I think I've figured out a big piece of the mystery of what I
generically called chatter in the "Clausing 5914 Chatter ..." threads.

Tightening the lathe dovetails up helped a great deal, and is a good
idea in general, but didn't really solve the problem.

It came to me in the shower Wednesday morning - self-feeding would
explain just about everything seen, and that if one reverses something,
the sign of the mechanical feedback loop can be reversed. Now the
feedback is positive, yielding the vicious loop that causes visible
tilting, flake chips, and breakage. By contrast, negative feedback
causes stability.

The key experiment was to try face grooving a 2.125" diameter 6061
aluminum slug held in the 4-jaw chuck, and using the BXA-6 toolholder
with the huge overhang (~5" from cutting edge to toolpost center) but
with the tool bit held upsidedown and the lathe running in reverse.
Running backwards cases the self-feeding effect to change sign, becoming
a self-unloading effect as the toolpost tilts away from the workpiece,
reducing the bite of the tool bit.

Now I can peel very thin chips off the plate while face grooving,
although it is still necessary to use the back gear, and there was mucho
squealing. I did it dry, with too much overhang, and without properly
shaping the tool bit. But it worked anyway. The difference is
night-and-day.

So I now think it was the tendency to self-feed that caused all the
problems, even if the self-feeding effect wasn't so powerful as to cause
visible tilting of the toolpost. The squealing will go away with a
stiffer method of holding the tool bit, and perhaps a better-shaped bit.


This also applies to parting off, and specifically explains why using an
upsidedown blade coming towards the back of the workpiece, or coming
from the front with the lathe running backwards, works. (BXA-7R)

I never really believed the theory that better chip removal was why
upsidedown cutoff blades worked better, because I had problems even when
there were no chip wads to be found and the groove sidewalls were clean.
Actually, the galloping chatter tended to throw thick flake chips far
and wide, so they were everywhere but in the groove.

To summarize, there are two elements that are necessary for face
grooving, trepanning, and parting off on the Clausing 5914 lathe: Use
the back gear (for tortional rigidity), and use an upsidedown tool bit
(for stability).


As for use of a coaxial boring bar to hold a grooving/trepanning
toolbit, it turns out to be a common method. I found it mentioned in US
Patent 5,640,890 as prior art to be improved upon. The patentee is
trepanning stainless steel hydraulic hose fittings in production, and
needed a method that worked in a screw machine of some kind.


Joe Gwinn

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
I think I've figured out a big piece of the mystery of what I
generically called chatter in the "Clausing 5914 Chatter ..." threads.

Tightening the lathe dovetails up helped a great deal, and is a good
idea in general, but didn't really solve the problem.

It came to me in the shower Wednesday morning - self-feeding would
explain just about everything seen, and that if one reverses something,
the sign of the mechanical feedback loop can be reversed.
Yes, of course, you are dead right! But, proper serup of the
tool and how it relates to the toolpost, compound swivel, etc.
can make a big difference. You mentioned in an earlier post, I
think, that interference with the chuck jaws required you to
have so much overhang, so that points out that better work
holding would reduce the problem.

I had some real problems doing these types of operations on
Atlas/Craftsman lathes. The 5914 is a MUCH sturdier lathe with
a much heavier bed casting, so I'm surprised you were having
this sort of trouble. I finally traded up to a Sheldon R15-6,
which is an even heavier lathe, in the 3000 - 3500 Lb class.
You can stand on the bed with no measurable deflection (and I
have precision electronic levels that are REALLY sensitive).
It is amazing what a difference stiffness of the lathe makes.
Now, another comment is that you may have a poor "fit up"
between your carriage and bed. I totally rescraped my bed and
carriage to get the best fit between these surfaces. In my
case, due to the hardened bed, I had to grind it with Cratex
polishing wheels and then lap it smooth with bench stones.
(A carbide scraper blade wouldn't even SCRATCH the bed.)
I then used Moglice castable way liner to make the underside of
the carriage conform to the bed.

But, after all that work, I have no problem parting-off or with
other jobs where there is a bit of overhang. I haven't done
anything with quite as much overhang as you needed on this jb,
but my guess is there is somthing in your lathe that is "not
right" and allowing maybe the carriage to rock about some local
high points. Sometimes you can see this if you take the way
wipers off. You might be able to see the oil fillet between the
bed and carriage "pulse" a bit as force is applied to the
carriage. That is a dead giveaway that the carriage is rocking.

Jon

On 2008-05-01, Jon Elson wrote:
Joseph Gwinn wrote:
I think I've figured out a big piece of the mystery of what I
generically called chatter in the "Clausing 5914 Chatter ..." threads.

Tightening the lathe dovetails up helped a great deal, and is a good
idea in general, but didn't really solve the problem.

It came to me in the shower Wednesday morning - self-feeding would
explain just about everything seen, and that if one reverses something,
the sign of the mechanical feedback loop can be reversed.

[ ... ]

I had some real problems doing these types of operations on
Atlas/Craftsman lathes. The 5914 is a MUCH sturdier lathe with
a much heavier bed casting, so I'm surprised you were having
this sort of trouble.
As am I. I've got the 5418 (similar bed profile, but manual
change belts), and have very little chatter.

I finally traded up to a Sheldon R15-6,
which is an even heavier lathe, in the 3000 - 3500 Lb class.
You can stand on the bed with no measurable deflection (and I
have precision electronic levels that are REALLY sensitive).
It is amazing what a difference stiffness of the lathe makes.
Now, another comment is that you may have a poor "fit up"
between your carriage and bed.

You know -- there is one other possibility which occurs to me.
I presume that your lathe, like mine, has the hollow level adjusting
screws in the feet of the bed through which pass the bolts to lock it
down to the stand. If you have something like the near side bolt loose
and the level adjusting screw a little clear of the stand, the bed would
wind up under torque, which could give you similar behavior.

Did you get a proper sensitive level and adjust the bed to
proper level at both headstock and tailstock end? (I did.) After that,
did you make sure that the hold-down bolts were tight (and didn't
disturb the leveling)? *This* may be where your flex is -- especially
since you have a longer bed than I do (I believe), and thus more total
flex possibility.

Get it chattering and feel each foot with the adjacent finger on
the stand so you can detect relative motion between them. If you find
any, you'll need to tighten the hold-down bolts, and probably re-level
the bed.

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 ,
Jon Elson wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
I think I've figured out a big piece of the mystery of what I
generically called chatter in the "Clausing 5914 Chatter ..." threads.

Tightening the lathe dovetails up helped a great deal, and is a good
idea in general, but didn't really solve the problem.

It came to me in the shower Wednesday morning - self-feeding would
explain just about everything seen, and that if one reverses something,
the sign of the mechanical feedback loop can be reversed.

Yes, of course, you are dead right! But, proper setup of the
tool and how it relates to the toolpost, compound swivel, etc.
can make a big difference. You mentioned in an earlier post, I
think, that interference with the chuck jaws required you to
have so much overhang, so that points out that better work
holding would reduce the problem.

I knew the setup wasn't what it should be, but was limited by the
available toolholders, which were either too short or far too long. The
hope is that the coaxial boring bar will solve this problem.


I had some real problems doing these types of operations on
Atlas/Craftsman lathes. The 5914 is a MUCH sturdier lathe with
a much heavier bed casting, so I'm surprised you were having
this sort of trouble.

So am I, and it has lead to a real research program. I certainly did
not expect that parting off would involve so much drama.


I finally traded up to a Sheldon R15-6,
which is an even heavier lathe, in the 3000 - 3500 Lb class.
You can stand on the bed with no measurable deflection (and I
have precision electronic levels that are REALLY sensitive).
It is amazing what a difference stiffness of the lathe makes.

This is about three times what the 5914 weighs. If one assumes that
this is accomplished by tripling the thickness of everything, the
stiffness will increase by the cube of three, or a factor of 27, so I'm
not surprised the a few hundred pounds on the bed has little effect.

What are the dimensions of your Sheldon? One reason I didn't go that
heavy was space limitations, and the difficulty of getting such a heavy
machine into my basement.


Now, another comment is that you may have a poor "fit up"
between your carriage and bed. I totally rescraped my bed and
carriage to get the best fit between these surfaces. In my
case, due to the hardened bed, I had to grind it with Cratex
polishing wheels and then lap it smooth with bench stones.
(A carbide scraper blade wouldn't even SCRATCH the bed.)
I then used Moglice castable way liner to make the underside of
the carriage conform to the bed.

There is some bed wear which prevents the hold-down plates from being
too tight on the underside of the bed way, but the slop is about 0.001".
I did take one 0.002" shim out from under both hold-down plates, which
both had visible wear.

One reason that self-feeding is less of a problem when the tool moves
perpendicular to the spindle axis than when the tool motion is parallel
to the axis may be that the carriage is narrower along the way than
across the way, by a factor of about two.

The ways were hardened and ground, but not scraped. But I doubt that I
will ever have the time or energy to re-scrape them.


But, after all that work, I have no problem parting-off or with
other jobs where there is a bit of overhang. I haven't done
anything with quite as much overhang as you needed on this job,
but my guess is there is somthing in your lathe that is "not
right" and allowing maybe the carriage to rock about some local
high points. Sometimes you can see this if you take the way
wipers off. You might be able to see the oil fillet between the
bed and carriage "pulse" a bit as force is applied to the
carriage. That is a dead giveaway that the carriage is rocking.

I think that it does rock slightly, as I can feel slight movement if I
put a finger spanning the gap between carriage and way. But the skin is
very sensitive to motion in such setups, and this is probably the
~0.001" slop I already know of. The problem is that this was observed
while the lathe was shaking with chatter, and everything was bouncing,
and it wasn't clear what was cause and what was effect.

A dial indicator between carriage and way and an iron bar in the boring
bar holder (to apply force while the lathe is stopped) may be useful
here, though.

More generally, I've been finding and fixing many problems, few of which
were huge, but they do add up.

Joe Gwinn

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-05-01, Jon Elson wrote:
Joseph Gwinn wrote:
I think I've figured out a big piece of the mystery of what I
generically called chatter in the "Clausing 5914 Chatter ..." threads.

Tightening the lathe dovetails up helped a great deal, and is a good
idea in general, but didn't really solve the problem.

It came to me in the shower Wednesday morning - self-feeding would
explain just about everything seen, and that if one reverses something,
the sign of the mechanical feedback loop can be reversed.

[ ... ]

I had some real problems doing these types of operations on
Atlas/Craftsman lathes. The 5914 is a MUCH sturdier lathe with
a much heavier bed casting, so I'm surprised you were having
this sort of trouble.

As am I. I've got the 5418 (similar bed profile, but manual
change belts), and have very little chatter.

I finally traded up to a Sheldon R15-6,
which is an even heavier lathe, in the 3000 - 3500 Lb class.
You can stand on the bed with no measurable deflection (and I
have precision electronic levels that are REALLY sensitive).
It is amazing what a difference stiffness of the lathe makes.
Now, another comment is that you may have a poor "fit up"
between your carriage and bed.

You know -- there is one other possibility which occurs to me.
I presume that your lathe, like mine, has the hollow level adjusting
screws in the feet of the bed through which pass the bolts to lock it
down to the stand. If you have something like the near side bolt loose
and the level adjusting screw a little clear of the stand, the bed would
wind up under torque, which could give you similar behavior.

Do you mean the bolts between cabinet and the floor, or that hold the
headstock to the bed? I assume you mean between headstock and bed.


Did you get a proper sensitive level and adjust the bed to
proper level at both headstock and tailstock end? (I did.)

I do have such a level (Starrett model 98-6), and did level the bed by
adjustment of the leveling feet between cabinet and floor.


After that,
did you make sure that the hold-down bolts were tight (and didn't
disturb the leveling)? *This* may be where your flex is -- especially
since you have a longer bed than I do (I believe), and thus more total
flex possibility.

Hmm. This I did not think of, or check. But I will.

I don't see why bed length would matter, given that while trepanning all
the action happens within a foot of the chuck face.


Get it chattering and feel each foot with the adjacent finger on
the stand so you can detect relative motion between them. If you find
any, you'll need to tighten the hold-down bolts, and probably re-level
the bed.

What I'm not quite sure of is which bolts you mean. On the 5914, the
headstock is bolted to the bed with four solid 3/8-16 hex socket cap
screws and two clamp bars, and the bed is bolted to the head pedestal
foot, which is in turn bolted to the cabinet, all with solid
non-adjustable bolts. The only hollow bolts I know of are in the
leveling feet between cabinet and floor, which doesn't seem relevant to
chatter (versus inability to turn a cylinder due to bed twist).

I looked the the 5418 manual. Now I understand. The designs of 5914
and 5418 are very different in this area. But there is no harm in
making sure that all those bolts are nice and tight, especially those
holding headstock to bed.

I suspect that on the 5914 they just machined the mating surfaces of
cast iron components close enough that adjustment wasn't needed, and
that the two pedestal feet isolated the bed and headstock sufficiently
from the sheet metal cabinet and chip pan that adjusters were not
needed. Unlike the 5418 manual, in the 5914 manual, there is no
procedure for adjusting how the cast iron stuff rests upon the sheet
metal stuff.

Joe Gwinn

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

On 2008-05-01, Jon Elson wrote:
Joseph Gwinn wrote:
I think I've figured out a big piece of the mystery of what I
generically called chatter in the "Clausing 5914 Chatter ..." threads.

[ ... ]

I had some real problems doing these types of operations on
Atlas/Craftsman lathes. The 5914 is a MUCH sturdier lathe with
a much heavier bed casting, so I'm surprised you were having
this sort of trouble.

As am I. I've got the 5418 (similar bed profile, but manual
change belts), and have very little chatter.

[ ... ]

You know -- there is one other possibility which occurs to me.
I presume that your lathe, like mine, has the hollow level adjusting
screws in the feet of the bed through which pass the bolts to lock it
down to the stand. If you have something like the near side bolt loose
and the level adjusting screw a little clear of the stand, the bed would
wind up under torque, which could give you similar behavior.

Do you mean the bolts between cabinet and the floor, or that hold the
headstock to the bed? I assume you mean between headstock and bed.

I see that you figured out what I was talking about from
examining the manual for the 5418. Since I don't have the manual for
yours, I had not realized how different they were.

Did you get a proper sensitive level and adjust the bed to
proper level at both headstock and tailstock end? (I did.)

I do have such a level (Starrett model 98-6), and did level the bed by
adjustment of the leveling feet between cabinet and floor.

Hmm ... not nearly as sensitive. The 98-6 (and the rest of the
98 series) have a sensitivity of 0.005"/foot, while the No. 199 "Master
Precision Level" has a sensitivity 0f 0.0005"/foot -- ten times the
sensitivity. But, of course, the 98-6 gets you close enough if you then
do the "turn two rings on a single bar and measure them" operation
afterwards.


After that,
did you make sure that the hold-down bolts were tight (and didn't
disturb the leveling)? *This* may be where your flex is -- especially
since you have a longer bed than I do (I believe), and thus more total
flex possibility.

Hmm. This I did not think of, or check. But I will.

I don't see why bed length would matter, given that while trepanning all
the action happens within a foot of the chuck face.

O.K. As long as you are that close, it would not really matter.
Where it would matter is turning some distance from the headstock, or
running something like a 1" drill bit in the tailstock -- especially
with a long workpiece extension from the chuck.

Get it chattering and feel each foot with the adjacent finger on
the stand so you can detect relative motion between them. If you find
any, you'll need to tighten the hold-down bolts, and probably re-level
the bed.

What I'm not quite sure of is which bolts you mean. On the 5914, the
headstock is bolted to the bed with four solid 3/8-16 hex socket cap
screws and two clamp bars, and the bed is bolted to the head pedestal
foot, which is in turn bolted to the cabinet, all with solid
non-adjustable bolts. The only hollow bolts I know of are in the
leveling feet between cabinet and floor, which doesn't seem relevant to
chatter (versus inability to turn a cylinder due to bed twist).

O.K. Quite different. The 5418 is supposed to have the cabinet
bolted firmly to the floor (I don't), and the bed leveled relative to
the stand and chip tray.

I looked the the 5418 manual. Now I understand. The designs of 5914
and 5418 are very different in this area. But there is no harm in
making sure that all those bolts are nice and tight, especially those
holding headstock to bed.

Agreed. Check the tailstock end too -- because that is what
would flex when the torque is transmitted from the spindle to the
carriage. It would wind up the bed (a little, at least).

BTW For parting there used to be a gooseneck parting tool. It went
in a lantern style toolpost, came out, turned up, formed an
Omega shaped arch, back down to where the parting tool is
actually clamped. The result is that excessive cutting forces
tends to move the tool away from the workpiece, thus eliminating
chatter. But your machine *should* be rigid enough to not need
this, especially with an Aloris style quick-change toolpost, and
the T-profile parting blades.

I suspect that on the 5914 they just machined the mating surfaces of
cast iron components close enough that adjustment wasn't needed, and
that the two pedestal feet isolated the bed and headstock sufficiently
from the sheet metal cabinet and chip pan that adjusters were not
needed.

Perhaps the bed feet were machined flat on the bottom, then
bolted to a thick flat plate (say 4" thick or so), machined flat on the
top, the bed mounted on this, and the ways finish-ground this way, so it
could get all the twist out of the bed by adjusting the cabinet feet.

Hmm ... another thing to check. While you have chatter, see
whether there is any relative motion between the headstock and the bed.
If it is not clamped down firmly enough, or if there are chips trapped
between the headstock and the bed, that could introduce enough give to
create problems.

Unlike the 5418 manual, in the 5914 manual, there is no
procedure for adjusting how the cast iron stuff rests upon the sheet
metal stuff.

O.K. This assumes that the sheet metal stuff is rigidly bolted
to the floor, I guess.

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

On 2008-05-01, Jon Elson wrote:
Joseph Gwinn wrote:
I think I've figured out a big piece of the mystery of what I
generically called chatter in the "Clausing 5914 Chatter ..." threads.

[ ... ]

I had some real problems doing these types of operations on
Atlas/Craftsman lathes. The 5914 is a MUCH sturdier lathe with
a much heavier bed casting, so I'm surprised you were having
this sort of trouble.

As am I. I've got the 5418 (similar bed profile, but manual
change belts), and have very little chatter.

[ ... ]

You know -- there is one other possibility which occurs to me.
I presume that your lathe, like mine, has the hollow level adjusting
screws in the feet of the bed through which pass the bolts to lock it
down to the stand. If you have something like the near side bolt loose
and the level adjusting screw a little clear of the stand, the bed would
wind up under torque, which could give you similar behavior.

Do you mean the bolts between cabinet and the floor, or that hold the
headstock to the bed? I assume you mean between headstock and bed.

I see that you figured out what I was talking about from
examining the manual for the 5418. Since I don't have the manual for
yours, I had not realized how different they were.

Ahh. Yes. It will take a while, but I may scan my manual, which does
not appear to be copyrighted.


Did you get a proper sensitive level and adjust the bed to
proper level at both headstock and tailstock end? (I did.)

I do have such a level (Starrett model 98-6), and did level the bed by
adjustment of the leveling feet between cabinet and floor.

Hmm ... not nearly as sensitive. The 98-6 (and the rest of the
98 series) have a sensitivity of 0.005"/foot, while the No. 199 "Master
Precision Level" has a sensitivity 0f 0.0005"/foot -- ten times the
sensitivity. But, of course, the 98-6 gets you close enough if you then
do the "turn two rings on a single bar and measure them" operation
afterwards.

I have not yet done the bar turning test, but intend to, once the more
immediate problems are at least understood if not resolved.

I probably should repeat the leveling exercise, as based on the other
kinds of ignorance-induced problems I've already found, it's likely that
the lathe was left unleveled and thus twisted for years, and may have
taken a set that needs to relax out.


After that,
did you make sure that the hold-down bolts were tight (and didn't
disturb the leveling)? *This* may be where your flex is -- especially
since you have a longer bed than I do (I believe), and thus more total
flex possibility.

Hmm. This I did not think of, or check. But I will.

I don't see why bed length would matter, given that while trepanning all
the action happens within a foot of the chuck face.

O.K. As long as you are that close, it would not really matter.
Where it would matter is turning some distance from the headstock, or
running something like a 1" drill bit in the tailstock -- especially
with a long workpiece extension from the chuck.

While using the 1" drill, the bed will most certainly wind up a bit. I
guess that what would resist permanent twist would be the leveling, with
the lathe resting on a concrete floor, as it now does.


Get it chattering and feel each foot with the adjacent finger on
the stand so you can detect relative motion between them. If you find
any, you'll need to tighten the hold-down bolts, and probably re-level
the bed.

What I'm not quite sure of is which bolts you mean. On the 5914, the
headstock is bolted to the bed with four solid 3/8-16 hex socket cap
screws and two clamp bars, and the bed is bolted to the head pedestal
foot, which is in turn bolted to the cabinet, all with solid
non-adjustable bolts. The only hollow bolts I know of are in the
leveling feet between cabinet and floor, which doesn't seem relevant to
chatter (versus inability to turn a cylinder due to bed twist).

O.K. Quite different. The 5418 is supposed to have the cabinet
bolted firmly to the floor (I don't), and the bed leveled relative to
the stand and chip tray.

The 5914 manual also speaks of bolting to the floor, but few people
actually do this I suspect.


I looked the the 5418 manual. Now I understand. The designs of 5914
and 5418 are very different in this area. But there is no harm in
making sure that all those bolts are nice and tight, especially those
holding headstock to bed.

Agreed. Check the tailstock end too -- because that is what
would flex when the torque is transmitted from the spindle to the
carriage. It would wind up the bed (a little, at least).

The tailstock now clamps pretty firmly to the bed. This is one of the
first things I cleaned and adjusted, mainly because it was easy and
could be done without the manual.


BTW For parting there used to be a gooseneck parting tool. It went
in a lantern style toolpost, came out, turned up, formed an
Omega shaped arch, back down to where the parting tool is
actually clamped. The result is that excessive cutting forces
tends to move the tool away from the workpiece, thus eliminating
chatter. But your machine *should* be rigid enough to not need
this, especially with an Aloris style quick-change toolpost, and
the T-profile parting blades.

I vaguely knew (from reading old books) that there was such a tool, and
that it involved a gooseneck, but I had the "picture" upsidedown in my
mind, and couldn't see how it would work. I just googled it, and found
a book from 1910 that explained the principle as applied to use in a
planer. They did understand the self-feeding effect, saying that the
gooseneck would eliminate gouging the work, but a sufficiently rigid
machine didn't need gooseneck tools.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...lpg=RA8-PA36&d
q=gooseneck+tool+lathe&source=web&ots=edrQWKc6hu&s ig=QsKeq0Vn7zebOdjC5ydY
KtuqnkA&hl=en#PRA8-PA35,M1

It occurs to me that a negative rake cutting tool could be set up to
develop enough outward force to at least partially counteract the
tendency to self-feed. Perhaps this is why one commonly stated cause of
chattering is too-sharp tools. When one carefully blunts such a tool,
one puts a little bit of very negative rake right at the cutting edge.


I suspect that on the 5914 they just machined the mating surfaces of
cast iron components close enough that adjustment wasn't needed, and
that the two pedestal feet isolated the bed and headstock sufficiently
from the sheet metal cabinet and chip pan that adjusters were not
needed.

Perhaps the bed feet were machined flat on the bottom, then
bolted to a thick flat plate (say 4" thick or so), machined flat on the
top, the bed mounted on this, and the ways finish-ground this way, so it
could get all the twist out of the bed by adjusting the cabinet feet.

It's certainly a plausible approach, at least for the rough machining.
But the machining will release stresses, causing warping when the bed is
unbolted from the 4" slab. The bed ways are ground, so what may have
been done is that well-aged castings were rough machined and then
further aged and/or normalized, and then were finished on a surface
grinder. The exact procedure may have been a trade secret, as it was
exactly such recipes that were the secret sauce of lathe manufacture.


Hmm ... another thing to check. While you have chatter, see
whether there is any relative motion between the headstock and the bed.
If it is not clamped down firmly enough, or if there are chips trapped
between the headstock and the bed, that could introduce enough give to
create problems.

Hmm. Offhand, I don't see any safe way to do this, as my hand would
need to be very close to the spinning chuck, or to various gears and the
like.

I think I'll just torque all the clamp bolts, to see if any are loose.
I doubt that the headstock was ever unbolted, at least not by the people
who caused all the ignorance-induced problems. Taking the headstock off
would have frightened them, at least one fondly hopes that it would. In
any event, chips can only get in there is the headstock is unbolted.

The headstock is located on the bed ways by careful fitting of headstock
bottom to ways, plus a pair of steel dowel pins to prevent sliding.


Unlike the 5418 manual, in the 5914 manual, there is no
procedure for adjusting how the cast iron stuff rests upon the sheet
metal stuff.

O.K. This assumes that the sheet metal stuff is rigidly bolted
to the floor, I guess.

That would make sense. In the 5914, these adjustments have moved to the
cabinet-floor feet.

Joe Gwinn

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

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

[ ... ]

As am I. I've got the 5418 (similar bed profile, but manual
change belts), and have very little chatter.

[ ... ]

You know -- there is one other possibility which occurs to me.
I presume that your lathe, like mine, has the hollow level adjusting
screws in the feet of the bed through which pass the bolts to lock it
down to the stand. If you have something like the near side bolt loose
and the level adjusting screw a little clear of the stand, the bed would
wind up under torque, which could give you similar behavior.

Do you mean the bolts between cabinet and the floor, or that hold the
headstock to the bed? I assume you mean between headstock and bed.

I see that you figured out what I was talking about from
examining the manual for the 5418. Since I don't have the manual for
yours, I had not realized how different they were.

Ahh. Yes. It will take a while, but I may scan my manual, which does
not appear to be copyrighted.

Hmm ... beware that you can't e-mail it to me. There is a limit
of 30K total size on incoming e-mail, to keep virus infections out of a
couple of small mailing lists which I host. No problem with my systems,
of course -- but I first turned on the limit when I got over 300 copies
of a new spam on the first day, and 200 more on the next day. I forget
what it was, but it was spreading like wildfire, and it took a long time
to clean out my mailbox enough so that I could read valid e-mail.


Did you get a proper sensitive level and adjust the bed to
proper level at both headstock and tailstock end? (I did.)

I do have such a level (Starrett model 98-6), and did level the bed by
adjustment of the leveling feet between cabinet and floor.

Hmm ... not nearly as sensitive. The 98-6 (and the rest of the
98 series) have a sensitivity of 0.005"/foot, while the No. 199 "Master
Precision Level" has a sensitivity 0f 0.0005"/foot -- ten times the
sensitivity. But, of course, the 98-6 gets you close enough if you then
do the "turn two rings on a single bar and measure them" operation
afterwards.

I have not yet done the bar turning test, but intend to, once the more
immediate problems are at least understood if not resolved.

O.K.

I probably should repeat the leveling exercise, as based on the other
kinds of ignorance-induced problems I've already found, it's likely that
the lathe was left unleveled and thus twisted for years, and may have
taken a set that needs to relax out.

Good idea.

[ ... bed twist ... ]

O.K. As long as you are that close, it would not really matter.
Where it would matter is turning some distance from the headstock, or
running something like a 1" drill bit in the tailstock -- especially
with a long workpiece extension from the chuck.

While using the 1" drill, the bed will most certainly wind up a bit. I
guess that what would resist permanent twist would be the leveling, with
the lathe resting on a concrete floor, as it now does.

Better with the near foot on the tailstock end and the back foot
on the headstock end bolted down, even if the other two are not. That
should resist the twist introduced by the drilling.

[ ... ]

O.K. Quite different. The 5418 is supposed to have the cabinet
bolted firmly to the floor (I don't), and the bed leveled relative to
the stand and chip tray.

The 5914 manual also speaks of bolting to the floor, but few people
actually do this I suspect.

Indeed -- unless forced by OSHA inspectors. :-) Now, if I were
doing lots of faceplate work, I would bolt it down just to be sure that
the lathe does not start walking around the shop with a bit of imbalance
on the faceplate. :-)

I looked the the 5418 manual. Now I understand. The designs of 5914
and 5418 are very different in this area. But there is no harm in
making sure that all those bolts are nice and tight, especially those
holding headstock to bed.

Agreed. Check the tailstock end too -- because that is what
would flex when the torque is transmitted from the spindle to the
carriage. It would wind up the bed (a little, at least).

The tailstock now clamps pretty firmly to the bed. This is one of the
first things I cleaned and adjusted, mainly because it was easy and
could be done without the manual.

It was not the tailstock to the bed that I was thinking of. I
was assuming that it would be well clamped, and for turning it would not
make a difference anyway. But bed feet to stand and/or stand to floor
are where the wind-up could be controlled.

BTW For parting there used to be a gooseneck parting tool. It went
in a lantern style toolpost, came out, turned up, formed an
Omega shaped arch, back down to where the parting tool is
actually clamped. The result is that excessive cutting forces
tends to move the tool away from the workpiece, thus eliminating
chatter. But your machine *should* be rigid enough to not need
this, especially with an Aloris style quick-change toolpost, and
the T-profile parting blades.

I vaguely knew (from reading old books) that there was such a tool, and
that it involved a gooseneck, but I had the "picture" upsidedown in my
mind, and couldn't see how it would work. I just googled it, and found
a book from 1910 that explained the principle as applied to use in a
planer. They did understand the self-feeding effect, saying that the
gooseneck would eliminate gouging the work, but a sufficiently rigid
machine didn't need gooseneck tools.

Yep.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...lpg=RA8-PA36&d
q=gooseneck+tool+lathe&source=web&ots=edrQWKc6hu&s ig=QsKeq0Vn7zebOdjC5ydY
KtuqnkA&hl=en#PRA8-PA35,M1

Hmm ... I don't think that I'm going to bother cut-and-pasting
all three chunks of that URL. I know the tool anyway, and see them
occasionally on eBay auctions.

It occurs to me that a negative rake cutting tool could be set up to
develop enough outward force to at least partially counteract the
tendency to self-feed.

Right.

Perhaps this is why one commonly stated cause of
chattering is too-sharp tools. When one carefully blunts such a tool,
one puts a little bit of very negative rake right at the cutting edge.

How much backlash is there in your cross-feed leadscrew? The
self-feed can take the slack out of a worn leadscrew/nut pair. And you
want the cross-slide gibs to have a bit of drag, too.

[ ... ]

Hmm ... another thing to check. While you have chatter, see
whether there is any relative motion between the headstock and the bed.
If it is not clamped down firmly enough, or if there are chips trapped
between the headstock and the bed, that could introduce enough give to
create problems.

Hmm. Offhand, I don't see any safe way to do this, as my hand would
need to be very close to the spinning chuck, or to various gears and the
like.

There is space where the outer ways stick out from under the
headstock (which is clamped to the inner ways) and you should be able to
check back along the near side far enough to be clear of the chuck.

I think I'll just torque all the clamp bolts, to see if any are loose.

O.K. That will deal with loose bolts, though not with chips.

I doubt that the headstock was ever unbolted, at least not by the people
who caused all the ignorance-induced problems. Taking the headstock off
would have frightened them, at least one fondly hopes that it would. In
any event, chips can only get in there is the headstock is unbolted.

Well ... you have the lathe in your basement I believe? Some
people disassemble the lathe to several heavy components and take each
down separately. If you didn't, perhaps someone else did previously.

The headstock is located on the bed ways by careful fitting of headstock
bottom to ways, plus a pair of steel dowel pins to prevent sliding.

O.K. Mine has one taper pin, not two dowel pins.


Unlike the 5418 manual, in the 5914 manual, there is no
procedure for adjusting how the cast iron stuff rests upon the sheet
metal stuff.

O.K. This assumes that the sheet metal stuff is rigidly bolted
to the floor, I guess.

That would make sense. In the 5914, these adjustments have moved to the
cabinet-floor feet.

O.K. This produces fewer paths for swarf to get down into the
drawers and the motor/pulley assembly in the pedestals.

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 Sat, 03 May 2008 04:07:16 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-05-02, Joseph Gwinn joegwinn@... wrote:
....
I vaguely knew (from reading old books) that there was such a tool, and
that it involved a gooseneck, but I had the "picture" upsidedown in my
mind, and couldn't see how it would work. I just googled it, and found
a book from 1910 that explained the principle as applied to use in a
planer. They did understand the self-feeding effect, saying that the
gooseneck would eliminate gouging the work, but a sufficiently rigid
machine didn't need gooseneck tools.

Yep.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...lpg=RA8-PA36&d
q=gooseneck+tool+lathe&source=web&ots=edrQWKc6hu&s ig=QsKeq0Vn7zebOdjC5ydY
KtuqnkA&hl=en#PRA8-PA35,M1

Hmm ... I don't think that I'm going to bother cut-and-pasting
all three chunks of that URL. I know the tool anyway, and see them
occasionally on eBay auctions.
....

Just for reference, here's a working link to the same page, with
non-essential parts (ie, the last two-thirds) cut away:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...AJ&pg=RA8-PA36

The "Download PDF - 36.3M" link on that page fetches a pdf file
with 1100-odd scanned pages from what appear to be pamphlets #41
through 110 of Machinery's Reference Series, ca. 1908-1913.

Also, regarding cut-and-paste of broken-up URL's like that,
I usually highlight the whole mess, paste it into Firefox's
URL box, then delete the return characters to fix it, as
opposed to cutting and pasting three separate parts.

-jiw

In article ,
James Waldby wrote:

On Sat, 03 May 2008 04:07:16 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-05-02, Joseph Gwinn joegwinn@... wrote:
...
I vaguely knew (from reading old books) that there was such a tool, and
that it involved a gooseneck, but I had the "picture" upsidedown in my
mind, and couldn't see how it would work. I just googled it, and found
a book from 1910 that explained the principle as applied to use in a
planer. They did understand the self-feeding effect, saying that the
gooseneck would eliminate gouging the work, but a sufficiently rigid
machine didn't need gooseneck tools.

Yep.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...lpg=RA8-PA36&d
q=gooseneck+tool+lathe&source=web&ots=edrQWKc6hu&s ig=QsKeq0Vn7zebOdjC5ydY
KtuqnkA&hl=en#PRA8-PA35,M1

Hmm ... I don't think that I'm going to bother cut-and-pasting
all three chunks of that URL. I know the tool anyway, and see them
occasionally on eBay auctions.
...

Just for reference, here's a working link to the same page, with
non-essential parts (ie, the last two-thirds) cut away:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...AJ&pg=RA8-PA36

The "Download PDF - 36.3M" link on that page fetches a pdf file
with 1100-odd scanned pages from what appear to be pamphlets #41
through 110 of Machinery's Reference Series, ca. 1908-1913.

That's right.


Also, regarding cut-and-paste of broken-up URL's like that,
I usually highlight the whole mess, paste it into Firefox's
URL box, then delete the return characters to fix it, as
opposed to cutting and pasting three separate parts.

The cut&paste exercise is not necessary if the poster provided the start
and end brackets needed by the newsreader (or email client) to know
exactly what is the URL string.

I do provide those brackets, so when you see something like
"http://www.whatever.com/stuff", just click on it, even if it wrapped
to multiple lines. It's the and that do the job.

The exception is when the URL is in a quoted message, and so extra quote
mark characters have been inserted.

On May 3, 10:35*am, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

I do provide those brackets, so when you see something like
"http://www.whatever.com/stuff", just click on it, even if it wrapped
to multiple lines. *It's the and that do the job.

That's actually a valid link.

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

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

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

[ ... ]

As am I. I've got the 5418 (similar bed profile, but manual
change belts), and have very little chatter.

[ ... ]

You know -- there is one other possibility which occurs to me.
I presume that your lathe, like mine, has the hollow level adjusting
screws in the feet of the bed through which pass the bolts to lock it
down to the stand. If you have something like the near side bolt loose
and the level adjusting screw a little clear of the stand, the bed would
wind up under torque, which could give you similar behavior.

Do you mean the bolts between cabinet and the floor, or that hold the
headstock to the bed? I assume you mean between headstock and bed.

I see that you figured out what I was talking about from
examining the manual for the 5418. Since I don't have the manual for
yours, I had not realized how different they were.

Ahh. Yes. It will take a while, but I may scan my manual, which does
not appear to be copyrighted.

Hmm ... beware that you can't e-mail it to me. There is a limit
of 30K total size on incoming e-mail, to keep virus infections out of a
couple of small mailing lists which I host. No problem with my systems,
of course -- but I first turned on the limit when I got over 300 copies
of a new spam on the first day, and 200 more on the next day. I forget
what it was, but it was spreading like wildfire, and it took a long time
to clean out my mailbox enough so that I could read valid e-mail.

OK. I'll probably post it to the metalworking archive.


[ ... bed twist ... ]

O.K. As long as you are that close, it would not really matter.
Where it would matter is turning some distance from the headstock, or
running something like a 1" drill bit in the tailstock -- especially
with a long workpiece extension from the chuck.

While using the 1" drill, the bed will most certainly wind up a bit. I
guess that what would resist permanent twist would be the leveling, with
the lathe resting on a concrete floor, as it now does.

Better with the near foot on the tailstock end and the back foot
on the headstock end bolted down, even if the other two are not. That
should resist the twist introduced by the drilling.

Well, if I do bolt it down, I'll probably do all four feet. But I'm
reluctant to bolt it down, because I may move it. Nor is a basement
slab all that thick and rigid, compared to the floor in an industrial
plant.


[ ... ]

O.K. Quite different. The 5418 is supposed to have the cabinet
bolted firmly to the floor (I don't), and the bed leveled relative to
the stand and chip tray.

The 5914 manual also speaks of bolting to the floor, but few people
actually do this I suspect.

Indeed -- unless forced by OSHA inspectors. :-) Now, if I were
doing lots of faceplate work, I would bolt it down just to be sure that
the lathe does not start walking around the shop with a bit of imbalance
on the faceplate. :-)

I'm still looking for a faceplate. One can buy a new faceplate plus L00
back from Bison for about $300, but the need is not immediate, and so
I've been watching eBay.

In looking at the 5418 manual, I see that it was also sold without
cabinet stand, for mounting on an owner-provided bench. Thus, the
adjusters had to be between cast iron stuff and the base (bench or
cabinet).


I looked the the 5418 manual. Now I understand. The designs of 5914
and 5418 are very different in this area. But there is no harm in
making sure that all those bolts are nice and tight, especially those
holding headstock to bed.

Agreed. Check the tailstock end too -- because that is what
would flex when the torque is transmitted from the spindle to the
carriage. It would wind up the bed (a little, at least).

The tailstock now clamps pretty firmly to the bed. This is one of the
first things I cleaned and adjusted, mainly because it was easy and
could be done without the manual.

It was not the tailstock to the bed that I was thinking of. I
was assuming that it would be well clamped, and for turning it would not
make a difference anyway. But bed feet to stand and/or stand to floor
are where the wind-up could be controlled.

Ahh. Now it makes sense.


BTW For parting there used to be a gooseneck parting tool. It went
in a lantern style toolpost, came out, turned up, formed an
Omega shaped arch, back down to where the parting tool is
actually clamped. The result is that excessive cutting forces
tends to move the tool away from the workpiece, thus eliminating
chatter. But your machine *should* be rigid enough to not need
this, especially with an Aloris style quick-change toolpost, and
the T-profile parting blades.

I vaguely knew (from reading old books) that there was such a tool, and
that it involved a gooseneck, but I had the "picture" upsidedown in my
mind, and couldn't see how it would work. I just googled it, and found
a book from 1910 that explained the principle as applied to use in a
planer. They did understand the self-feeding effect, saying that the
gooseneck would eliminate gouging the work, but a sufficiently rigid
machine didn't need gooseneck tools.

Yep.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...lpg=RA8-PA36&d
q=gooseneck+tool+lathe&source=web&ots=edrQWKc6hu&s ig=QsKeq0Vn7zebOdjC5ydY
KtuqnkA&hl=en#PRA8-PA35,M1

Hmm ... I don't think that I'm going to bother cut-and-pasting
all three chunks of that URL. I know the tool anyway, and see them
occasionally on eBay auctions.

In the original posting, you should be able to just click on the URL,
even though it appears wrapped, because I provided start and end
delimiters ( ... ). In quoted postings, this won't work, and editing
is required.


It occurs to me that a negative rake cutting tool could be set up to
develop enough outward force to at least partially counteract the
tendency to self-feed.

Right.

Perhaps this is why one commonly stated cause of
chattering is too-sharp tools. When one carefully blunts such a tool,
one puts a little bit of very negative rake right at the cutting edge.

How much backlash is there in your cross-feed leadscrew? The
self-feed can take the slack out of a worn leadscrew/nut pair. And you
want the cross-slide gibs to have a bit of drag, too.

I have the gibs adjusted so there is much drag, but the cross-slide
backlash is about 0.020", and the compound slide backlash is about
0.006".

The compound slide backlash was ~0.055" when I got the lathe, and so I
replaced the screw and its bronze nut. What a difference it made. I
have no idea why it was so worn compared to the cross-slide; perhaps
someone replaced the cross-slide screw and nut.

The cross-slide wasn't too bad (after being cleaned and adjusted), so I
left it alone. At least for now.


[ ... ]

Hmm ... another thing to check. While you have chatter, see
whether there is any relative motion between the headstock and the bed.
If it is not clamped down firmly enough, or if there are chips trapped
between the headstock and the bed, that could introduce enough give to
create problems.

Hmm. Offhand, I don't see any safe way to do this, as my hand would
need to be very close to the spinning chuck, or to various gears and the
like.

There is space where the outer ways stick out from under the
headstock (which is clamped to the inner ways) and you should be able to
check back along the near side far enough to be clear of the chuck.

Ahh. I see what you mean. One can get at the back of the lathe safely
enough. The problem is that I cannot then reach the handwheels to
advance the toolbit into the work. I'll have to cogitate on this.


I think I'll just torque all the clamp bolts, to see if any are loose.

O.K. That will deal with loose bolts, though not with chips.

I doubt that the headstock was ever unbolted, at least not by the people
who caused all the ignorance-induced problems. Taking the headstock off
would have frightened them, at least one fondly hopes that it would. In
any event, chips can only get in there is the headstock is unbolted.

Well ... you have the lathe in your basement I believe? Some
people disassemble the lathe to several heavy components and take each
down separately. If you didn't, perhaps someone else did previously.

It's possible, but I'm pretty sure that I am the first HSM owner of this
lathe, so this is probably its first basement gig. And my basement has
level entry, so no disassembly was needed.


The headstock is located on the bed ways by careful fitting of headstock
bottom to ways, plus a pair of steel dowel pins to prevent sliding.

O.K. Mine has one taper pin, not two dowel pins.

What I called dowels are in fact #6 taper pins, and they fix the
headstock to the bed way, preventing motion along the bed way.

There are in addition four pointed bolts that attach the bed to the cast
iron pedestal foot. I thing these studs are pointed for ease of manual
assembly in the factory.


Unlike the 5418 manual, in the 5914 manual, there is no
procedure for adjusting how the cast iron stuff rests upon the sheet
metal stuff.

O.K. This assumes that the sheet metal stuff is rigidly bolted
to the floor, I guess.

That would make sense. In the 5914, these adjustments have moved to the
cabinet-floor feet.

O.K. This produces fewer paths for swarf to get down into the
drawers and the motor/pulley assembly in the pedestals.

Yes. Not that the defense is perfect. I have pulled swarf out of just
about everywhere.

Joe Gwinn

In article
,
Jim Wilkins wrote:

On May 3, 10:35*am, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

I do provide those brackets, so when you see something like
"http://www.whatever.com/stuff", just click on it, even if it wrapped
to multiple lines. *It's the and that do the job.

That's actually a valid link.

So it is. Is nothing safe?

Joe Gwinn

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

This is about three times what the 5914 weighs. If one assumes that
this is accomplished by tripling the thickness of everything, the
stiffness will increase by the cube of three, or a factor of 27, so I'm
not surprised the a few hundred pounds on the bed has little effect.

Yes, this was a move up from a 12" Atlas/Craftsman. Wow, what a
difference! The cross slide is beefier than the carriage ways
on the Atlas, and the carriage spans 25" along the bed.
What are the dimensions of your Sheldon? One reason I didn't go that
heavy was space limitations, and the difficulty of getting such a heavy
machine into my basement.

It is about 80" long, and I had to take off the nice door over
the back end of the headstock, as there's a bench right there.
The bed itself is 6 feet, exactly, giving a conservative 42"
between centers. I'm sure I could turn a 48" long part with no
trouble.

One of the reasons I bought this house was the grade-level door
to the back yard from the basement. I had to take a couple
handles off the lathe to slide it through the door. The biggest
problem is the soft terrain and the immense weight of fork lift
trucks.

See http://jelinux.pico-systems.com/sheldon.html
for the story and some pictures of the lathe.



Now, another comment is that you may have a poor "fit up"
between your carriage and bed. I totally rescraped my bed and
carriage to get the best fit between these surfaces. In my
case, due to the hardened bed, I had to grind it with Cratex
polishing wheels and then lap it smooth with bench stones.
(A carbide scraper blade wouldn't even SCRATCH the bed.)
I then used Moglice castable way liner to make the underside of
the carriage conform to the bed.


There is some bed wear which prevents the hold-down plates from being
too tight on the underside of the bed way, but the slop is about 0.001".
I did take one 0.002" shim out from under both hold-down plates, which
both had visible wear.

Depending on the shape of this wear, it may allow rocking of the
carriage on the convex curvature of the bed. This is "bad"!
It allows external forces to easily move the cutting point.
The larger the lathe, and the more distance between bed and
spindle centerline, the more this rocking is magnified.
One reason that self-feeding is less of a problem when the tool moves
perpendicular to the spindle axis than when the tool motion is parallel
to the axis may be that the carriage is narrower along the way than
across the way, by a factor of about two.

The ways were hardened and ground, but not scraped. But I doubt that I
will ever have the time or energy to re-scrape them.

Well, you can't scrape them, I suspect. Hardenable beds are not
grey or white cast iron, and when hardened, even without flame
spraying, they get immensely hard. I have developed a system
for "hand scraping" hardened beds, using a die grinder and the
muslin-bonded Cratex polishing wheels. If hand scraping is
slow, this "hand polishing" is even slower! It took me 14
months to do my Sheldon bed, but that involved several detours
down wrong paths.

I think that it does rock slightly, as I can feel slight movement if I
put a finger spanning the gap between carriage and way. But the skin is
very sensitive to motion in such setups, and this is probably the
~0.001" slop I already know of. The problem is that this was observed
while the lathe was shaking with chatter, and everything was bouncing,
and it wasn't clear what was cause and what was effect.

A dial indicator between carriage and way and an iron bar in the boring
bar holder (to apply force while the lathe is stopped) may be useful
here, though.

More generally, I've been finding and fixing many problems, few of which
were huge, but they do add up.
I think it really doesn't take much rocking to set up the
vibrations, then the natural resonant frequency of the machine
and workpiece take over. I have noticed with the Atlas machines
that the setup of tool overhang has a large effect on this.

Jon

In article ,
Jon Elson wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

This is about three times what the 5914 weighs. If one assumes that
this is accomplished by tripling the thickness of everything, the
stiffness will increase by the cube of three, or a factor of 27, so I'm
not surprised the a few hundred pounds on the bed has little effect.

Yes, this was a move up from a 12" Atlas/Craftsman. Wow, what a
difference! The cross slide is beefier than the carriage ways
on the Atlas, and the carriage spans 25" along the bed.

What are the dimensions of your Sheldon? One reason I didn't go that
heavy was space limitations, and the difficulty of getting such a heavy
machine into my basement.

It is about 80" long, and I had to take off the nice door over
the back end of the headstock, as there's a bench right there.
The bed itself is 6 feet, exactly, giving a conservative 42"
between centers. I'm sure I could turn a 48" long part with no
trouble.

Uff. A bit too large for my basement. But it sure would be nice.


One of the reasons I bought this house was the grade-level door
to the back yard from the basement. I had to take a couple
handles off the lathe to slide it through the door. The biggest
problem is the soft terrain and the immense weight of fork lift
trucks.

See http://jelinux.pico-systems.com/sheldon.html
for the story and some pictures of the lathe.

I didn't have near the drama. It was in the middle of the Winter, so I
hired a rigger, and he had the equipment to handle a 1200# lathe like a
toy. They would not have had much more trouble with 3500#, so the issue
is where to put it.


Now, another comment is that you may have a poor "fit up"
between your carriage and bed. I totally rescraped my bed and
carriage to get the best fit between these surfaces. In my
case, due to the hardened bed, I had to grind it with Cratex
polishing wheels and then lap it smooth with bench stones.
(A carbide scraper blade wouldn't even SCRATCH the bed.)
I then used Moglice castable way liner to make the underside of
the carriage conform to the bed.


There is some bed wear which prevents the hold-down plates from being
too tight on the underside of the bed way, but the slop is about 0.001".
I did take one 0.002" shim out from under both hold-down plates, which
both had visible wear.

Depending on the shape of this wear, it may allow rocking of the
carriage on the convex curvature of the bed. This is "bad"!
It allows external forces to easily move the cutting point.
The larger the lathe, and the more distance between bed and
spindle centerline, the more this rocking is magnified.

One reason that self-feeding is less of a problem when the tool moves
perpendicular to the spindle axis than when the tool motion is parallel
to the axis may be that the carriage is narrower along the way than
across the way, by a factor of about two.

I don't think I'm having much rocking. And, it turns out that the
carriage is more of less square, not a 2:1 rectangle.


The ways were hardened and ground, but not scraped. But I doubt that I
will ever have the time or energy to re-scrape them.

Well, you can't scrape them, I suspect. Hardenable beds are not
grey or white cast iron, and when hardened, even without flame
spraying, they get immensely hard. I have developed a system
for "hand scraping" hardened beds, using a die grinder and the
muslin-bonded Cratex polishing wheels. If hand scraping is
slow, this "hand polishing" is even slower! It took me 14
months to do my Sheldon bed, but that involved several detours
down wrong paths.

The ways are flame hardened, according to the nameplate on the lathe.
This means that grinding is the only way. One can do this by hand,
using coarse diamond grit embedded in a piece of aluminum as the tool.
It won't be fast, but it will work. Diamond dust cuts hard steel quite
well.

I wonder if the dovetails are also hardened. Most of the wear is in the
gibs, so one assumes that they are softer that the dovetail material.


I think that it does rock slightly, as I can feel slight movement if I
put a finger spanning the gap between carriage and way. But the skin is
very sensitive to motion in such setups, and this is probably the
~0.001" slop I already know of. The problem is that this was observed
while the lathe was shaking with chatter, and everything was bouncing,
and it wasn't clear what was cause and what was effect.

A dial indicator between carriage and way and an iron bar in the boring
bar holder (to apply force while the lathe is stopped) may be useful
here, though.

More generally, I've been finding and fixing many problems, few of which
were huge, but they do add up.

I think it really doesn't take much rocking to set up the
vibrations, then the natural resonant frequency of the machine
and workpiece take over. I have noticed with the Atlas machines
that the setup of tool overhang has a large effect on this.

Yes. But the first thing to do is to fix the gibs, as described in
another thread.

Joe Gwinn

On 2008-05-03, James Waldby wrote:
On Sat, 03 May 2008 04:07:16 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:

[ ... ]

http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...lpg=RA8-PA36&d
q=gooseneck+tool+lathe&source=web&ots=edrQWKc6hu&s ig=QsKeq0Vn7zebOdjC5ydY
KtuqnkA&hl=en#PRA8-PA35,M1

Hmm ... I don't think that I'm going to bother cut-and-pasting
all three chunks of that URL. I know the tool anyway, and see them
occasionally on eBay auctions.
...

Just for reference, here's a working link to the same page, with
non-essential parts (ie, the last two-thirds) cut away:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...AJ&pg=RA8-PA36

O.K. That (the full PDF) is dowloading as I type.

The "Download PDF - 36.3M" link on that page fetches a pdf file
with 1100-odd scanned pages from what appear to be pamphlets #41
through 110 of Machinery's Reference Series, ca. 1908-1913.

O.K. Possibly other intersting things in there, then.

Also, regarding cut-and-paste of broken-up URL's like that,
I usually highlight the whole mess, paste it into Firefox's
URL box, then delete the return characters to fix it, as
opposed to cutting and pasting three separate parts.

O.K. But I normally don't have Opera up and running, so I
invoke it by a script "op" which does a cd to a place where I tend to
save things, then invokes opera via the URL which I cut-and-pasted into
the comand line -- and the command line sees the newlines as end of a
command line and the start of another, which of course fails to reach
the place desired and then tries to interpret the other two as separate
commands, which also normally fail. :-) So I have to cut and paste it
one line at a time, and surround the whole thing with double quotes to
keep any stray '?', '%' or similar characters with special meanings to
the shell from having those meanings.

Obviously, if I used a web brower for a newsreader I wouldn't
have this -- but I would have other possible problems.

Thanks,
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 2008-05-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
James Waldby wrote:

On Sat, 03 May 2008 04:07:16 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-05-02, Joseph Gwinn joegwinn@... wrote:

[ ... ]

http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...lpg=RA8-PA36&d
q=gooseneck+tool+lathe&source=web&ots=edrQWKc6hu&s ig=QsKeq0Vn7zebOdjC5ydY
KtuqnkA&hl=en#PRA8-PA35,M1

Hmm ... I don't think that I'm going to bother cut-and-pasting
all three chunks of that URL. I know the tool anyway, and see them
occasionally on eBay auctions.

[ ... ]

The "Download PDF - 36.3M" link on that page fetches a pdf file
with 1100-odd scanned pages from what appear to be pamphlets #41
through 110 of Machinery's Reference Series, ca. 1908-1913.

That's right.

1122 pages worth of them :-)

Also, regarding cut-and-paste of broken-up URL's like that,
I usually highlight the whole mess, paste it into Firefox's
URL box, then delete the return characters to fix it, as
opposed to cutting and pasting three separate parts.

The cut&paste exercise is not necessary if the poster provided the start
and end brackets needed by the newsreader (or email client) to know
exactly what is the URL string.

I do provide those brackets, so when you see something like
"http://www.whatever.com/stuff", just click on it, even if it wrapped
to multiple lines. It's the and that do the job.

That only works in a newsreader which is designed and configured
to directly invoke a web brower -- or which is part of a web browser.
It does not work in mine, and that is the way I want it -- so a
malicious URL can't be accessed without my active participation. And
yes, I *have* seen malicious URLS in usenet articles.

The exception is when the URL is in a quoted message, and so extra quote
mark characters have been inserted.

Or -- when you are using a system which is not configured to do
it, as I am. I *think* that I could configure this newsreader (slrn) to
do it, but I will not.

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 2008-05-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-05-02, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

Ahh. Yes. It will take a while, but I may scan my manual, which does
not appear to be copyrighted.

Hmm ... beware that you can't e-mail it to me. There is a limit
of 30K total size on incoming e-mail, to keep virus infections out of a
couple of small mailing lists which I host. No problem with my systems,
of course -- but I first turned on the limit when I got over 300 copies
of a new spam on the first day, and 200 more on the next day. I forget
what it was, but it was spreading like wildfire, and it took a long time
to clean out my mailbox enough so that I could read valid e-mail.

OK. I'll probably post it to the metalworking archive.

You mean to the dropbox http://www.metalworking.com? That
should do -- or perhaps to the archive of manuals which Iggy is building
up.


[ ... bed twist ... ]

Better with the near foot on the tailstock end and the back foot
on the headstock end bolted down, even if the other two are not. That
should resist the twist introduced by the drilling.

Well, if I do bolt it down, I'll probably do all four feet. But I'm
reluctant to bolt it down, because I may move it. Nor is a basement
slab all that thick and rigid, compared to the floor in an industrial
plant.

O.K. Mine is not bolted down -- but I don't see the kind of
chatter that you do. Perhaps it is because most of the industrial
service life of the machine was as a turret lathe, where most of the
motion was in the turret ram.

[ ... ]

The 5914 manual also speaks of bolting to the floor, but few people
actually do this I suspect.

Indeed -- unless forced by OSHA inspectors. :-) Now, if I were
doing lots of faceplate work, I would bolt it down just to be sure that
the lathe does not start walking around the shop with a bit of imbalance
on the faceplate. :-)

I'm still looking for a faceplate. One can buy a new faceplate plus L00
back from Bison for about $300, but the need is not immediate, and so
I've been watching eBay.

O.K. So was I -- until I found one at a flea market/picnic held
by the local metalworking club (which, BTW, is also where the dropbox
is. :-)

In looking at the 5418 manual, I see that it was also sold without
cabinet stand, for mounting on an owner-provided bench.

With a somewhat different headstock which allowed the belts to
run back to a rear-mounted motor instead of down into the pedestal.

Thus, the
adjusters had to be between cast iron stuff and the base (bench or
cabinet).

Yes -- but before that, it was common to adjust between the feet
and the cabinet (or table) with stacks of shims.

[ ... ]

Agreed. Check the tailstock end too -- because that is what
would flex when the torque is transmitted from the spindle to the
carriage. It would wind up the bed (a little, at least).

The tailstock now clamps pretty firmly to the bed. This is one of the
first things I cleaned and adjusted, mainly because it was easy and
could be done without the manual.

It was not the tailstock to the bed that I was thinking of. I
was assuming that it would be well clamped, and for turning it would not
make a difference anyway. But bed feet to stand and/or stand to floor
are where the wind-up could be controlled.

Ahh. Now it makes sense.

Good.

[ ... ]

http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...lpg=RA8-PA36&d
q=gooseneck+tool+lathe&source=web&ots=edrQWKc6hu&s ig=QsKeq0Vn7zebOdjC5ydY
KtuqnkA&hl=en#PRA8-PA35,M1

Hmm ... I don't think that I'm going to bother cut-and-pasting
all three chunks of that URL. I know the tool anyway, and see them
occasionally on eBay auctions.

In the original posting, you should be able to just click on the URL,
even though it appears wrapped, because I provided start and end
delimiters ( ... ). In quoted postings, this won't work, and editing
is required.

Nope! *I* can't -- because I don't use a GUI-based newsreader.
I can click on the url and get at most a single line of it to paste to
a browser or another window with a command line.

People with GUI-based newsreaders (especially those built into
web browsers) can do so. Frankly, I am glad that I can't, because it
makes it more difficult to accidentally click on a malicious link.

[ ... ]

Perhaps this is why one commonly stated cause of
chattering is too-sharp tools. When one carefully blunts such a tool,
one puts a little bit of very negative rake right at the cutting edge.

How much backlash is there in your cross-feed leadscrew? The
self-feed can take the slack out of a worn leadscrew/nut pair. And you
want the cross-slide gibs to have a bit of drag, too.

I have the gibs adjusted so there is much drag, but the cross-slide
backlash is about 0.020", and the compound slide backlash is about
0.006".

O.K.

The compound slide backlash was ~0.055" when I got the lathe, and so I
replaced the screw and its bronze nut. What a difference it made. I
have no idea why it was so worn compared to the cross-slide; perhaps
someone replaced the cross-slide screw and nut.

Well ... my cross-slide had 0.070" backlash. But I know why.
The power feed was used for parting off workpieces after the turret does
most of the work of shaping them. So the carriage just sat there, the
compound was untouched, and the cross-slide cycled under power for every
part made.

The cross-slide wasn't too bad (after being cleaned and adjusted), so I
left it alone. At least for now.

O.K. But when you are experiencing chatter, you might also try
placing a finger where it can sense motion along the cross slide.


[ ... ]

Hmm ... another thing to check. While you have chatter, see
whether there is any relative motion between the headstock and the bed.
If it is not clamped down firmly enough, or if there are chips trapped
between the headstock and the bed, that could introduce enough give to
create problems.

Hmm. Offhand, I don't see any safe way to do this, as my hand would
need to be very close to the spinning chuck, or to various gears and the
like.

There is space where the outer ways stick out from under the
headstock (which is clamped to the inner ways) and you should be able to
check back along the near side far enough to be clear of the chuck.

Ahh. I see what you mean. One can get at the back of the lathe safely
enough. The problem is that I cannot then reach the handwheels to
advance the toolbit into the work. I'll have to cogitate on this.

Isn't there access above the quick-change gearbox? The gearbox
is bolted firmly to the bed, so you could sense motion between the top
of the gearbox and the front of the headstock.

[ ... ]

I doubt that the headstock was ever unbolted, at least not by the people

[ ... ]

Well ... you have the lathe in your basement I believe? Some
people disassemble the lathe to several heavy components and take each
down separately. If you didn't, perhaps someone else did previously.

It's possible, but I'm pretty sure that I am the first HSM owner of this
lathe, so this is probably its first basement gig. And my basement has
level entry, so no disassembly was needed.

O.K. That helps greatly.

The headstock is located on the bed ways by careful fitting of headstock
bottom to ways, plus a pair of steel dowel pins to prevent sliding.

O.K. Mine has one taper pin, not two dowel pins.

What I called dowels are in fact #6 taper pins, and they fix the
headstock to the bed way, preventing motion along the bed way.

O.K. That is as it should be.

There are in addition four pointed bolts that attach the bed to the cast
iron pedestal foot. I thing these studs are pointed for ease of manual
assembly in the factory.

Hmm ... I've not checked how my bed feet are attached.

[ ... ]

O.K. This produces fewer paths for swarf to get down into the
drawers and the motor/pulley assembly in the pedestals.

Yes. Not that the defense is perfect. I have pulled swarf out of just
about everywhere.

It does tend to get everywhere.

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 2008-05-04, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
Jon Elson wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

One reason that self-feeding is less of a problem when the tool moves
perpendicular to the spindle axis than when the tool motion is parallel
to the axis may be that the carriage is narrower along the way than
across the way, by a factor of about two.

I don't think I'm having much rocking. And, it turns out that the
carriage is more of less square, not a 2:1 rectangle.

Yes -- the Clausing carriages have wide wings.

[ ... ]

The ways are flame hardened, according to the nameplate on the lathe.
This means that grinding is the only way. One can do this by hand,
using coarse diamond grit embedded in a piece of aluminum as the tool.
It won't be fast, but it will work. Diamond dust cuts hard steel quite
well.

I wonder if the dovetails are also hardened. Most of the wear is in the
gibs, so one assumes that they are softer that the dovetail material.

Actually -- the wear is normally on the harder of two mating
surfaces. This is because harder objects (grit, etc) embed in the
softer surface and cut the harder. This is how a lap works.

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 Mon, 05 May 2008 00:59:21 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-05-03, James Waldby wrote:
....
Also, regarding cut-and-paste of broken-up URL's like that, I usually
highlight the whole mess, paste it into Firefox's URL box, then delete
the return characters to fix it, as opposed to cutting and pasting
three separate parts.

O.K. But I normally don't have Opera up and running, so I
invoke it by a script "op" which does a cd to a place where I tend to
save things, then invokes opera via the URL which I cut-and-pasted into
the command line -- and the command line sees the newlines as end of a
command line and the start of another, which of course fails to reach
the place desired and then tries to interpret the other two as separate
commands, which also normally fail. :-) So I have to cut and paste it
one line at a time, and surround the whole thing with double quotes to
keep any stray '?', '%' or similar characters with special meanings to
the shell from having those meanings.
....

Add the following near the beginning of the script:
URL="`xclip -o | tr -d '\n'`"

This will set URL to the contents of the clipboard with newlines
deleted. Adapt as necessary for shells other than sh or bash.

-jiw

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-05-04, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
Jon Elson wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

[ ... ]

The ways are flame hardened, according to the nameplate on the lathe.
This means that grinding is the only way. One can do this by hand,
using coarse diamond grit embedded in a piece of aluminum as the tool.
It won't be fast, but it will work. Diamond dust cuts hard steel quite
well.

I wonder if the dovetails are also hardened. Most of the wear is in the
gibs, so one assumes that they are softer that the dovetail material.

Actually -- the wear is normally on the harder of two mating
surfaces. This is because harder objects (grit, etc) embed in the
softer surface and cut the harder. This is how a lap works.

I'm not sure that cast iron is soft enough for much embedment to happen,
unless one is using a toolpost grinder. And while the gibs are visibly
and heavily worn, the dovetails are somewhere between pristine and
lightly worn to the eye.

Anyway, the gibs both had something like 0.003" to 0.004" of wear on one
side and another 0.001" on the other side. This doesn't sound like
much, but it approaches to exceeds the adjustment range of the gib. For
example, given a taper of 5/32" per foot (0.013021" per inch), 0.003" of
wear allows the gib to move 0.003/0.013021= 0.230", a major fraction of
the adjustment range. This plus the bunged corners forced me to flip
the gib over. However, now the gib rests at an angle on the dovetail,
as the surface is stepped (the wear not being uniform, instead leaving a
step running the full length of the gib). So, I threw in the towel.

Joe Gwinn

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-05-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-05-02, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

Ahh. Yes. It will take a while, but I may scan my manual, which does
not appear to be copyrighted.

Hmm ... beware that you can't e-mail it to me. There is a limit
of 30K total size on incoming e-mail, to keep virus infections out of a
couple of small mailing lists which I host. No problem with my systems,
of course -- but I first turned on the limit when I got over 300 copies
of a new spam on the first day, and 200 more on the next day. I forget
what it was, but it was spreading like wildfire, and it took a long time
to clean out my mailbox enough so that I could read valid e-mail.

OK. I'll probably post it to the metalworking archive.

You mean to the dropbox http://www.metalworking.com? That
should do -- or perhaps to the archive of manuals which Iggy is building
up.

I meant the dropbox, although Iggy would be welcome to a copy as well.


[ ... bed twist ... ]

Better with the near foot on the tailstock end and the back foot
on the headstock end bolted down, even if the other two are not. That
should resist the twist introduced by the drilling.

Well, if I do bolt it down, I'll probably do all four feet. But I'm
reluctant to bolt it down, because I may move it. Nor is a basement
slab all that thick and rigid, compared to the floor in an industrial
plant.

O.K. Mine is not bolted down -- but I don't see the kind of
chatter that you do. Perhaps it is because most of the industrial
service life of the machine was as a turret lathe, where most of the
motion was in the turret ram.

OK.


The 5914 manual also speaks of bolting to the floor, but few people
actually do this I suspect.

Indeed -- unless forced by OSHA inspectors. :-) Now, if I were
doing lots of faceplate work, I would bolt it down just to be sure that
the lathe does not start walking around the shop with a bit of imbalance
on the faceplate. :-)

I'm still looking for a faceplate. One can buy a new faceplate plus L00
back from Bison for about $300, but the need is not immediate, and so
I've been watching eBay.

O.K. So was I -- until I found one at a flea market/picnic held
by the local metalworking club (which, BTW, is also where the dropbox
is. :-)

It helps to be lucky...


In looking at the 5418 manual, I see that it was also sold without
cabinet stand, for mounting on an owner-provided bench.

With a somewhat different headstock which allowed the belts to
run back to a rear-mounted motor instead of down into the pedestal.

Thus, the
adjusters had to be between cast iron stuff and the base (bench or
cabinet).

Yes -- but before that, it was common to adjust between the feet
and the cabinet (or table) with stacks of shims.

Yep. I wanted a lathe with integral cabinet stand, on the theory that
it would all fit together better.


[ ... ]

http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...lpg=RA8-PA36&d
q=gooseneck+tool+lathe&source=web&ots=edrQWKc6hu&s ig=QsKeq0Vn7zebOdjC5ydY
KtuqnkA&hl=en#PRA8-PA35,M1

Hmm ... I don't think that I'm going to bother cut-and-pasting
all three chunks of that URL. I know the tool anyway, and see them
occasionally on eBay auctions.

In the original posting, you should be able to just click on the URL,
even though it appears wrapped, because I provided start and end
delimiters ( ... ). In quoted postings, this won't work, and editing
is required.

Nope! *I* can't -- because I don't use a GUI-based newsreader.
I can click on the url and get at most a single line of it to paste to
a browser or another window with a command line.

People with GUI-based newsreaders (especially those built into
web browsers) can do so. Frankly, I am glad that I can't, because it
makes it more difficult to accidentally click on a malicious link.

If you are not on Windows, why would this be a problem?


[ ... ]

Perhaps this is why one commonly stated cause of
chattering is too-sharp tools. When one carefully blunts such a tool,
one puts a little bit of very negative rake right at the cutting edge.

How much backlash is there in your cross-feed leadscrew? The
self-feed can take the slack out of a worn leadscrew/nut pair. And you
want the cross-slide gibs to have a bit of drag, too.

I have the gibs adjusted so there is much drag, but the cross-slide
backlash is about 0.020", and the compound slide backlash is about
0.006".

O.K.

I figured out how better to adjust things, and got this down to ~0.003".


The compound slide backlash was ~0.055" when I got the lathe, and so I
replaced the screw and its bronze nut. What a difference it made. I
have no idea why it was so worn compared to the cross-slide; perhaps
someone replaced the cross-slide screw and nut.

Well ... my cross-slide had 0.070" backlash. But I know why.
The power feed was used for parting off workpieces after the turret does
most of the work of shaping them. So the carriage just sat there, the
compound was untouched, and the cross-slide cycled under power for every
part made.

The cross-slide wasn't too bad (after being cleaned and adjusted), so I
left it alone. At least for now.

O.K. But when you are experiencing chatter, you might also try
placing a finger where it can sense motion along the cross slide.

Yep. I tried the same improved adjustment method on the cross slide,
but the backlash remained at ~0.020", so this is probably inherent to
the screw and nut.

Did you ever figure out how much of the 0.070" was the screw versus the
nut? I think I recall you saying that the Acme threads were worn down
to sharp points, which would imply that screw wear was the larger
contributor.


[ ... ]

Hmm ... another thing to check. While you have chatter, see
whether there is any relative motion between the headstock and the bed.
If it is not clamped down firmly enough, or if there are chips trapped
between the headstock and the bed, that could introduce enough give to
create problems.

Hmm. Offhand, I don't see any safe way to do this, as my hand would
need to be very close to the spinning chuck, or to various gears and the
like.

There is space where the outer ways stick out from under the
headstock (which is clamped to the inner ways) and you should be able to
check back along the near side far enough to be clear of the chuck.

Ahh. I see what you mean. One can get at the back of the lathe safely
enough. The problem is that I cannot then reach the handwheels to
advance the toolbit into the work. I'll have to cogitate on this.

Isn't there access above the quick-change gearbox? The gearbox
is bolted firmly to the bed, so you could sense motion between the top
of the gearbox and the front of the headstock.

Not without some disassembly.


The headstock is located on the bed ways by careful fitting of headstock
bottom to ways, plus a pair of steel dowel pins to prevent sliding.

O.K. Mine has one taper pin, not two dowel pins.

What I called dowels are in fact #6 taper pins, and they fix the
headstock to the bed way, preventing motion along the bed way.

O.K. That is as it should be.

And it turns out that there is only one taper pin, not two, so the two
models are about the same here. I recalled that there were two, but
when I cleaned the dirt off, only one.


There are in addition four pointed bolts that attach the bed to the cast
iron pedestal foot. I thing these studs are pointed for ease of manual
assembly in the factory.

Hmm ... I've not checked how my bed feet are attached.

[ ... ]

O.K. This produces fewer paths for swarf to get down into the
drawers and the motor/pulley assembly in the pedestals.

Yes. Not that the defense is perfect. I have pulled swarf out of just
about everywhere.

It does tend to get everywhere.

In the shoes is the worst. And chattering tools generate particularly
annoying swarf - millions of sharp little steel needles. Coolant helps
by wetting the whole mess down, keeping it from blowing around in the
shop.

Joe Gwinn

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-05-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
James Waldby wrote:

On Sat, 03 May 2008 04:07:16 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-05-02, Joseph Gwinn joegwinn@... wrote:

[ ... ]

http://books.google.com/books?id=Skd...lpg=RA8-PA36&d
q=gooseneck+tool+lathe&source=web&ots=edrQWKc6hu&s ig=QsKeq0Vn7zebOdjC5yd
Y
KtuqnkA&hl=en#PRA8-PA35,M1

Hmm ... I don't think that I'm going to bother cut-and-pasting
all three chunks of that URL. I know the tool anyway, and see them
occasionally on eBay auctions.

[ ... ]

The "Download PDF - 36.3M" link on that page fetches a pdf file
with 1100-odd scanned pages from what appear to be pamphlets #41
through 110 of Machinery's Reference Series, ca. 1908-1913.

That's right.

1122 pages worth of them :-)

Also right. I wonder if anyone offers this on CDs.


Also, regarding cut-and-paste of broken-up URL's like that,
I usually highlight the whole mess, paste it into Firefox's
URL box, then delete the return characters to fix it, as
opposed to cutting and pasting three separate parts.

The cut&paste exercise is not necessary if the poster provided the start
and end brackets needed by the newsreader (or email client) to know
exactly what is the URL string.

I do provide those brackets, so when you see something like
"http://www.whatever.com/stuff", just click on it, even if it wrapped
to multiple lines. It's the and that do the job.

That only works in a newsreader which is designed and configured
to directly invoke a web brower -- or which is part of a web browser.
It does not work in mine, and that is the way I want it -- so a
malicious URL can't be accessed without my active participation. And
yes, I *have* seen malicious URLS in usenet articles.

The exception is when the URL is in a quoted message, and so extra quote
mark characters have been inserted.

Or -- when you are using a system which is not configured to do
it, as I am. I *think* that I could configure this newsreader (slrn) to
do it, but I will not.

What's wrong with newsreaders that correctly handle URLs? If one is not
on Windows, there is little danger from URLs.


Joe Gwinn

On 2008-05-05, James Waldby wrote:
On Mon, 05 May 2008 00:59:21 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-05-03, James Waldby wrote:

[ ... ]

O.K. But I normally don't have Opera up and running, so I
invoke it by a script "op" which does a cd to a place where I tend to
save things, then invokes opera via the URL which I cut-and-pasted into
the command line -- and the command line sees the newlines as end of a
command line and the start of another, which of course fails to reach
the place desired and then tries to interpret the other two as separate
commands, which also normally fail. :-) So I have to cut and paste it
one line at a time, and surround the whole thing with double quotes to
keep any stray '?', '%' or similar characters with special meanings to
the shell from having those meanings.
...

Add the following near the beginning of the script:
URL="`xclip -o | tr -d '\n'`"

Katana:dnichols 0:53:00 which xclip
xclip: Command not found.

This will set URL to the contents of the clipboard with newlines
deleted. Adapt as necessary for shells other than sh or bash.

How about for systems which don't have xclip? :-)

O.K. I've found the source, compiled and installed it without
any drama. Now to see what I can do with the script modification.

Hmm ... "Reads from standard in, or from one or more files,"

But the script is invoked as:

op URL-goes-here

and when URL occupies three lines, this would still be:

op FIRST-LINE-OF-URL (opera barfs because of incomplete URL)
SECOND-LINE-OF-URL (shell barfs, because it is expecting a new valid command)
THIRD-LINE-OF-URL (shell barfs, because it is expecting a new valid commnd)

So -- unless you can see a way to drop the cut-and-paste as
standard input for the script, I don't see how this can work.

Still -- xclip looks like an intersting tool to play with.

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

On 2008-05-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

The exception is when the URL is in a quoted message, and so extra quote
mark characters have been inserted.

Or -- when you are using a system which is not configured to do
it, as I am. I *think* that I could configure this newsreader (slrn) to
do it, but I will not.

What's wrong with newsreaders that correctly handle URLs? If one is not
on Windows, there is little danger from URLs.

Little does not translate into *no* danger. :-)

So much of the web wants javascript enabled, or flash, or lots
of other things. I don't trust those, and have them turned off except
for sites which I trust -- and that does not mean that they won't get
cracked and malicious HTML installed.

I like to look at the URL, perhaps run a whois on the domain,
and various other checks before deciding to go to the site. If it is
set up to respond to a click, I could wind up visiting one which I don't
care for because one of my cats hopped into my lap and nudged my hand
thus pressing the mouse button at just the wrong time. (Aside from the
mouse (actually a trackball) falling off the arm of the chair and
bumping the buttons in falling.

So -- the most that a mouse click in my newsreader can do is to
highlight some text and perhaps copy it into the clip buffer. :-) I've
got to bring up another window, and type a command line before I get to
a web site.

Call me paranoid. :-)

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

On 2008-05-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

OK. I'll probably post it to the metalworking archive.

You mean to the dropbox http://www.metalworking.com? That
should do -- or perhaps to the archive of manuals which Iggy is building
up.

I meant the dropbox, although Iggy would be welcome to a copy as well.

Good.

[ ... ]

I'm still looking for a faceplate. One can buy a new faceplate plus L00
back from Bison for about $300, but the need is not immediate, and so
I've been watching eBay.

O.K. So was I -- until I found one at a flea market/picnic held
by the local metalworking club (which, BTW, is also where the dropbox
is. :-)

It helps to be lucky...

And to not be in a hurry. :-)

[ ... ]

Yes -- but before that, it was common to adjust between the feet
and the cabinet (or table) with stacks of shims.

Yep. I wanted a lathe with integral cabinet stand, on the theory that
it would all fit together better.

And you got that. (And got rid of the chatter problem with the
new gib. Congratulations.

BTW -- the squeal might be because the trepanning tool is not
ground to give proper clearance on the curve of the slot.

[ ... ]

Nope! *I* can't -- because I don't use a GUI-based newsreader.
I can click on the url and get at most a single line of it to paste to
a browser or another window with a command line.

People with GUI-based newsreaders (especially those built into
web browsers) can do so. Frankly, I am glad that I can't, because it
makes it more difficult to accidentally click on a malicious link.

If you are not on Windows, why would this be a problem?

Because I don't depend on them *always* focusing on Windows
systems, just because they are the easiest target. There have been
experimental attacks which used javascript, or java, and I see lots of
information about security holes in the flash plugins (information from
the CERT mailing list). Anything attacking something other than the
basic native machine language can be made to work on other systems.

[ ... ]

I have the gibs adjusted so there is much drag, but the cross-slide
backlash is about 0.020", and the compound slide backlash is about
0.006".

O.K.

I figured out how better to adjust things, and got this down to ~0.003".

Good!

[ ... ]

O.K. But when you are experiencing chatter, you might also try
placing a finger where it can sense motion along the cross slide.

Yep. I tried the same improved adjustment method on the cross slide,
but the backlash remained at ~0.020", so this is probably inherent to
the screw and nut.

Did you ever figure out how much of the 0.070" was the screw versus the
nut? I think I recall you saying that the Acme threads were worn down
to sharp points, which would imply that screw wear was the larger
contributor.

It was about half. Cranking the cross-slide out to near falling
out of the nut reduced the backlash to 0.036".

[ ... ]

There is space where the outer ways stick out from under the
headstock (which is clamped to the inner ways) and you should be able to
check back along the near side far enough to be clear of the chuck.

Ahh. I see what you mean. One can get at the back of the lathe safely
enough. The problem is that I cannot then reach the handwheels to
advance the toolbit into the work. I'll have to cogitate on this.

Isn't there access above the quick-change gearbox? The gearbox
is bolted firmly to the bed, so you could sense motion between the top
of the gearbox and the front of the headstock.

Not without some disassembly.

Hmm ... it must be much more enclosed there than the 5418 is.

[ ... ]

O.K. Mine has one taper pin, not two dowel pins.

What I called dowels are in fact #6 taper pins, and they fix the
headstock to the bed way, preventing motion along the bed way.

O.K. That is as it should be.

And it turns out that there is only one taper pin, not two, so the two
models are about the same here. I recalled that there were two, but
when I cleaned the dirt off, only one.

:-) That dirt does tend to mask details, doesn't it? :-)

[ ... ]

O.K. This produces fewer paths for swarf to get down into the
drawers and the motor/pulley assembly in the pedestals.

Yes. Not that the defense is perfect. I have pulled swarf out of just
about everywhere.

It does tend to get everywhere.

In the shoes is the worst. And chattering tools generate particularly
annoying swarf - millions of sharp little steel needles. Coolant helps
by wetting the whole mess down, keeping it from blowing around in the
shop.

O.K. I don't have problems with the shoes. I wear
oil-resistant steel toed boots, and the legs of my pants come down below
the top of the boots, so it would have to bounce off the floor and come
up to get in. :-) Given some of the things I have dropped, I am glad to
have those steel-toed boots. :-)

And if you want nasty needles, try a horizontal mill with a
conventional milling cutter on steel. :-) I'll take what comes from my
lahte any day. :-)

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

On 2008-05-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

Yes -- but before that, it was common to adjust between the feet
and the cabinet (or table) with stacks of shims.

Yep. I wanted a lathe with integral cabinet stand, on the theory that
it would all fit together better.

And you got that. (And got rid of the chatter problem with the
new gib. Congratulations.

Thanks. I've been reflecting on how I came to the conclusion that the
5914 needed new gibs.

The key was the gross tilting of the toolpost, which moved something
like a tenth or even an eighth of an inch, and yet nothing broke (except
for a tool bit now and then).

There is a reason people don't make springs out of cast iron, so the
castings could not be bending enough to explain such large deflections.
So it had to be the joints and/or slideways. The only joints were
firmly bolted (toolpost to slide) or wedged (tool holder to toolpost),
and no relative motion could be felt. And the headstock was firmly
bolted to the bed.

This left the slideways, of which there are three.

The first is between the bed ways and the carriage. This originally had
~0.003" wear-induced clearance, reduced to ~0.001" by removal of one
0.002" brass shim from each of the two rear hold-down plates. The
carriage is about 12" wide along the bed, so this 0.001" could account
for only about 0.001" of the tilt (measured at the end of the 5"
overhang). Only ~0.099" to go.

The second is the cross-slide dovetail (~2" wide), and the third is the
compound dovetail (~1.625" wide). The observed wear (~0.004" in both)
would easily explain the observed deflection, given the leverage from
the overhang plus the 2:1 amplification in each of the 60-degree
dovetails.

And it didn't feel right when I tightened the gibs. The effect on
slideway drag was very gradual as I tightened the gibs; one would expect
the effect on drag to be far more abrupt. This pointed to misshapen
gibs springing under pressure, versus being in pure compression.



BTW -- the squeal might be because the trepanning tool is not
ground to give proper clearance on the curve of the slot.

That also happened, when the groove got deeper, until I ground a little
more off the bit.


[ ... ]

Nope! *I* can't -- because I don't use a GUI-based newsreader.
I can click on the url and get at most a single line of it to paste to
a browser or another window with a command line.

People with GUI-based newsreaders (especially those built into
web browsers) can do so. Frankly, I am glad that I can't, because it
makes it more difficult to accidentally click on a malicious link.

If you are not on Windows, why would this be a problem?

Because I don't depend on them *always* focusing on Windows
systems, just because they are the easiest target. There have been
experimental attacks which used javascript, or java, and I see lots of
information about security holes in the flash plugins (information from
the CERT mailing list). Anything attacking something other than the
basic native machine language can be made to work on other systems.

It's true that everything has vulnerabilities, but as a matter of actual
(versus theoretical) risk, once you leave Windows things get pretty
quiet, and the expense (dollar cost and time cost and lost opportunity
cost) of security soon outweighs the cost of cleaning up the occasional
problem.

I read in one of the Mac magazines that only 10% or 15% of Mac owners
use any kind of add-on anti-virus product, and the unprotected Mac
owners are none the worse for it, and have been for years.

Unix/Linux users have even less to worry about.

By contrast, an unprotected Windows machine on the web will last a few
days at most, and a dialup machine might manage months before getting
caught.


[ ... ]

I have the gibs adjusted so there is much drag, but the cross-slide
backlash is about 0.020", and the compound slide backlash is about
0.006".

O.K.

I figured out how better to adjust things, and got this down to ~0.003".

Good!

I should say how I did this. It turned out to be simple. There is a
black steel collar upon which the dial rotates, the collar being fixed
to the screw shaft with a setscrew. Loosen setscrew. Tighten the cone
nut (or nylock nut) until the screw shaft binds, then back off just
enough that the screw shaft turns freely. Tighten setscrew.

Before doing this, it helps to disassemble, clean, and lubricate the
entire dial assembly, so things can turn freely.



[ ... ]

O.K. But when you are experiencing chatter, you might also try
placing a finger where it can sense motion along the cross slide.

Yep. I tried the same improved adjustment method on the cross slide,
but the backlash remained at ~0.020", so this is probably inherent to
the screw and nut.

Did you ever figure out how much of the 0.070" was the screw versus the
nut? I think I recall you saying that the Acme threads were worn down
to sharp points, which would imply that screw wear was the larger
contributor.

It was about half. Cranking the cross-slide out to near falling
out of the nut reduced the backlash to 0.036".

I just tried this same crank-it-out test on the 5914: the backlash is
0.020" throughout the range, which implies that the bronze nut is the
culprit. And implies that the screw is far newer than the bronze T-nut
it now mates with.

Hmm. The nut is far cheaper than the screw, and very easy to install.
Replacing just the nut might be worthwhile.


[ ... ]

O.K. This produces fewer paths for swarf to get down into the
drawers and the motor/pulley assembly in the pedestals.

Yes. Not that the defense is perfect. I have pulled swarf out of just
about everywhere.

It does tend to get everywhere.

In the shoes is the worst. And chattering tools generate particularly
annoying swarf - millions of sharp little steel needles. Coolant helps
by wetting the whole mess down, keeping it from blowing around in the
shop.

O.K. I don't have problems with the shoes. I wear
oil-resistant steel toed boots, and the legs of my pants come down below
the top of the boots, so it would have to bounce off the floor and come
up to get in. :-) Given some of the things I have dropped, I am glad to
have those steel-toed boots. :-)

And if you want nasty needles, try a horizontal mill with a
conventional milling cutter on steel. :-) I'll take what comes from my
lahte any day. :-)

Someday I'll have the room for a horizontal mill. I keep running into
jobs for which it would be perfect. But it sounds like a perfect
application for copious flood cooling, if only to control the swarf.

Joe Gwinn

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

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

On 2008-05-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

The exception is when the URL is in a quoted message, and so extra quote
mark characters have been inserted.

Or -- when you are using a system which is not configured to do
it, as I am. I *think* that I could configure this newsreader (slrn) to
do it, but I will not.

What's wrong with newsreaders that correctly handle URLs? If one is not
on Windows, there is little danger from URLs.

Little does not translate into *no* danger. :-)

So much of the web wants javascript enabled, or flash, or lots
of other things. I don't trust those, and have them turned off except
for sites which I trust -- and that does not mean that they won't get
cracked and malicious HTML installed.

I like to look at the URL, perhaps run a whois on the domain,
and various other checks before deciding to go to the site. If it is
set up to respond to a click, I could wind up visiting one which I don't
care for because one of my cats hopped into my lap and nudged my hand
thus pressing the mouse button at just the wrong time. (Aside from the
mouse (actually a trackball) falling off the arm of the chair and
bumping the buttons in falling.

So -- the most that a mouse click in my newsreader can do is to
highlight some text and perhaps copy it into the clip buffer. :-) I've
got to bring up another window, and type a command line before I get to
a web site.

Call me paranoid. :-)

Yes. I think that the cost of security provisions have now much
exceeded the cost of cleaning up the occasional problem. Unix and Linux
boxes are pretty much immune to actual attacks seen in the wild.

All computers are vulnerable to attack by a skilled human, so if one is
targeted by name, security is very difficult to achieve. However, if
the threat is automated attack on random computers, avoidance of Windows
pretty much solves the problem.

Said another way, a Mac or Unix/Linux box behind a hardware firewall (or
on dialup) is pretty safe.

Joe Gwinn

On Tue, 06 May 2008 05:08:39 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-05-05, James Waldby wrote:
On Mon, 05 May 2008 00:59:21 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-05-03, James Waldby wrote:
[ ... ]
O.K. But I normally don't have Opera up and running, so I
invoke it by a script "op" which does a cd to a place where I tend to
save things, then invokes opera via the URL which I cut-and-pasted
into the command line -- and the command line sees the newlines as end
of a command line and the start of another, which of course fails to
reach the place desired and then tries to interpret the other two as
separate commands, which also normally fail. :-) So I have to cut and
paste it one line at a time, and surround the whole thing with double
quotes to keep any stray '?', '%' or similar characters with special
meanings to the shell from having those meanings.
...
Add the following near the beginning of the script:
URL="`xclip -o | tr -d '\n'`"

[snip re fetch and compile xclip]

Hmm ... "Reads from standard in, or from one or more files,"

Later in the man page: "xclip can also print the contents of a selection
to standard out with the -o option." Also see last example in man page.

But the script is invoked as:

op URL-goes-here

and when URL occupies three lines, this would still be:

op FIRST-LINE-OF-URL (opera barfs because of incomplete URL)
SECOND-LINE-OF-URL (shell barfs, because it is expecting a new valid
command) THIRD-LINE-OF-URL (shell barfs, because it is expecting a new
valid commnd)

So -- unless you can see a way to drop the cut-and-paste as
standard input for the script, I don't see how this can work.
....

I meant that you'd change the script to invoke without command line
parameters. Get URL from current selection. The current selection
is whatever you most recently copied or cut or xclip -i'd.
For example, when I left drag the mouse cursor over the two lines:
test 1 @ 2 $ 3 % 4
test 5 ? 6 # 7 ! 8
and then execute URL="`xclip -o | tr -d '\n'`"; echo "/$URL/"
bash displays: / test 1 @ 2 $ 3 % 4 test 5 ? 6 # 7 ! 8/

To use URL from command line when given, else use selection:
U=$1
[ "$U" ] || U="`xclip -o | tr -d '\n'`"
firefox "$U"

-jiw

On 2008-05-06, James Waldby wrote:
On Tue, 06 May 2008 05:08:39 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-05-05, James Waldby wrote:

[ ... ]

Add the following near the beginning of the script:
URL="`xclip -o | tr -d '\n'`"

[snip re fetch and compile xclip]

Hmm ... "Reads from standard in, or from one or more files,"

Later in the man page: "xclip can also print the contents of a selection
to standard out with the -o option." Also see last example in man page.

Aha! It was too late, and I was trying to get through my usenet
reading before crashing. I've now tested that feature, and it works.

But the script is invoked as:

op URL-goes-here

and when URL occupies three lines, this would still be:

op FIRST-LINE-OF-URL (opera barfs because of incomplete URL)
SECOND-LINE-OF-URL (shell barfs, because it is expecting a new valid
command) THIRD-LINE-OF-URL (shell barfs, because it is expecting a new
valid command)

So -- unless you can see a way to drop the cut-and-paste as
standard input for the script, I don't see how this can work.
...

I meant that you'd change the script to invoke without command line
parameters. Get URL from current selection. The current selection
is whatever you most recently copied or cut or xclip -i'd.
For example, when I left drag the mouse cursor over the two lines:
test 1 @ 2 $ 3 % 4
test 5 ? 6 # 7 ! 8
and then execute URL="`xclip -o | tr -d '\n'`"; echo "/$URL/"
bash displays: / test 1 @ 2 $ 3 % 4 test 5 ? 6 # 7 ! 8/

O.K. I currently have it set so if there is nothing on the
command line, it fires it up looking at my own home page. I could
instead modify it so if there is nothing on the command line, it uses
xclip(1) instead. That would break less of what I do with it. Perhaps
add another feature so if there is a single '.' as an argument, it still
brings up my home page.

Thanks much,
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 2008-05-06, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-05-05, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

Yep. I wanted a lathe with integral cabinet stand, on the theory that
it would all fit together better.

And you got that. (And got rid of the chatter problem with the
new gib. Congratulations.

Thanks. I've been reflecting on how I came to the conclusion that the
5914 needed new gibs.

The key was the gross tilting of the toolpost, which moved something
like a tenth or even an eighth of an inch, and yet nothing broke (except
for a tool bit now and then).

There is a reason people don't make springs out of cast iron, so the
castings could not be bending enough to explain such large deflections.
So it had to be the joints and/or slideways. The only joints were
firmly bolted (toolpost to slide) or wedged (tool holder to toolpost),
and no relative motion could be felt. And the headstock was firmly
bolted to the bed.

This left the slideways, of which there are three.

The first is between the bed ways and the carriage. This originally had
~0.003" wear-induced clearance, reduced to ~0.001" by removal of one
0.002" brass shim from each of the two rear hold-down plates. The
carriage is about 12" wide along the bed, so this 0.001" could account
for only about 0.001" of the tilt (measured at the end of the 5"
overhang). Only ~0.099" to go.

The second is the cross-slide dovetail (~2" wide), and the third is the
compound dovetail (~1.625" wide). The observed wear (~0.004" in both)
would easily explain the observed deflection, given the leverage from
the overhang plus the 2:1 amplification in each of the 60-degree
dovetails.

And -- your compound has less adjustment range for the gib
because the dovetail itself is shorter, so the compound would show the
problems sooner, given equal wear.

And it didn't feel right when I tightened the gibs. The effect on
slideway drag was very gradual as I tightened the gibs; one would expect
the effect on drag to be far more abrupt. This pointed to misshapen
gibs springing under pressure, versus being in pure compression.

Yep! Good diagnostics.

BTW -- the squeal might be because the trepanning tool is not
ground to give proper clearance on the curve of the slot.

That also happened, when the groove got deeper, until I ground a little
more off the bit.

O.K.

[ ... ]

If you are not on Windows, why would this be a problem?

Because I don't depend on them *always* focusing on Windows
systems, just because they are the easiest target. There have been
experimental attacks which used javascript, or java, and I see lots of
information about security holes in the flash plugins (information from
the CERT mailing list). Anything attacking something other than the
basic native machine language can be made to work on other systems.

It's true that everything has vulnerabilities, but as a matter of actual
(versus theoretical) risk, once you leave Windows things get pretty
quiet, and the expense (dollar cost and time cost and lost opportunity
cost) of security soon outweighs the cost of cleaning up the occasional
problem.

I read in one of the Mac magazines that only 10% or 15% of Mac owners
use any kind of add-on anti-virus product, and the unprotected Mac
owners are none the worse for it, and have been for years.

Unix/Linux users have even less to worry about.

Yes -- though there is a tradeoff to being a user of the most
numerous unix version -- which I think is now Solaris 10. That makes it
the next likeliest target.

By contrast, an unprotected Windows machine on the web will last a few
days at most, and a dialup machine might manage months before getting
caught.

An unpatched Windows box, from first connection to the net in a
college dorm, has an expected mean-time-to-infection significantly less
than the time needed to download the patches via the net -- even with a
fast pipe. This is why at least some colleges (those who care about
security) will not connect a new box to the net until one of their staff
have come around with a DVD or CD containing all the patches and applied
them. This at least slows down the infection rate somewhat. :-)


[ ... ]

I have the gibs adjusted so there is much drag, but the cross-slide
backlash is about 0.020", and the compound slide backlash is about
0.006".

O.K.

I figured out how better to adjust things, and got this down to ~0.003".

Good!

I should say how I did this. It turned out to be simple. There is a
black steel collar upon which the dial rotates, the collar being fixed
to the screw shaft with a setscrew. Loosen setscrew. Tighten the cone
nut (or nylock nut) until the screw shaft binds, then back off just
enough that the screw shaft turns freely. Tighten setscrew.

Oh -- the thrust bearing was loose. On the cross-slide of mine,
the handcrank screws onto the leadscrew and then is locked by a cone
nut which goes into a countersink in the crank (IIRC). It is easy to
get this too tight. But it is also easy to tell that this is the source
of the play by feel. You feel a bit of a "thud" as the bearing play is
taken up, while the backlash in the actual leadscrew/net interface is
less sudden. :-)

Before doing this, it helps to disassemble, clean, and lubricate the
entire dial assembly, so things can turn freely.

Of course.

[ ... ]

Did you ever figure out how much of the 0.070" was the screw versus the
nut? I think I recall you saying that the Acme threads were worn down
to sharp points, which would imply that screw wear was the larger
contributor.

It was about half. Cranking the cross-slide out to near falling
out of the nut reduced the backlash to 0.036".

I just tried this same crank-it-out test on the 5914: the backlash is
0.020" throughout the range, which implies that the bronze nut is the
culprit. And implies that the screw is far newer than the bronze T-nut
it now mates with.

That narrows things down significantly.

Hmm. The nut is far cheaper than the screw, and very easy to install.
Replacing just the nut might be worthwhile.

I think so.

[ ... ]

In the shoes is the worst. And chattering tools generate particularly
annoying swarf - millions of sharp little steel needles. Coolant helps
by wetting the whole mess down, keeping it from blowing around in the
shop.

O.K. I don't have problems with the shoes. I wear
oil-resistant steel toed boots, and the legs of my pants come down below
the top of the boots, so it would have to bounce off the floor and come
up to get in. :-) Given some of the things I have dropped, I am glad to
have those steel-toed boots. :-)

And if you want nasty needles, try a horizontal mill with a
conventional milling cutter on steel. :-) I'll take what comes from my
lathe any day. :-)

Someday I'll have the room for a horizontal mill. I keep running into
jobs for which it would be perfect. But it sounds like a perfect
application for copious flood cooling, if only to control the swarf.

The Nichols horizontal mill takes a lot less space than many,
and (usually) offers a choice between leadscrew or lever feed through a
rack-and-pinion drive for the X-axis feed. And -- there are a pair of
micrometer stops which can be set up to restrict the X-axis travel
rather precisely. Nice for certain forms of production work.

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 2008-05-06, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-05-05, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

Yep. I wanted a lathe with integral cabinet stand, on the theory that
it would all fit together better.

And you got that. (And got rid of the chatter problem with the
new gib. Congratulations.

Thanks. I've been reflecting on how I came to the conclusion that the
5914 needed new gibs.

The key was the gross tilting of the toolpost, which moved something
like a tenth or even an eighth of an inch, and yet nothing broke (except
for a tool bit now and then).

There is a reason people don't make springs out of cast iron, so the
castings could not be bending enough to explain such large deflections.
So it had to be the joints and/or slideways. The only joints were
firmly bolted (toolpost to slide) or wedged (tool holder to toolpost),
and no relative motion could be felt. And the headstock was firmly
bolted to the bed.

This left the slideways, of which there are three.

The first is between the bed ways and the carriage. This originally had
~0.003" wear-induced clearance, reduced to ~0.001" by removal of one
0.002" brass shim from each of the two rear hold-down plates. The
carriage is about 12" wide along the bed, so this 0.001" could account
for only about 0.001" of the tilt (measured at the end of the 5"
overhang). Only ~0.099" to go.

The second is the cross-slide dovetail (~2" wide), and the third is the
compound dovetail (~1.625" wide). The observed wear (~0.004" in both)
would easily explain the observed deflection, given the leverage from
the overhang plus the 2:1 amplification in each of the 60-degree
dovetails.

And -- your compound has less adjustment range for the gib
because the dovetail itself is shorter, so the compound would show the
problems sooner, given equal wear.

It was the narrower dovetail width that matters, more so than the
length. On a narrower dovetail the same amount of wear in thousandths
allows for greater angular motion.


And it didn't feel right when I tightened the gibs. The effect on
slideway drag was very gradual as I tightened the gibs; one would expect
the effect on drag to be far more abrupt. This pointed to misshapen
gibs springing under pressure, versus being in pure compression.

Yep! Good diagnostics.

Ya gotta have a feel for feel.

I did another experiment today, this time cutting 1018 steel with the
grooving tool with the flat nose 0.206" wide held upside down in a
toolholder and with the lathe in reverse, and the backgear engaged. I
can cut a wide groove without drama and in almost total silence (aside
for the noise of the gears), but the tool and toolpost rises visibly
under the strain.

Now this is a very severe test, yielding chips about -0.008" thick by
0.200" wide, and involves very large forces, so the toolbit rising is
not a surprise. One has to push pretty hard before the tool starts to
bite with an audible bump, and it then yields the 0.008" thick chip. If
one maintains the pressure, one can make a very long and curly chip.


[ ... ]

If you are not on Windows, why would this be a problem?

Because I don't depend on them *always* focusing on Windows
systems, just because they are the easiest target. There have been
experimental attacks which used javascript, or java, and I see lots of
information about security holes in the flash plugins (information from
the CERT mailing list). Anything attacking something other than the
basic native machine language can be made to work on other systems.

It's true that everything has vulnerabilities, but as a matter of actual
(versus theoretical) risk, once you leave Windows things get pretty
quiet, and the expense (dollar cost and time cost and lost opportunity
cost) of security soon outweighs the cost of cleaning up the occasional
problem.

I read in one of the Mac magazines that only 10% or 15% of Mac owners
use any kind of add-on anti-virus product, and the unprotected Mac
owners are none the worse for it, and have been for years.

Unix/Linux users have even less to worry about.

Yes -- though there is a tradeoff to being a user of the most
numerous unix version -- which I think is now Solaris 10. That makes it
the next likeliest target.

But it has not happened yet. And while Solaris isn't completely
hack-proof, it's orders of magnitude less vulnerable than Windows.


By contrast, an unprotected Windows machine on the web will last a few
days at most, and a dialup machine might manage months before getting
caught.

An unpatched Windows box, from first connection to the net in a
college dorm, has an expected mean-time-to-infection significantly less
than the time needed to download the patches via the net -- even with a
fast pipe. This is why at least some colleges (those who care about
security) will not connect a new box to the net until one of their staff
have come around with a DVD or CD containing all the patches and applied
them. This at least slows down the infection rate somewhat. :-)

A college dorm has to be some kind of worst case test.

One very large problem in Windows is that one does not have to provide a
password to install most software, while in MacOS and Unix, one does.
This sharply limits the growth rate of viruses as at ever step of the
way, a human is required. This prevention of automation is sufficient
to sharply reduce the prevalence of viruses in non-Windows platforms.

Now, Microsoft is slowly changing Windows so people don't have to run
their software from an administrator account, but this is like turning
the Queen Mary. But it five or ten years it will have been done.


[ ... ]

I have the gibs adjusted so there is much drag, but the cross-slide
backlash is about 0.020", and the compound slide backlash is about
0.006".

O.K.

I figured out how better to adjust things, and got this down to ~0.003".

Good!

I should say how I did this. It turned out to be simple. There is a
black steel collar upon which the dial rotates, the collar being fixed
to the screw shaft with a setscrew. Loosen setscrew. Tighten the cone
nut (or nylock nut) until the screw shaft binds, then back off just
enough that the screw shaft turns freely. Tighten setscrew.

Oh -- the thrust bearing was loose. On the cross-slide of mine,
the handcrank screws onto the leadscrew and then is locked by a cone
nut which goes into a countersink in the crank (IIRC). It is easy to
get this too tight. But it is also easy to tell that this is the source
of the play by feel. You feel a bit of a "thud" as the bearing play is
taken up, while the backlash in the actual leadscrew/net interface is
less sudden. :-)

The hand cranks are woodruff keyed to the screw shafts on the 5914, and
are kept on the screw shaft with a thread and cone nut as well.


Before doing this, it helps to disassemble, clean, and lubricate the
entire dial assembly, so things can turn freely.

Of course.

Mine turned OK albeit with drag, and I worried that people might not
realize how much better it would work after a cleaning, in particular if
one wants to move the dial to a new zero without disturbing things.


[ ... ]

Someday I'll have the room for a horizontal mill. I keep running into
jobs for which it would be perfect. But it sounds like a perfect
application for copious flood cooling, if only to control the swarf.

The Nichols horizontal mill takes a lot less space than many,
and (usually) offers a choice between leadscrew or lever feed through a
rack-and-pinion drive for the X-axis feed. And -- there are a pair of
micrometer stops which can be set up to restrict the X-axis travel
rather precisely. Nice for certain forms of production work.

I've seen pictures, but never met one in person. What do they weigh?


Joe Gwinn

On 2008-05-07, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

And -- your compound has less adjustment range for the gib
because the dovetail itself is shorter, so the compound would show the
problems sooner, given equal wear.

It was the narrower dovetail width that matters, more so than the
length. On a narrower dovetail the same amount of wear in thousandths
allows for greater angular motion.

O.K. But you also probably don't have as much adjustment range
in the tapered gib so you can't tune out as much wear as you could in
the cross-slide.

[ ... ]

I did another experiment today, this time cutting 1018 steel with the
grooving tool with the flat nose 0.206" wide held upside down in a
toolholder and with the lathe in reverse, and the backgear engaged. I
can cut a wide groove without drama and in almost total silence (aside
for the noise of the gears), but the tool and toolpost rises visibly
under the strain.

O.K.

Now this is a very severe test, yielding chips about -0.008" thick by
0.200" wide, and involves very large forces, so the toolbit rising is
not a surprise. One has to push pretty hard before the tool starts to
bite with an audible bump, and it then yields the 0.008" thick chip. If
one maintains the pressure, one can make a very long and curly chip.

Yes -- though the long and curly chip when parting can be a
problem, because it can wedge in the groove and result in a broken
parting tool.

[ ... ]

I read in one of the Mac magazines that only 10% or 15% of Mac owners
use any kind of add-on anti-virus product, and the unprotected Mac
owners are none the worse for it, and have been for years.

Unix/Linux users have even less to worry about.

Yes -- though there is a tradeoff to being a user of the most
numerous unix version -- which I think is now Solaris 10. That makes it
the next likeliest target.

But it has not happened yet. And while Solaris isn't completely
hack-proof, it's orders of magnitude less vulnerable than Windows.

And I've also turned off quite a few things which I don't need
or want. And, at least in unix systems, it is fairly easy to learn how
to turn things off or on.

By contrast, an unprotected Windows machine on the web will last a few
days at most, and a dialup machine might manage months before getting
caught.

An unpatched Windows box, from first connection to the net in a
college dorm, has an expected mean-time-to-infection significantly less
than the time needed to download the patches via the net -- even with a
fast pipe. This is why at least some colleges (those who care about
security) will not connect a new box to the net until one of their staff
have come around with a DVD or CD containing all the patches and applied
them. This at least slows down the infection rate somewhat. :-)

A college dorm has to be some kind of worst case test.

Indeed so. Lots of machines in unskilled hands, tons of
bandwidth, so they can all be attacking each other. :-)

One very large problem in Windows is that one does not have to provide a
password to install most software,

And toss in the "have you forgotten your password? Would you
like to set another?" behavior, and ... :-)

while in MacOS and Unix, one does.
This sharply limits the growth rate of viruses as at ever step of the
way, a human is required. This prevention of automation is sufficient
to sharply reduce the prevalence of viruses in non-Windows platforms.

Indeed so.

Now, Microsoft is slowly changing Windows so people don't have to run
their software from an administrator account, but this is like turning
the Queen Mary. But it five or ten years it will have been done.

If they are still around by then. :-)

[ ... ]

Oh -- the thrust bearing was loose. On the cross-slide of mine,
the handcrank screws onto the leadscrew and then is locked by a cone
nut which goes into a countersink in the crank (IIRC). It is easy to
get this too tight. But it is also easy to tell that this is the source
of the play by feel. You feel a bit of a "thud" as the bearing play is
taken up, while the backlash in the actual leadscrew/net interface is
less sudden. :-)

The hand cranks are woodruff keyed to the screw shafts on the 5914, and
are kept on the screw shaft with a thread and cone nut as well.

I had to go back to the manual to make sure that I had
remembered it properly. It is a threaded collar of fairly small
diameter with a step towards the crank on which the dial slips and
rotates when the thumbscrew is loose. And yes, the collar *does* thread
onto the end of the shaft, with a nut which locks against that, and then
the crank screws on. But there is not the cone nut which I thought that
I remembered.

Before doing this, it helps to disassemble, clean, and lubricate the
entire dial assembly, so things can turn freely.

Of course.

Mine turned OK albeit with drag, and I worried that people might not
realize how much better it would work after a cleaning, in particular if
one wants to move the dial to a new zero without disturbing things.

Indeed -- and the drag for the crank actually helps avoid
disturbing the crank position while re-positioning the dial.

[ ... ]

The Nichols horizontal mill takes a lot less space than many,
and (usually) offers a choice between leadscrew or lever feed through a
rack-and-pinion drive for the X-axis feed. And -- there are a pair of
micrometer stops which can be set up to restrict the X-axis travel
rather precisely. Nice for certain forms of production work.

I've seen pictures, but never met one in person. What do they weigh?

About 1100 pounds. It comes with a gearhead three-phase motor,
so you would need a VFD or a rotary converter to run it. I can't see
swapping in any other motor. Lots of cast iron in the base, the knee,
and the table. the head is mounted to the side of the column via a
dovetail, and there is a lever connected to a rack-and-quadrant gear
arrangement to move the head up and down. There is a lever between the
motor and the head pivoted in the middle of the column, so when the
head goes up, the motor goes down, maintaining a constant spacing and
thus constant belt tension. The really old ones have 1" shafts on both
the motor and the quill, and the pulleys are double groove per speed,
two speeds, and to get the other two speeds, you had to interchange the
motor pulley with the spindle pulley.

The later ones had a single belt instead of double, and five
steps so you had a pretty good range of speeds. I've adapted the later
pulleys to mine -- but I don't have the larger bore for a bigger drawbar
which the newer ones had. I had to make my own mounting ring for the
vertical head. But mine was a *very* old one. Both the horizontal head
and the vertical adaptor use 40-taper NTMB holders and arbors.

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 2008-05-07, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

And -- your compound has less adjustment range for the gib
because the dovetail itself is shorter, so the compound would show the
problems sooner, given equal wear.

It was the narrower dovetail width that matters, more so than the
length. On a narrower dovetail the same amount of wear in thousandths
allows for greater angular motion.

O.K. But you also probably don't have as much adjustment range
in the tapered gib so you can't tune out as much wear as you could in
the cross-slide.

I don't understand. Both gibs are tapered.


Now this is a very severe test, yielding chips about -0.008" thick by
0.200" wide, and involves very large forces, so the toolbit rising is
not a surprise. One has to push pretty hard before the tool starts to
bite with an audible bump, and it then yields the 0.008" thick chip. If
one maintains the pressure, one can make a very long and curly chip.

Yes -- though the long and curly chip when parting can be a
problem, because it can wedge in the groove and result in a broken
parting tool.


But the tool is upsidedown, so that won't happen. Well, not often.


[ ... ]

I read in one of the Mac magazines that only 10% or 15% of Mac owners
use any kind of add-on anti-virus product, and the unprotected Mac
owners are none the worse for it, and have been for years.

Unix/Linux users have even less to worry about.

Yes -- though there is a tradeoff to being a user of the most
numerous unix version -- which I think is now Solaris 10. That makes it
the next likeliest target.

But it has not happened yet. And while Solaris isn't completely
hack-proof, it's orders of magnitude less vulnerable than Windows.

And I've also turned off quite a few things which I don't need
or want. And, at least in unix systems, it is fairly easy to learn how
to turn things off or on.

True enough.


By contrast, an unprotected Windows machine on the web will last a few
days at most, and a dialup machine might manage months before getting
caught.

An unpatched Windows box, from first connection to the net in a
college dorm, has an expected mean-time-to-infection significantly less
than the time needed to download the patches via the net -- even with a
fast pipe. This is why at least some colleges (those who care about
security) will not connect a new box to the net until one of their staff
have come around with a DVD or CD containing all the patches and applied
them. This at least slows down the infection rate somewhat. :-)

A college dorm has to be some kind of worst case test.

Indeed so. Lots of machines in unskilled hands, tons of
bandwidth, so they can all be attacking each other. :-)

And absolutely no common sense about which websites are likely to be a
problem.


One very large problem in Windows is that one does not have to provide a
password to install most software,

And toss in the "have you forgotten your password? Would you
like to set another?" behavior, and ... :-)

while in MacOS and Unix, one does.
This sharply limits the growth rate of viruses as at ever step of the
way, a human is required. This prevention of automation is sufficient
to sharply reduce the prevalence of viruses in non-Windows platforms.

Indeed so.

Now, Microsoft is slowly changing Windows so people don't have to run
their software from an administrator account, but this is like turning
the Queen Mary. But it five or ten years it will have been done.

If they are still around by then. :-)

Oh, they will for sure, It's damn near impossible for a billion dollar
company to fail, even if they try real hard.


[ ... ]

Oh -- the thrust bearing was loose. On the cross-slide of mine,
the handcrank screws onto the leadscrew and then is locked by a cone
nut which goes into a countersink in the crank (IIRC). It is easy to
get this too tight. But it is also easy to tell that this is the source
of the play by feel. You feel a bit of a "thud" as the bearing play is
taken up, while the backlash in the actual leadscrew/net interface is
less sudden. :-)

The hand cranks are woodruff keyed to the screw shafts on the 5914, and
are kept on the screw shaft with a thread and cone nut as well.

I had to go back to the manual to make sure that I had
remembered it properly. It is a threaded collar of fairly small
diameter with a step towards the crank on which the dial slips and
rotates when the thumbscrew is loose. And yes, the collar *does* thread
onto the end of the shaft, with a nut which locks against that, and then
the crank screws on. But there is not the cone nut which I thought that
I remembered.

On the 5914, the collar is not threaded (aside from the setscrew).


Before doing this, it helps to disassemble, clean, and lubricate the
entire dial assembly, so things can turn freely.

Of course.

Mine turned OK albeit with drag, and I worried that people might not
realize how much better it would work after a cleaning, in particular if
one wants to move the dial to a new zero without disturbing things.

Indeed -- and the drag for the crank actually helps avoid
disturbing the crank position while re-positioning the dial.

I found the drag to be a problem.


[ ... ]

The Nichols horizontal mill takes a lot less space than many,
and (usually) offers a choice between leadscrew or lever feed through a
rack-and-pinion drive for the X-axis feed. And -- there are a pair of
micrometer stops which can be set up to restrict the X-axis travel
rather precisely. Nice for certain forms of production work.

I've seen pictures, but never met one in person. What do they weigh?

About 1100 pounds.

That puts it into the same weight class as my Millrite MVI vertical mill
and of course the Clausing 5914. Seems to be a reasonable size for a
home shop. When I was looking for a lathe, some Logans came by, but I
let them pass because they weighed only ~300 pounds. Far too floppy for
my taste.


It comes with a gearhead three-phase motor,
so you would need a VFD or a rotary converter to run it. I can't see
swapping in any other motor. Lots of cast iron in the base, the knee,
and the table. The head is mounted to the side of the column via a
dovetail, and there is a lever connected to a rack-and-quadrant gear
arrangement to move the head up and down. There is a lever between the
motor and the head pivoted in the middle of the column, so when the
head goes up, the motor goes down, maintaining a constant spacing and
thus constant belt tension. The really old ones have 1" shafts on both
the motor and the quill, and the pulleys are double groove per speed,
two speeds, and to get the other two speeds, you had to interchange the
motor pulley with the spindle pulley.

The later ones had a single belt instead of double, and five
steps so you had a pretty good range of speeds. I've adapted the later
pulleys to mine -- but I don't have the larger bore for a bigger drawbar
which the newer ones had. I had to make my own mounting ring for the
vertical head. But mine was a *very* old one. Both the horizontal head
and the vertical adaptor use 40-taper NTMB holders and arbors.

Someday. Space is my issue. I saw a local Nichols horizontal hand mill
go for ~$500 about six months ago. There were few takers.

Joe Gwinn

On 2008-05-08, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

O.K. But you also probably don't have as much adjustment range
in the tapered gib so you can't tune out as much wear as you could in
the cross-slide.

I don't understand. Both gibs are tapered.

With a shorter total dovetail, there is less linear travel
before the gib gets too far off center to give proper support. Assuming
that the taper is along the length rather than the width, which would
require an interesting adjustment system.

Now this is a very severe test, yielding chips about -0.008" thick by
0.200" wide, and involves very large forces, so the toolbit rising is
not a surprise. One has to push pretty hard before the tool starts to
bite with an audible bump, and it then yields the 0.008" thick chip. If
one maintains the pressure, one can make a very long and curly chip.

Yes -- though the long and curly chip when parting can be a
problem, because it can wedge in the groove and result in a broken
parting tool.


But the tool is upsidedown, so that won't happen. Well, not often.

One of the benefits of upside down is that chips tend to fall
out of the cut. But with a long curl, you would have the chip feeding
back cycle after cycle until there was enough to drag into the cutter
from pure edge friction.

[ ... ]

But it has not happened yet. And while Solaris isn't completely
hack-proof, it's orders of magnitude less vulnerable than Windows.

And I've also turned off quite a few things which I don't need
or want. And, at least in unix systems, it is fairly easy to learn how
to turn things off or on.

True enough.

And only a fool says that a system is hack-proof (using the
wrong sense of "hack".) I prefer to call that "cracking", as it has no
constructive target.

[ ... ]

A college dorm has to be some kind of worst case test.

Indeed so. Lots of machines in unskilled hands, tons of
bandwidth, so they can all be attacking each other. :-)

And absolutely no common sense about which websites are likely to be a
problem.

There is that, too. :-)

[ ... ]

Now, Microsoft is slowly changing Windows so people don't have to run
their software from an administrator account, but this is like turning
the Queen Mary. But it five or ten years it will have been done.

If they are still around by then. :-)

Oh, they will for sure, It's damn near impossible for a billion dollar
company to fail, even if they try real hard.

They appear to be trying "real hard". :-)

[ ... ]

The hand cranks are woodruff keyed to the screw shafts on the 5914, and
are kept on the screw shaft with a thread and cone nut as well.

I had to go back to the manual to make sure that I had
remembered it properly. It is a threaded collar of fairly small
diameter with a step towards the crank on which the dial slips and
rotates when the thumbscrew is loose. And yes, the collar *does* thread
onto the end of the shaft, with a nut which locks against that, and then
the crank screws on. But there is not the cone nut which I thought that
I remembered.

On the 5914, the collar is not threaded (aside from the setscrew).

O.K. A definite difference. You've seen the 5418 design in the
manual which you have.

[ ... ]

Mine turned OK albeit with drag, and I worried that people might not
realize how much better it would work after a cleaning, in particular if
one wants to move the dial to a new zero without disturbing things.

Indeed -- and the drag for the crank actually helps avoid
disturbing the crank position while re-positioning the dial.

I found the drag to be a problem.

Well ... it needs to be just right. Too loose and vibration
will change it -- even with a balanced crank. Too tight, and it is easy
to overshoot when you get past the friction limit. Just right and you
can steady the crank with one hand as you loosen the thumbscrew, rotate
the outer dial, and re-tighten the thumbscrew.

[ ... ]

The Nichols horizontal mill takes a lot less space than many,
and (usually) offers a choice between leadscrew or lever feed through a
rack-and-pinion drive for the X-axis feed. And -- there are a pair of
micrometer stops which can be set up to restrict the X-axis travel
rather precisely. Nice for certain forms of production work.

I've seen pictures, but never met one in person. What do they weigh?

About 1100 pounds.

That puts it into the same weight class as my Millrite MVI vertical mill
and of course the Clausing 5914. Seems to be a reasonable size for a
home shop. When I was looking for a lathe, some Logans came by, but I
let them pass because they weighed only ~300 pounds. Far too floppy for
my taste.

:-)

There are some larger Logans, I think. We've got an expert on
the newsgroup -- Scott Logan.

[ ... ]

Someday. Space is my issue. I saw a local Nichols horizontal hand mill
go for ~$500 about six months ago. There were few takers.

Mine was $200.00 on eBay -- and cost more to ship down to the DC
area from the Boston area. :-)

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 2008-05-08, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

O.K. But you also probably don't have as much adjustment range
in the tapered gib so you can't tune out as much wear as you could in
the cross-slide.

I don't understand. Both gibs are tapered.

With a shorter total dovetail, there is less linear travel
before the gib gets too far off center to give proper support. Assuming
that the taper is along the length rather than the width, which would
require an interesting adjustment system.

Well, in theory yes, but the gib adjustment range is the same for both
dovetails. The taper is indeed along the length, and is the same (5/32"
per foot) in both gibs.


Now this is a very severe test, yielding chips about -0.008" thick by
0.200" wide, and involves very large forces, so the toolbit rising is
not a surprise. One has to push pretty hard before the tool starts to
bite with an audible bump, and it then yields the 0.008" thick chip. If
one maintains the pressure, one can make a very long and curly chip.

Yes -- though the long and curly chip when parting can be a
problem, because it can wedge in the groove and result in a broken
parting tool.


But the tool is upsidedown, so that won't happen. Well, not often.

One of the benefits of upside down is that chips tend to fall
out of the cut. But with a long curl, you would have the chip feeding
back cycle after cycle until there was enough to drag into the cutter
from pure edge friction.

The tool tip is slightly angled, and so the chip usually curls into a
helix, versus a tight jellyroll.


[ ... ]

But it has not happened yet. And while Solaris isn't completely
hack-proof, it's orders of magnitude less vulnerable than Windows.

And I've also turned off quite a few things which I don't need
or want. And, at least in unix systems, it is fairly easy to learn how
to turn things off or on.

True enough.

And only a fool says that a system is hack-proof (using the
wrong sense of "hack".) I prefer to call that "cracking", as it has no
constructive target.

I don't think the hack/crack distinction has any traction in the
language at large. White hat versus black hat seems to be how the
distinction is made.


[ ... ]

Now, Microsoft is slowly changing Windows so people don't have to run
their software from an administrator account, but this is like turning
the Queen Mary. But it five or ten years it will have been done.

If they are still around by then. :-)

Oh, they will for sure, It's damn near impossible for a billion dollar
company to fail, even if they try real hard.

They appear to be trying "real hard". :-)

Well, they have always been good at understanding their business. After
all, they managed to achieve 90% market share selling products that were
far from "best in their class" technically.


[ ... ]

The hand cranks are woodruff keyed to the screw shafts on the 5914, and
are kept on the screw shaft with a thread and cone nut as well.

I had to go back to the manual to make sure that I had
remembered it properly. It is a threaded collar of fairly small
diameter with a step towards the crank on which the dial slips and
rotates when the thumbscrew is loose. And yes, the collar *does* thread
onto the end of the shaft, with a nut which locks against that, and then
the crank screws on. But there is not the cone nut which I thought that
I remembered.

On the 5914, the collar is not threaded (aside from the setscrew).

O.K. A definite difference. You've seen the 5418 design in the
manual which you have.

Right. The mechanics are quite different.


[ ... ]

Mine turned OK albeit with drag, and I worried that people might not
realize how much better it would work after a cleaning, in particular if
one wants to move the dial to a new zero without disturbing things.

Indeed -- and the drag for the crank actually helps avoid
disturbing the crank position while re-positioning the dial.

I found the drag to be a problem.

Well ... it needs to be just right. Too loose and vibration
will change it -- even with a balanced crank. Too tight, and it is easy
to overshoot when you get past the friction limit. Just right and you
can steady the crank with one hand as you loosen the thumbscrew, rotate
the outer dial, and re-tighten the thumbscrew.

Thumbscrew? Mine came with hex socket cap machine screws riding on
brass slugs. Hmm. The 5914 manual shows knurled thumbscrews, also
riding on brass slugs. So both thumbscrews were lost and replaced. The
cap screws are clumsy to use.


[ ... ]

The Nichols horizontal mill takes a lot less space than many,
and (usually) offers a choice between leadscrew or lever feed through a
rack-and-pinion drive for the X-axis feed. And -- there are a pair of
micrometer stops which can be set up to restrict the X-axis travel
rather precisely. Nice for certain forms of production work.

I've seen pictures, but never met one in person. What do they weigh?

About 1100 pounds.

That puts it into the same weight class as my Millrite MVI vertical mill
and of course the Clausing 5914. Seems to be a reasonable size for a
home shop. When I was looking for a lathe, some Logans came by, but I
let them pass because they weighed only ~300 pounds. Far too floppy for
my taste.

:-)

There are some larger Logans, I think. We've got an expert on
the newsgroup -- Scott Logan.

Yes, there are suitable 1000# Logan lathes, but none came onto the local
market while I was looking. Logans were a definite possibility because
Logan Actuator still exists and still supports their old iron.


[ ... ]

Someday. Space is my issue. I saw a local Nichols horizontal hand mill
go for ~$500 about six months ago. There were few takers.

Mine was $200.00 on eBay -- and cost more to ship down to the DC
area from the Boston area. :-)

That's a bit of a drive. How much did the shipping cost, and what year
was this? Perhaps I should have considered non-local sources.

Joe Gwinn

On 2008-05-08, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-05-08, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

With a shorter total dovetail, there is less linear travel
before the gib gets too far off center to give proper support. Assuming
that the taper is along the length rather than the width, which would
require an interesting adjustment system.

Well, in theory yes, but the gib adjustment range is the same for both
dovetails. The taper is indeed along the length, and is the same (5/32"
per foot) in both gibs.

O.K. So they didn't give an extra adjustment range to the
cross-slide, even though they could have.

[ ... ]

But the tool is upsidedown, so that won't happen. Well, not often.

One of the benefits of upside down is that chips tend to fall
out of the cut. But with a long curl, you would have the chip feeding
back cycle after cycle until there was enough to drag into the cutter
from pure edge friction.

The tool tip is slightly angled, and so the chip usually curls into a
helix, versus a tight jellyroll.

O.K. And if the tip has a shallow 'V' in the top, it will make
the chip narrower than the slot, to reduce the chances of catching.

[ ... ]

And only a fool says that a system is hack-proof (using the
wrong sense of "hack".) I prefer to call that "cracking", as it has no
constructive target.

I don't think the hack/crack distinction has any traction in the
language at large. White hat versus black hat seems to be how the
distinction is made.

Yes -- it is a lost cause -- though it *used* to be a term of
praise.

[ ... ]

Now, Microsoft is slowly changing Windows so people don't have to run
their software from an administrator account, but this is like turning
the Queen Mary. But it five or ten years it will have been done.

If they are still around by then. :-)

Oh, they will for sure, It's damn near impossible for a billion dollar
company to fail, even if they try real hard.

They appear to be trying "real hard". :-)

Well, they have always been good at understanding their business. After
all, they managed to achieve 90% market share selling products that were
far from "best in their class" technically.

:-)

[ ... ]

[ ... ]

I found the drag to be a problem.

Well ... it needs to be just right. Too loose and vibration
will change it -- even with a balanced crank. Too tight, and it is easy
to overshoot when you get past the friction limit. Just right and you
can steady the crank with one hand as you loosen the thumbscrew, rotate
the outer dial, and re-tighten the thumbscrew.

Thumbscrew? Mine came with hex socket cap machine screws riding on
brass slugs. Hmm. The 5914 manual shows knurled thumbscrews, also
riding on brass slugs. So both thumbscrews were lost and replaced. The
cap screws are clumsy to use.

Mine had one thumbscrew and one cap screw, so I ordered a
thumbscrew along with the leadscrew and T-nut for the cross-slide.

[ ... ]

There are some larger Logans, I think. We've got an expert on
the newsgroup -- Scott Logan.

Yes, there are suitable 1000# Logan lathes, but none came onto the local
market while I was looking. Logans were a definite possibility because
Logan Actuator still exists and still supports their old iron.

Yes. I guess that more of the Logan lathes were sold in the
hobbist size range, so we don't see the larger ones coming up on the
used market very often.

[ ... Nichols mill ... ]

Someday. Space is my issue. I saw a local Nichols horizontal hand mill
go for ~$500 about six months ago. There were few takers.

Mine was $200.00 on eBay -- and cost more to ship down to the DC
area from the Boston area. :-)

That's a bit of a drive. How much did the shipping cost, and what year
was this? Perhaps I should have considered non-local sources.

I don't remember for sure, but I think about $240.00. And this
was back around 2000 I think.

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 2008-05-08, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-05-08, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

But the tool is upsidedown, so that won't happen. Well, not often.

One of the benefits of upside down is that chips tend to fall
out of the cut. But with a long curl, you would have the chip feeding
back cycle after cycle until there was enough to drag into the cutter
from pure edge friction.

The tool tip is slightly angled, and so the chip usually curls into a
helix, versus a tight jellyroll.

O.K. And if the tip has a shallow 'V' in the top, it will make
the chip narrower than the slot, to reduce the chances of catching.

Yes, although I have not had that problem if I can prevent self-feeding
and overly thick chips.


I've been looking for a cutoff tool that can be used in front, but with
reverse rotation. The BXA7R doesn't actually work for this, instead
being intended for use on the back side of a forward rotating workpiece.
What is needed is the mirror image of a BXA-7, versus an upside-down
BXA-7.

I've also been looking at the Aloris holder for SGIH blades, BXA-77.
However, it isn't clear that one can use upsidedown blades in this
holder, as the bevels on the blade are not symmetrical.

Perhaps the best solution is to install a cutoff tool bar with
rectangular shank upsidedown in a regular tool holder.


[ ... ]

I found the drag to be a problem.

Well ... it needs to be just right. Too loose and vibration
will change it -- even with a balanced crank. Too tight, and it is easy
to overshoot when you get past the friction limit. Just right and you
can steady the crank with one hand as you loosen the thumbscrew, rotate
the outer dial, and re-tighten the thumbscrew.

Thumbscrew? Mine came with hex socket cap machine screws riding on
brass slugs. Hmm. The 5914 manual shows knurled thumbscrews, also
riding on brass slugs. So both thumbscrews were lost and replaced. The
cap screws are clumsy to use.

Mine had one thumbscrew and one cap screw, so I ordered a
thumbscrew along with the leadscrew and T-nut for the cross-slide.

I may do the same. I'm close to ordering a T-nut for the cross-slide
screw.


[ ... ]

There are some larger Logans, I think. We've got an expert on
the newsgroup -- Scott Logan.

Yes, there are suitable 1000# Logan lathes, but none came onto the local
market while I was looking. Logans were a definite possibility because
Logan Actuator still exists and still supports their old iron.

Yes. I guess that more of the Logan lathes were sold in the
hobbist size range, so we don't see the larger ones coming up on the
used market very often.

Actually, one did go by, at Gold Machinery in Rhode Island, but before I
was ready to buy anything. So did a Clausing 5914 for that matter.

Gold's reputation around Boston is that they are expensive, but have
good stuff. http://goldmachinery.com/machinery/index.htm


[ ... Nichols mill ... ]

Someday. Space is my issue. I saw a local Nichols horizontal hand mill
go for ~$500 about six months ago. There were few takers.

Mine was $200.00 on eBay -- and cost more to ship down to the DC
area from the Boston area. :-)

That's a bit of a drive. How much did the shipping cost, and what year
was this? Perhaps I should have considered non-local sources.

I don't remember for sure, but I think about $240.00. And this
was back around 2000 I think.

Even with eight years of inflation, not such a bad price. One problem I
had with getting stuff from Gold Machinery was the distance. Perhaps it
was not as big a problem as feared.

Joe Gwinn

I had to fold the "References: " header again. It got too long for
jove to accept on a single line. :-) Then I had to create my own
} Message-Id: because that was where jove was snipping things off
when following-up.

Perhaps we should start trimming the end of the References
header every reply if we're going to keep this long a thread going. Of
course, it will mess up threading, but at least it won't hit the 1024
byte line length limit on jove -- or force me to move to emacs. :-)

On 2008-05-09, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

O.K. And if the tip has a shallow 'V' in the top, it will make
the chip narrower than the slot, to reduce the chances of catching.

Yes, although I have not had that problem if I can prevent self-feeding
and overly thick chips.

O.K.

I've been looking for a cutoff tool that can be used in front, but with
reverse rotation. The BXA7R doesn't actually work for this, instead
being intended for use on the back side of a forward rotating workpiece.
What is needed is the mirror image of a BXA-7, versus an upside-down
BXA-7.

So -- make your own using the design of the Aloris one. The
main trick is getting the dovetail width and depth right. The trick for
measuring the width is to measure between two pieces of drill rod pushed
into the 'V's.

I've also been looking at the Aloris holder for SGIH blades, BXA-77.
However, it isn't clear that one can use upsidedown blades in this
holder, as the bevels on the blade are not symmetrical.

Perhaps the best solution is to install a cutoff tool bar with
rectangular shank upsidedown in a regular tool holder.

Perhaps. Or make something which you can clamp in the regular
holder but which will hold the blade of your choice upside down.

[ ... ]

Thumbscrew? Mine came with hex socket cap machine screws riding on
brass slugs. Hmm. The 5914 manual shows knurled thumbscrews, also
riding on brass slugs. So both thumbscrews were lost and replaced. The
cap screws are clumsy to use.

Mine had one thumbscrew and one cap screw, so I ordered a
thumbscrew along with the leadscrew and T-nut for the cross-slide.

I may do the same. I'm close to ordering a T-nut for the cross-slide
screw.

They were pretty cheap when I got mine -- at least by comparison
with everything else which I ordered. (Oh yes -- the felts for the
carriage-to-ways interface were pretty cheap, too.

[ ... ]

Yes. I guess that more of the Logan lathes were sold in the
hobbist size range, so we don't see the larger ones coming up on the
used market very often.

Actually, one did go by, at Gold Machinery in Rhode Island, but before I
was ready to buy anything. So did a Clausing 5914 for that matter.

Gold's reputation around Boston is that they are expensive, but have
good stuff. http://goldmachinery.com/machinery/index.htm

O.K. I'm retired too long to have the money to buy more large
tools, so that will simply be filed in memory somewhere in case I win a
*real* lottery instead of all the fake ones I get e-mails about. :-)

[ ... ]

Mine was $200.00 on eBay -- and cost more to ship down to the DC
area from the Boston area. :-)

That's a bit of a drive. How much did the shipping cost, and what year
was this? Perhaps I should have considered non-local sources.

I don't remember for sure, but I think about $240.00. And this
was back around 2000 I think.

Even with eight years of inflation, not such a bad price. One problem I
had with getting stuff from Gold Machinery was the distance. Perhaps it
was not as big a problem as feared.

Perhaps. But the prices will probably change on a day-to-day
basis with the fuel costs.

Good Luck,
DoN.

In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

I had to fold the "References: " header again. It got too long for
jove to accept on a single line. :-) Then I had to create my own
} Message-Id: because that was where jove was snipping things off
when following-up.

Perhaps we should start trimming the end of the References
header every reply if we're going to keep this long a thread going. Of
course, it will mess up threading, but at least it won't hit the 1024
byte line length limit on jove -- or force me to move to emacs. :-)

I never delved into how the threading mechanism works, and the nesting
gets pretty deep and sometimes complex, but perhaps there is a clever
way to prune.

Perhaps it's best to start a daughter thread of the same title.


On 2008-05-09, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

O.K. And if the tip has a shallow 'V' in the top, it will make
the chip narrower than the slot, to reduce the chances of catching.

Yes, although I have not had that problem if I can prevent self-feeding
and overly thick chips.

O.K.

Most of the stuff I would cut off are not that large, so a narrower
blade is also useful, and it reduces the force causing all the problems.


I've been looking for a cutoff tool that can be used in front, but with
reverse rotation. The BXA7R doesn't actually work for this, instead
being intended for use on the back side of a forward rotating workpiece.
What is needed is the mirror image of a BXA-7, versus an upside-down
BXA-7.

So -- make your own using the design of the Aloris one. The
main trick is getting the dovetail width and depth right. The trick for
measuring the width is to measure between two pieces of drill rod pushed
into the 'V's.

Hmm. The BXA-7R would be a lot of trouble to duplicate in full, but it
is certainly practical to duplicate the BXA dovetail, allowing me to
make special BXA toolholders.


I've also been looking at the Aloris holder for SGIH blades, BXA-77.
However, it isn't clear that one can use upsidedown blades in this
holder, as the bevels on the blade are not symmetrical.

Perhaps the best solution is to install a cutoff tool bar with
rectangular shank upsidedown in a regular tool holder.

Perhaps. Or make something which you can clamp in the regular
holder but which will hold the blade of your choice upside down.

I received a somewhat beat up Hardinge C31 cutoff blade holder with the
lathe. The C31 is designed to be clamped in the slot of a toolholder in
their CHNC line. Google for "HARDINGE CHNC TOOLING.PDF".

Nor would it be difficult to make one's own mirror image C31. The only
problem with this approach is the large overhang, 3.5" versus 2" from
the center of the 5/8-20 bolt clamping the toolpost to the slide.

One could make a mirror-image C31 with a BXA dovetail, but the two
designs are pulling in different directions. The C31 has a very deep
horizontal slit which closes slightly when two hex socket cap screws are
tightened, thus bringing the top and bottom of the blade groove
together, clamping the blade. The bending caused by clamping would tend
to distort the dovetail, unless a second slit were provided. The second
slit would orphan part of the dovetail. This needs some design analysis.

I think I'll also troll in the catalogs of BXA-compatible toolpost
vendors for ideas and/or products.


[ ... ]

Thumbscrew? Mine came with hex socket cap machine screws riding on
brass slugs. Hmm. The 5914 manual shows knurled thumbscrews, also
riding on brass slugs. So both thumbscrews were lost and replaced.
The
cap screws are clumsy to use.

Mine had one thumbscrew and one cap screw, so I ordered a
thumbscrew along with the leadscrew and T-nut for the cross-slide.

I may do the same. I'm close to ordering a T-nut for the cross-slide
screw.

They were pretty cheap when I got mine -- at least by comparison
with everything else which I ordered. (Oh yes -- the felts for the
carriage-to-ways interface were pretty cheap, too.

Felts. The left front carriage wiper always leaves a black dirty-oil
trail in the bed way. Solvent cleaning didn't help, although continuous
flushing by over-oiling with Vactra #2 is helping.

I should see if the black is coming from the carriage versus the felt,
as I have not yet disassembled and cleaned this part of the lathe.


[ ... ]

Yes. I guess that more of the Logan lathes were sold in the
hobbist size range, so we don't see the larger ones coming up on the
used market very often.

Actually, one did go by, at Gold Machinery in Rhode Island, but before I
was ready to buy anything. So did a Clausing 5914 for that matter.

Gold's reputation around Boston is that they are expensive, but have
good stuff. http://goldmachinery.com/machinery/index.htm

O.K. I'm retired too long to have the money to buy more large
tools, so that will simply be filed in memory somewhere in case I win a
*real* lottery instead of all the fake ones I get e-mails about. :-)

Who knows. Maybe that nice man from West Africa will arrive with the
$20 million he promised. Maybe.

More seriously, I'm wondering if the more expensive machine might prove
cheaper, as I will probably end up spending the difference on new parts.
Although it has certainly been educational.


[ ... ]

Mine was $200.00 on eBay -- and cost more to ship down to the DC
area from the Boston area. :-)

That's a bit of a drive. How much did the shipping cost, and what year
was this? Perhaps I should have considered non-local sources.

I don't remember for sure, but I think about $240.00. And this
was back around 2000 I think.

Even with eight years of inflation, not such a bad price. One problem I
had with getting stuff from Gold Machinery was the distance. Perhaps it
was not as big a problem as feared.

Perhaps. But the prices will probably change on a day-to-day
basis with the fuel costs.

True enough, but probably not the biggest cost.

Joe Gwinn