Hello all,

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

I *know* I asked about the dials. They have both imperial and metric
labels on separate "sub-rings" that are staggered, and with staggered
pointers, but I still strongly suspect that it is an imperial machine;
the thread selections are strongly tilted toward imperial. When US
hardware stores switch, I'll _think_ about doing mechanics in metric
units BTW, the metric units for heat transfer beat the daylights out
of BTUs and friends - no argument there.

Back to the lathe. I will check the screws against an indicator, but
one thing that is clear is that they are 0.125/rev vs. the 0.1/rev I was
told to expect. Somehow I suspect it won't bother me as much as it
would on a mill. I like being able to pick off the last two digits to
get the dial reading; it seems as though I could easily adapt to
0.2/rev, but 0.125???? I know many of you say it comes naturally, and
you are typically bang on right; I still think it would bother me. No
DROs please. I'm too cheap first offg, and secondly I recently did
some RT work that I probably could not have done had I not practiced
with scales and dials. The manual approach works for me. I admit to
sometimes printing and cutting templates from 1:1 drawings to help
locate features when things get tricky.

Gently prodding some of the headstock levers, they appear to be a little
stubborn at times. Hopefully I have been clever enough to avoid
breaking it, but let me know if I should be worried about levers that
appear not to want to move to specific positions. I am assuming that
much of it is gear teeth in the way, and that one would move the spindle
to obtain favorable alignment??? I have yet to put power to it; there
are wiring puzzles to ponder before I can safely do that. I have
hydraulic oil on hand, but have yet to transfer the 3 GALLONS it is
supposed to hold ~:0

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

What I believe to be the face plate is (if I gave it a fair shake with a
quick inspection) not a thing of beauty, but it should serve. Is that
for the lathe analog of clamping to a mill table? Dare I ask how to do
precision setups on it? I suspect that most of my work will start out
held in the chucks. A few years from now, when I start spending money
againg, I will look for a 5C setup of some sort.

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

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

MANY dumb questions to come.

Bill

On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:23:43 -0400, Bill Schwab wrote:

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

Guy Lautard has a good trick in one of his books - make a bit that
duplicates the nose of your headstock such that the faceplate will fit on
it; assemble and align anything tricky on the faceplate mounted on this bit
in a vise. This way you are not fighting gravity, and when it is just
right you take the faceplate+work off the bit and put them on the lathe.

In article ,
Bill Schwab wrote:

Hello all,

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

[snip]

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

That was my experience with the Clausing 5914. I worried that this and
that was stuck/broken, but after reading the manual and understanding
the interlocks, all was well.


I have yet to put power to it; there
are wiring puzzles to ponder before I can safely do that.

VFDs are also useful for trying thing out - just start with the drive
frequency at zero, and slowly ramp the speed up manually. If anything
balks, the motor will just stop, and no harm will be done.

It's also easier to see how things are working while running in slow
motion.


I have
hydraulic oil on hand, but have yet to transfer the 3 GALLONS it is
supposed to hold ~:0

Three gallons? The 5914 takes maybe a half gallon. I'd make a siphon
to get oil from the container it came in and into the lathe. There is
probably a drain plug to get the old oil out.


Joe Gwinn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dare I ask how to do
precision setups on it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes -- it is a source of stability.

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

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

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
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 ---

Joe,

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

That was my experience with the Clausing 5914. I worried that this and
that was stuck/broken, but after reading the manual and understanding
the interlocks, all was well.

Good. I suspect it is fine, but waiting is tough. Waiting? Well, I
was snagged by work, both on the customer service and self-interest
fronts, and I am fighting (well by comparison to others) a fairly
unusual cold, so I'm not in at top efficiency.


I have yet to put power to it; there
are wiring puzzles to ponder before I can safely do that.

VFDs are also useful for trying thing out - just start with the drive
frequency at zero, and slowly ramp the speed up manually. If anything
balks, the motor will just stop, and no harm will be done.

Interesting. Any constraints on the type? I ask because a mill I am
considering for the future is said to run only with rotary converters????



I have
hydraulic oil on hand, but have yet to transfer the 3 GALLONS it is
supposed to hold ~:0

Three gallons?

That's what the techs tell me. We'll see.

Bill

In article ,
Bill Schwab wrote:

Joe,

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

That was my experience with the Clausing 5914. I worried that this and
that was stuck/broken, but after reading the manual and understanding
the interlocks, all was well.

Good. I suspect it is fine, but waiting is tough. Waiting? Well, I
was snagged by work, both on the customer service and self-interest
fronts, and I am fighting (well by comparison to others) a fairly
unusual cold, so I'm not in at top efficiency.


I have yet to put power to it; there
are wiring puzzles to ponder before I can safely do that.

VFDs are also useful for trying thing out - just start with the drive
frequency at zero, and slowly ramp the speed up manually. If anything
balks, the motor will just stop, and no harm will be done.

Interesting. Any constraints on the type? I ask because a mill I am
considering for the future is said to run only with rotary converters????

I think any VFD can run right down to zero speed. If the VFD is capable
of sensorless vector control, which greatly increases torque at low
speeds, turn this feature off until you know that things work OK.

What mill would that be? The only reason I can imagine for a mill to be
rotary converter only is that it has more than just the spindle motor
being powered.

There have been long discussions of how to rewire a mill so the motor
could be VFD controlled without affecting the other stuff. Basically,
one runs the other stuff on single phase. The fly in the ointment is if
such things as coolant pumps are truly three phase.

In any event, any ~220 volt 50 or 50 Hz three-phase motor can be driven
by a VFD. It is not required that motor Hz and prime power Hz be the
same with a VFD. The VFD must be derated by a factor of about two if
the prime power is single phase.


I have
hydraulic oil on hand, but have yet to transfer the 3 GALLONS it is
supposed to hold ~:0

Three gallons?

That's what the techs tell me. We'll see.

I've forgotten - what make and model lathe is this?

Three gallons sounds more like a coolant tank.


Joe Gwinn

Don,

A partial reply for now:


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

It is specified as 8 tpi and the compound checked out to 0.125. I was
getting 0.124 or something on the cross, but discovered that my mounting
surface for the indicator was not flat. The metric dials have a weird
number of divisions, so it is looking like an imperial machine. That's
good.



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

That would be slick. I will search my email to see if I have it in
writing. The guy who found that info for me seems very good overall. I
will see what else I had available and then approach them about it if I
was indeed mislead.

I have a hunch that it will not bother nearly so much on a lathe as it
would (which it would bug me) on a mill. Staring at the thing, I
suspect I will be doing a lot of "remove this much next" type of work
vs. zeroing the dials for large distances. If I am missing something,
please speak up.



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

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

That probably is in the cards for the future. I like to work manually,
but I am not totally nuts




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

That depends. It could be a faceplate, or a dog driver plate.

I had not thought of a dog driver; that could easily be what it is.
More later.




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

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

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

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

Now for the reason for the partial reply. The stand is in one piece and
the hoist legs are in position. Cribbing the skid would allow me to
break away a couple of boards on the left side of the pallet to give the
hoist access to the sling location.

At this point, it is very clear that the lathe is bolted to the skid. I
do not yet see any firm attachment between the skid and the pallet.

The alternative to supporting the skid is to crib the pallet. The
logical conclusion would be to take the pallet up 7-8 inches to clear
the hoist legs. Not knowing whether the pallet is truly adding
stability, that seems a long way to crib it.



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

Yes -- it is a source of stability.

How would they be attached? I will look again, but it's not obvious.

Thanks!!!!

Bill

On Mar 30, 3:21*pm, Bill Schwab wrote:

It is specified as 8 tpi and the compound checked out to 0.125.

I have a hunch that it will not bother nearly so much on a lathe as it
would (which it would bug me) on a mill. *Staring at the thing, I
suspect I will be doing a lot of "remove this much next" type of work
vs. zeroing the dials for large distances. *If I am missing something,
please speak up.

I had to live with an 8TPI mill for a while. You do get somewhat used
to it, and also learn fraction-to-decimal conversions pretty well. I
would count turns 125-250-375-500-625-750-875-ONE INCH etc, and make
the finer adjustments in increments of .025", like a micrometer. It's
easy to double-check or recover the tool X & Y positions with a ruler
graduated to 0.1" as long as your zero is an edge or punch mark
rather than a drilled hole.

Jim Wilkins

Dare I ask how to do
precision setups on it?

With toolmaker's buttons. You start on a surface plate and
scribe two intersecting lines at the location of the center of your
desired feature. The drill and tap it for the screw which comes with
the toolmaker's buttons.

What I always found to be a much faster way was to use a combination
drill/countersink on the location of the feature and use a spring center to
indicate the location off of that.

I will readily grant and acknowledge that the toolmakers buttons let you
adjust AFTER the hole is created, if you have good dials or a good readout
on your mill, you really shouldn't NEED do adjust the buttons

Mike

On 2008-04-04, The Davenport's wrote:
Dare I ask how to do
precision setups on it?

With toolmaker's buttons. You start on a surface plate and
scribe two intersecting lines at the location of the center of your
desired feature. The drill and tap it for the screw which comes with
the toolmaker's buttons.

What I always found to be a much faster way was to use a combination
drill/countersink on the location of the feature and use a spring center to
indicate the location off of that.

You mean what is sometimes called a "pump" center? It might be
that you can't be as precise on such holes as you can using a height
gauge (set to gauge blocks) and surface plate to position the buttons.
But yes, the pump center in a center hole can do a good job if the
maximum precision is not needed, and be a lot quicker to set up, too.

I will readily grant and acknowledge that the toolmakers buttons let you
adjust AFTER the hole is created, if you have good dials or a good readout
on your mill, you really shouldn't NEED do adjust the buttons

But if you are doing layout on a complex casting, you probably
can't do the initial holes with a mill (or even a jig borer for greater
precision). Usually, all the holes are laid out relative to a reference
surface which rests on the surface plate. Granted, most hobby
metalworkers won't be working on such large castings most of the time.

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 ---

On Apr 4, 7:39*pm, "The Davenport's" wrote:
...
I will readily grant and acknowledge that the toolmakers buttons let you
adjust AFTER the hole is created, if you have good dials or a good readout
on your mill, you really shouldn't NEED do adjust the buttons

Mike

original question:

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

You center each button, then drill and bore..

Another way is to clamp two bars to the faceplate at right angles to
each other, at a known distance from the center, and locate the work
from them with adjustable parallels.

If the hole spacing must be as accurate as you can measure, you can
make disks the diameter of the hole spacing and bore a hole in the
center to locate from.

I made a drill jig for the jaw pins for a Microcentric lathe chuck
this way. Drill and ream one hole, install a dowel pin and put one
disk on it, clamp the second disk touching the first and align to its
center hole, then drill and bore the second hole. I used a mill but
it's the same principle on a lathe faceplate.

Jim Wilkins

On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:23:43 -0400, Bill Schwab
wrote:
snip
What I believe to be the face plate is (if I gave it a fair shake with a
quick inspection) not a thing of beauty, but it should serve. Is that
for the lathe analog of clamping to a mill table? Dare I ask how to do
precision setups on it? I suspect that most of my work will start out
held in the chucks. A few years from now, when I start spending money
againg, I will look for a 5C setup of some sort.
snip
==============
Get some of the old time machinists books from lindsay. They go
into using the faceplate in some detail.
http://www.lindsaybks.com/prod/sub/machine.html

Other posters have indicated using tool makers buttons to
accurately locate hole and other features, but these can be a
pain if you don't need "toolmaker" accuracy.

A good layout and a "pump staff" in combination with mag base
dial indicator will be adequate for most everything you are
likely to do. Old lathe books [reprints] have information on
pump shafts also, but these tend to get very fancy. I suggest
using a 24 inch long piece of 1/8 drill rod with a point about
like a center punch ground on one end, held in the tail stock.
You need only the slightest prick punch to locate the point of
the rod. Then use a spotting, not center drill to start hole for
best location accuracy.
http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRIT?P...PARTPG=INLMK32

An optical center punch is worth its weight in gold. I like the
Skidmore but the others are good also.
http://www.skidmoreengineering.com/i...s/Page1171.htm
http://store.flexbar.com/merchant2/m...e=Center-Punch

The location accuracy won't be any better than your layout lines.
Buy one of the cheap black granite surface plates and a space
block set. A Vernier/dial height gage is also good, but you have
more flexibility with the space blocks.
You will also need a right angle iron so you can turn the part
through 90 degrees to get the other direction/axis.
http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRIT?P...PARTPG=INLMK32
http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRIT?P...PARTPG=INLMK32

FWIW -- make sure you have good light in your layout area.

Unless you need to hold long stock through the spindle you can
clamp a collet vise on the face plate and get a good inexpensive
collet set-up. 5c collets come in hex and square in addition to
round. You can also bolt a block to the face plate and clamp
with a pinch bolt or setscrew. Trade-off is time v money.
http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRIT?P...&PARTPG=INLMK3
http://www.hhip.com/products/product...ctID=3900-1621
sometimes you can find these on sale with a set of starter
collets.

A 3 jaw chuck is for speed, the 4 jaw and face plate are for
accuracy. Also much of what you do in a hobby/home shop will be
easier between centers [e.g. cutting a thread to fit a part] as
you can remove and replace the workpiece and not lose location.

If possible sign up for a intro to machining class at your local
community college.






Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

On Apr 5, 12:02*am, F. George McDuffee gmcduf...@mcduffee-
associates.us wrote:
...
Other posters have indicated using tool makers buttons to
accurately locate hole and other features, but these can be a
pain if you don't need "toolmaker" accuracy. *
...
Unka' George [George McDuffee]

Lathe faceplate work with toolmaker's buttons etc was the practice in
the late 1800's before the vertical milling machine became common. It
hung on with amateurs because until recently a small vertical mill was
harder to find than small lathe, and boring on a horizontal mill is
about as difficult and limited as milling on a lathe. It's still a
nice technique to know about but unless the holes are too large for a
boring head, the vertical mill is much better for drilling an accurate
hole pattern.

I think the only job I've done on a faceplate in the last 10 years was
recutting solid rubber tires to fit the rims on my 1950's lawnmower.
Sometimes I use a faceplate with a protruding bolt to drive a pulley
on an arbor between centers.

Jim Wilkins