appears to be B&S.

The first line of the description reads (in part):

"(B88) Boyar-Schultz Model #2 RT roller box turning tool
with 1" shank."

I don't see B&S "Brown and Sharpe" anywhere in the listing. But
sometimes the vendors will see "BS" and label the auction "B&S" not
knowing the difference. And, of course, B&S *did* make a lot of automatic
screw machine tooling, so some of them can be true B&S. :-)

Some research is in order. Browne & Sharpe is more common than
Boyar-Schultz on eBay. Are there any other names than "roller box tool"?

Just plain "box tool" -- and "I found this strange tooling which
maybe you know what it is for." Just like other eBay auctions. :-)

Both are good quality, so go for whatever you find.

[ ... ]

I later got the genuine one from Clausing -- but for smaller
work I prefer to use the first one.

I'm afraid to ask what the Clausing unit cost.

That's O.K. I couldn't tell you -- except that I am unlikely to
have bid more than $100.00 for it -- and more likely in the $60-80$
range tops.

Not from Clausing - that's what saved your retirement.

Indeed so. I didn't know that they still had that. :-) They
don't have the locking lever for the tailstock, so I have to use a
wrench and a nut to lock it up.

[ ... ]

Except that the arms don't pivot or swing.

The is the $300 Aloris BXA unit?

I would have to dig out my MSC "Big Book" to be sure, but that
is likely. I got it from an eBay auction where there was not much
competition, and am *very* glad that I did.

OK

It often makes the difference between deciding whether or not to
knurl.

[ ... ]

It is more clear of the chips, and allows the carriage to move
quite close to the headstock, but it can be a problem when the turret
ram has to move full length and the carriage needs to move as far as
possible to get the cross-slide into position for certain operations.

How often does this come up?

Whenever I set up for a production run of about 80 of those
parts from six feet of 3/4" brass rod. :-)

So it better be easy to remove the scale.

Right -- or I should find some way to mount it out of the way of
everything.

If I were to keep the taper attachment on full time, it might
serve as a way to do it -- but I want to keep the wear on it and the
special cross-feed nut to a minimum. I'm not sure that that nut is
still available.

[ ... ]

Indeed. (Hmm ... I *could* extend the cross-slide sender out
behind the carriage -- except that would probably get in the way of the
taper attachment when *it* is mounted. Maybe mount it *past* the taper
attachment?

A puzzle for sure. I went through the same drama figuring out how to
fit the DRO scales to my mill. I've got X and Y done, but not yet Z
(the knee). I may do the quill first.

For the quill, (assuming a standard Bridgeport or a close clone)
there is a Mitsubishu one which mounts on the depth stop rod.

I've not been putting a DRO on the Bridgeport, because it is a
CNC machine -- no handwheels for X or Y axis, and real ball screws for
both. But I may put one on the Nichols horizontal mill. I think that I
even have what I need, if the Heidrihan (sp?) scales that I have are
still good. I have the 2-axis readout of the same vintage. (And
perhaps could add a third axis to that, too, since there is room in the
boards for it all -- if I can find all of the needed chips and LED
readouts.)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-08, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-06, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-05, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

Metal that will support carbide inserts had better be pretty hard.

But it does not support carbide inserts -- it supports carbide
*anvils* which then support the carbide inserts. This is the way that
*good* insert tooling is made.

Yes, but even so the steel under the anvil has to be pretty hard, or the
seat will deform, the anvil will crack, followed shortly by the insert.
I suppose a very thick anvil could allow a softer seat to succeed.

The steel on a *quality* insert tool is tough -- but certainly
not fully hard. The anvil (and the insert) are thicker than the inserts
on the cheap tooling (where once you have bought the cheap set of five
holders, you discover that the inserts cost more each than the ones for
the quality tools -- which have the advantage that the industrial users
are buying them in sufficient quantity to keep the price down. :-)

This is a good point. I have been using HSS tools for now, although I
did get one small triangle-insert tool with 5 or 6 extra inserts, made
by TRW. It seems to work quite well, although it's a bit small for the
Dickson toolholders.

I imagine that the cheap tools use an odd size insert precisely to
prevent use of commodity insets.

As for quality insert tooling, which brands are good, and more
importantly, which brands are better avoided, and why?


And I have been able to reduce the
height (from 3/4" to 5/8" to fit my BXA size tooling) using my Nichols
horizontal mill and a slab milling cutter and lots of high sulfur
threading oil. :-) Boy did that stink. :-)

The cutter was HSS? From the setscrew story, this steel is pretty hard.

The cutter was HSS -- or perhaps a Cobalt steel. The horizontal
mill has both excellent support for the milling cutter (bearing at the
far end of the arbor) and very slow speeds -- plus lever feed which lets
you tune the feed to what feels right. You don't get much tactile
feedback from a leadscrew and crank.

Well, I do depend on crank feel (and sound) when cutting something new,
but it stands to reason a feed lever would be even more tactile. It did
take me a few drill bits before I learned how to drill on the Millrite
-- there is far less vibration than with the drill press, so I was far
too aggressive at first.


Is it perhaps expecting you to have a display program for the
Mathematica program? If so -- are they available (free) for anything
other than Windows?

In all cases above, the visuals require only a web browser. I use
Firefox.

I'm using Opera -- on a Sun system running Solaris 10. Nothing
-- even when I turned on javascript and the Flash plugin.

Same when I tried Mozilla (which came with the Solaris 10).

I wonder whether it is doing something which requires some
Windows-only stuff such as Active-X.

Not a chance that this is needed, as I run Firefox on MacOS. Perhaps
Opera needs to tell a different lie?

O.K. I do have a Mac Mini (Intel based) for income tax software
and a few other things which require a mass-media system.

As for the lie -- normally I let Opera tell the truth. Perhaps
I should try some of the lies -- but right now there is too much else to
do, so I'll let it drop for the moment.

I suspect another root problem is that the browsers are too old.


One can also download MathReader and view the Mathematica notebooks
directly, at no cost. Mathreader is available for Windows, MacOS, and
Linux. Mathematica notebooks are platform-independent.

Mathreader is however apparently *not* available for Sun's
Solaris or for OpenBSD.

Solaris on SPARC is supported, but not on Intel.

That's O.K. I'm running it on UltraSPARC III Cu CPUs. Two Sun
Blade 1000s and one Sun Fire 280R (Plus a lot of older systems still in
service, going back to a Sun LX serving as a DNS server and not much
else. :-)

At least used to be,
ending at MMA version 2.2 (current is 6.0). Oh well.

Try these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torus and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_surface.

Later.

OK. The cleanest solution is to mount the current version of MathReader
on the Mac Mini. Also, current versions of Opera will probably handle
the Wolfram site correctly from the Mac. Failing that, Firefox.

MMA version 2.0 is *very* old, and will fail on most current MMA stuff,
so I would not bother trying to run 2.2 on Solaris.


I also have a 15C. The advantage is that nobody borrows your
calculator.

The disadvanatge is that you have to speak Polish backwards.

I don't consider that a disadvantage -- as long as I don't have
to *spell* Polish -- or to pronounce it from their spelling. :-)

I'm sure that true Poles will say that it's easy...

Of course -- but I'm not one. :-) And the ones that I grew up
with in South Texas probably could do no better. :-)

Ply them with kielbasa and beer...

Not sure that I could have *found* kielbasa in South Texas in
the 1950s. Beer was there in plenty, but I couldn't buy it, as I wasn't
old enough. :-)

Heh.


I think that I'll try measuring the taper and making a matching
taper which *will* be pinned to the plate. (A rectangular plate secured
to the cross-slide with four Allen-head cap screws (metric of course),
and providing two tapped holes -- one for turning larger diameter
workpieces, the other for smaller diameter ones. (The travel of the
cross-slide is rather limited on this.

I can't imagine how the taper can work, unless the pin is individually
fitted to tapers in body and plate.

That taper is out to a max diameter of perhaps 75% of the
dimension between opposite sides of the toolpost. The mating male taper
which I would make would be pinned to the plate.

OK. If only one taper has to mate perfectly, then it can work.


I assume that there is some kind of max ratio of stock diameter to
blade width.

No doubt -- but also a function of the material as well.

3/(1/8)= 24:1

Minor misalignments have to matter at such ratios.

But also -- harder materials are more likely to break off the
parting tool.

Time for a carbide insert cutoff tool?

For some things -- but this was 6" diameter 12L14, which should
not need carbides. :-)

Yes, but I meant for the harder materials.


The eBay listed item appears to be B&S.

The first line of the description reads (in part):

"(B88) Boyar-Schultz Model #2 RT roller box turning tool
with 1" shank."

I don't see B&S "Brown and Sharpe" anywhere in the listing. But
sometimes the vendors will see "BS" and label the auction "B&S" not
knowing the difference. And, of course, B&S *did* make a lot of automatic
screw machine tooling, so some of them can be true B&S. :-)

Some research is in order. Browne & Sharpe is more common than
Boyar-Schultz on eBay. Are there any other names than "roller box tool"?

Just plain "box tool" -- and "I found this strange tooling which
maybe you know what it is for." Just like other eBay auctions. :-)

Both are good quality, so go for whatever you find.

OK. It was not clear to me how one attaches that tool to the lathe.



How often does this come up?

Whenever I set up for a production run of about 80 of those
parts from six feet of 3/4" brass rod. :-)

So it better be easy to remove the scale.

Right -- or I should find some way to mount it out of the way of
everything.

If I were to keep the taper attachment on full time, it might
serve as a way to do it -- but I want to keep the wear on it and the
special cross-feed nut to a minimum. I'm not sure that that nut is
still available.

No doubt. There will be a reason Clausing ran out of these nuts.
Probably not easy to make either.


Indeed. (Hmm ... I *could* extend the cross-slide sender out
behind the carriage -- except that would probably get in the way of the
taper attachment when *it* is mounted. Maybe mount it *past* the taper
attachment?

Sounds floppy and hard to keep the DRO components aligned with respect
to each other.


A puzzle for sure. I went through the same drama figuring out how to
fit the DRO scales to my mill. I've got X and Y done, but not yet Z
(the knee). I may do the quill first.

For the quill, (assuming a standard Bridgeport or a close clone)
there is a Mitsubishu one which mounts on the depth stop rod.

The Millrite does not have a depth stop, so attaching a DRO to the quill
will involve replacing the depth pointer with a steel blade that moves
the readout box on the DRO scale. I'll probably also engrave an
indicator line on the blade, for nostalgia.


I've not been putting a DRO on the Bridgeport, because it is a
CNC machine -- no handwheels for X or Y axis, and real ball screws for
both. But I may put one on the Nichols horizontal mill. I think that I
even have what I need, if the Heidrihan (sp?) scales that I have are
still good. I have the 2-axis readout of the same vintage. (And
perhaps could add a third axis to that, too, since there is room in the
boards for it all -- if I can find all of the needed chips and LED
readouts.)

It's "Heidenhain". They probably use one of the standard signal sets,
so you may be able to find a DRO head that will correctly handle the
signal, requiring only some work with connectors. Making the readout
head from small parts sounds like far too much work.


Joe Gwinn