Absolutely LOVE that you lower the volume when doing the actual machining operations. So many machining videos feel like they want to give me ear damage. Here it feels like you give us workshop hearing protection like if we were with you in the workshop :D
@@StefanGotteswinter Yes we notice Stefan. Thankyou. Its appreciated. 🙂 But as my background is sound editing, I just can't resist spending as much if not more time in sound editing on my videos (see my last machining video on my channel if interested).
I love it when you bust myths in your videos. It’s so bizarre how people get stuck on certain methods and have no idea why they do it but insist it must be done.
Dear Mr. Gotteswinter, I really appreciate your practical approach to everything and your generosity to share your knowledge and experience. Thank you. Long time subscriber
@@minigpracing3068 But many of us do, and that is the important thing! I find it wonderful that these people have a platform to share the knowledge they have acquired. Consider in the past a master may have passed their knowledge to a very few people, now many may benefit!
Wow, I knew it was practical to drill with the carriage but some of these tips really blew my mind. Had never even considered how practical it would be for use with taps!
I only just did this myself for the first time recently. I have built a multipurpose spindle, optionally powered, which I can fit to the toolpost of several of my lathes, mainly for drilling PCDs (with the lathe spindle locked) and wobble broaching (mainly for internal hex holes), but I recently had to tap a large number of M3 threads in gnarly work-hardened stainless, and so I used the spindle (which has an integral ER32 collet holder) as a passive tap holder in my sensitive little instrument lathe, whose carriage moves wonderfully freely. I provided sensitive and quick-releasing torque restraint by hand-holding the collet nut. This worked really well and I broke no taps. (The lathe has a nice progressive clutch on the spindle drive)
Stefan mentions disengaging the carriage feed to break chips. On some industrial lathes the feed rod, where it emerges from the gearbox, has a tripping and self-resetting overload clutch which can be easily adjusted and which is cleverly designed not to suffer undue wear from being called into play. In such cases you can break chips regularly without disengaging the feed, by momentarily applying a bit more (reverse) load to the carriage handwheel than the clutch will currently overcome. This is very quick and convenient in comparison with disengaging and reengaging, and arguably is less inclined to wear out the mechanism for doing so.
Gentle giant bends over a small lathe and drills 0,2 mm holes with only eye side adjustment. I, too short for my weight, climbing on bigger lathes, learned a lot. Thank you Stephan!
Very impressed you get to put your < .5mm drill bits back in their case. I don't think I've ever got to return such bits to the holder ... rather the stub into the bin so some great tips here.
I love this, there are so many positives using this method, this has made me rethink the drilling operations on my lathe, thankyou for your continual practical logic, fantastic!
I really like it when you and @robrenz cover the same concepts. Often you will each emphasize different aspects which provides me with a more complete understanding.
I love doing this on my CNC conversion. Basically I indicate it in with a coaxial indicator in the chuck that I got for my mill. I indicate it into the bore of an ER16 collet thats in the tool holder. It works amazingly and is surprisingly precise. At least for my needs. I never use the tailstock other than for turning between centres.
If you are in the U.S., Craigslist can be a great source for machinist tools if you use it well. You can set up a listing search filter such that when someone posts a listing for a lathe you will get an email alert. That's how I got my 9x20 Central Machinery lathe 4 years ago for only $200 (including loads of tooling). Between that and a minimill I've setup a fairly decent hobby shop.
This is brilliant! An additional feature of this method is that the carriage has a much longer range of movement than a tailstock. Mine is theoretically 75mm but the chuck tang drops this to ~60mm. Obviously, the carriage moves further than 60mm and so long drills can use a single pass.
And I can now ditch my (expensive) Akon tap- and die holder set which goes into the tailstock. Even last year I spent money for an MK3 adapter as I only had the MK4 for a previous lathe. Mr. Gotteswinter, you are a life saver!
Just an idea for someone without a digital readout on their lathe that might be interested in doing this. I've seen arrangements that hook the tailstock body to the carriage. This allows the carriage to drag the tailstock. There may be another option. On a lathe that on might typically find in a home shop. 9"/225mm up to 12"/300. This also depends on just how the compound is mounted to the Cross Slide. If the lathe has tee slots in the Cross Slide it makes things easier. 1) Remove the compound. 2) Build the device that you want to hold drills etc in. But do not final bore the holder 3) Position the Cross Slide in the center on its travel. Mount the Drill Holding Device to the Cross Slide. Mount this so that the device is pretty well centered to the Spindle. 4) Now drill and ream one or two holes for locating pins through the Drill Holder, the Cross Slide and into the Carraige. 5) Install pins. These could be straight dowel pins, tapered dowel pins or straight shear pins. Shear pins might be a good option as to provide a failure point if you have a crash. 6) Now finish bore the drill holding device so that when the locating pins are in place the the unit is installed on the lathe with the locating pins in place 7) When not in use place short dummy pins in the Cross Slide portion of the holes to prevent chips etc from getting into the sliding surfaces. On industrial machines I used to run there was another option on the tailstock. The hand wheel was mounted on a two speed planetary drive that allowed fast and fine feed. The fine feed made it possible to use larger drills without having to use cheater bars or have arms like a gorilla's.
I don't have DROs on any of my lathes but I do have 50mm travel Dial indicators (100 mm on my big lathe) which read z axis movement relative to a datum anvil repositionable along the bed, on the far side of the carriage from the headstock. When Stefan talks of the benefits of a DRO for following the progress of a drill when using the carriage, I can't help thinking that an analogue dial is even more convenient and restful, as for 95 percent of the time are processing the smoothly changing angle of a pair of needles, only looking at the graduations and numbers when you need to, right at the end, when in any case you are creeping up to a size. With a DRO it's a much bigger cognitive burden, processing rapidly changing (and hence flashing) digits in base 10, increasing or decreasing, and converting them to an analogue "sense" of the drill location in relation to the ultimate depth. With difficult ultra workhardening materials like Inconel and Nitronic, it's really important to know just when the drill is about to reengage, as you have change the rate of advance so as to "hit" the work with just enough speed and follow-through to be instantly cutting but not too aggressively (which would might chip the cutting edge), and yet be ready to increase that force considerably as the drill starts to work and has to be fed at the optimum rate to avoid strain hardening, which latter would instantly take the edge off and probably weld the drill down the hole. Anything which reduces the cognitive burden is a big help, as you can't always be on your A game. I do have a genuine Trav-a-Dial I plan to fit to my big lathe, which I think would be even more convenient, as it has unlimited travel, and that is a long lathe. Once again, an analogue dial. I think the perfect solution would actually be an electronic three-axis DRO (tailstock or compound being the third) with a high resolution screen and (as a selectable option and conceivably not on all axes) analogue dial readouts, like the analog clock displays which are optional on a mobile phone -- but much handier on a DRO, because of the rapidly changing positions being monitored, in comparison with the slow and steady pace of time. It occurred to me that a better analogy would be with altimeters particularly those used by jumpers. wingsuit maniacs, etc, where the readings can change very rapidly and the jumper has other demands on their cognitive abilities. Sure enough, there is a very sophisticated digital altimeter with an analog display which has recently been released, the Larsen & Brusgaard Altitrack. A really Rolls-Royce implementation would process the sum of two scales for the tailstock, to track the position of the tooltip, regardless of unclamping and moving the tailstock casting.
@@Gottenhimfella Having used both DROs and Trav-a-Dials on manual lathes I really prefer the later. It is much easier to track just when you are coming up to "zero". Other options I've used to set bed stops on lathes is an inside micrometer. Or solid stacks of gage blocks
Thank you for expanding this topic. Now that I have seen the micro-drilling demonstration, I am more than convinced to give carriage drilling a try. ATB from Massachusetts.
I just got a MT3 quick change holder for a project I was doing for work (I work at a lab and all machining requiring more than a drill press is done at my house machine shop). I was working on something where I needed to do 1/4" deep drilling on 20 pieces of PTFE. I made a few prototypes using the tail stock and got fed up with that quickly. Glad I can run the drill on the carriage now.
Love the amount of "meh" for sub-par methods :) Also I am about to fit a DRO to the lathe and didn't like putting the scale in front for workpiece clearance issues or behind for tail-stock clearance thinking it affects the stickout of the quill BUT if I drilled with the carriage.... Keep up the good work
@Mark I have a small one of those as a second op lathe. It is still very useful for prototyping and small series etc, quick to set up. I find I use it a lot. Essentially a Schaublin 102 with a turret head and F38 collets. These have frequently been on the market for cheap, i got mine with lots of tooling for about 1000$, great quality machine for the money.
@@erikisberg3886 I bet there are a lot of capstan lathes on the market due to the penetration of affordable CNC machines into small and medium sized shops. At the school where I was teaching we briefly had a medium sized machine with lots of tooling but it was sold on to a guy who just wanted a few parts off it. I just realised that I have a BXA tool holder with a bore big enough to take a 10mm keyless chuck so I think I will have a go at trying Stefan's technique although I don't have a solid toolpost. Repeatability might be an issue but for the occasional use it would be great.
Another delightful video. A few times Stefan you dropped the comment that drilling was a kind of roughing or bulk material process. Once I got that idea in my head I was able to confront my fear of carriage drilling. I'm already set up with Aloris style tooling and I just invested in a split cotter style boring bar holder with a straight shank to JT on my drill chuck. I was puzzled about how to use it without DRO though. I was faced with some operation requiring deep holes and necessity was the mother of invention. I just eyeballed the center drill (sorry I use them for spotting 🙂) and with a couple of tweaks had the drill lined up by eye good enough for a roughing operation. I just couldn't face all that cranking on the tail stock to clear the chips. So again you and Robin do great service to those of us that only aspire to be better with our wiggly old home shop lathes & gear. I recall you had fitted a rack and pinion drive to your tailstock on an earlier lathe. I can see some advantages to that idea also for some kinds of production runs. Thanks!
I have on occasion used the carriage to drill with using a power drill in a holder so it is like live tooling on my lathe. It saves a lot of time versus setting back up on the mill to do the holes and with a 40”chuck I get good rotational accuracy just using degree markings.
Excellent video, explanation and demonstration. I’ll be testing carriage drilling for sure, but as importantly I really think I am going to remove my compound and make a solid post mounting block. Thanks again.
Great video. Not that this would be a problem with your setup. One place I worked the guys that ran some larger machines than yours. On 19" and 21" Leblond lathes. They would run larger drills with the power feed like this. Now what drives the carriage is the pinion gear on the rack mounted to the underside of the ways. They would either bend the pinion's shaft or strip the teeth on the rack (Or usually both) by the loads of large drills. But they were usually drilling with larger than 1.50" diameter drills to make this happen in tougher materials.
Great instruction video Stephan! I've been contemplating adding this feature to my Clausing lathe. My carriage has a light feel and I like the idea of not having to reposition my carriage and cross slide especially running multiple parts... Going to purchase a morse taper Aloris holder for my tool post and use the dro feature you demonstrated. Great trouble shooting explaining in the video! Thanks for your time and sharing Stephan! 👍😎✌️
I was just about to comment and realized that Kezyka said pretty much the same thing...which is..that Emco makes less noise then my powered toothbrush! Man o man those are nice machines. This was a super informative video Stefan. I absolutely love what I learn while watching your content.
Excellent tutorial and reasoning on the pro's on carriage drilling. During my apprenticeship, one of the lathes I used, the lathe tailstock was so large I wasn't strong enough to slide it on the bed, there was a short lifting strap which hooked over the tool post to pull it towards the chuck, pushing it back was done by using the carriage. There was a Dean Smith & Grace lathe, that had a cross slide Morse taper holder, cleverly the was a stop on the carriage, that this was pushed against and locked, always on centre line. Great content and video, thanks for sharing. Best regards form the UK.
I'm so glad you pointed out that center drills are a different tool for a different job. It always drives me nuts when people spot with a center drill, it completely goes against the point of spot drilling!
This is how I prefer to drill. Not only because when I bought my lathe and it didn't have a tailstock. But that helped force me into it and now that I've done it, it's so much nicer most of the time. Getting the chuck dialed in isn't any more difficult than most other precision operations on a lathe IMO.
I just this week had to drill some MD filled Nylon to 63mm x 250mm deep. Using the carriage was the only viable way, given rapid peck drilling and clearing is required to prevent melting the Nylon. The lathe I was using doesn't have a DRO, so to keep track of depth progress I use a small pot magnet with a thin piece of plastic glued to the face. I just stick it to the lathe way and let the carriage push the magnet along as the depth increases. When I retract the drill (or boring bar for that matter) the magnet stays puts and acts as a tell tale. Using that method I can use the rapids on the carriage to retract and return to work without fear of a crash. On my smaller lathe that has a DRO, I use a needle bearing inner ring in the chuck and a ground dowel pin in the drill chuck along with the 1/2 function on the DRO. Very quick and no indicator involved.
Great video, picked up many good tips! Been using my multifx with a drillchuck and an ER16 collet holder similar to this for many years in my Weiler Condor, a slightly larger lathe. I usually have a lever feed in the tail stock and it is fairly cumbersome to change to the original screw feed. For drilling grabby materials like plastics and brass the carriage method really saves the day. I am a bit concerned about running larger drills than the lathe likes though. Straight thread in feed is the way to go, has been doing it that way for a long time despite other opinions. but perhaps on older crappy lathes angled infeed made more sense. Started using core drills after I saw it on Your channel, works really great! For me the lever feed works well down to sub mm drills though. For really small drills I made a small pin vise on a ground shaft that I just feed with finger pressure. Works really well because the fingers feel both the torque and feed pressure nicely. It seems to me that a single lip D bit centerdrill is preferable for small drills. Would be interesting to hear others experience on this. I also recommend the plastic squeeze bottles with blunt syringe tips, they really work well, I use them for everything. Denaturerad ethanol is good for machining aluminum and is not to bad for the health compared to the number of beers You may ingest anyway (within limits of course...). Big advantage is that the surface after machining is essentially oil free. I glue a lot of Al parts with heat curing epoxy and this saves a lot of prep work compared to cutting fluids.
I made a similar tool holder for my multifix, but rather than taking a boring bar or Morse taper, it's bored 0.75in so I can use er16 collets on tormach TTS holders. It's wonderful to change tools and maintain offsets when doing a small batch of parts. I really like that 3 edge spot drill, crazy small! :) thanks for sharing!
Excellent video !. Using a sliding dieholder in place of a drill chuck on the multifix is another way of not having to drag the tailstock up and down !. I suggested this application on a forum I used to go on here in the UK and was literally laughed at .....
Sliding tapholders are similarly brilliant. I made a sliding quill which plugs into the morse taper of several of my tailstocks, about 300mm linear travel, with a 1" Jacobs Super Ball Bearing chuck at one end and a gokart steering wheel at the other. The spindle is free to turn, restrained by the operator. The wheel is big enough that it is relatively easy to hand hold for tapping M16 with a spiral fluted tap in mild steel, or (using serial taps) in tool steel or stainless, but it is delicate enough to use down to about M5. I've never broken a tap even using it from the MT5 tailstock of my biggest lathe. Both the feed and the torque are under full time sensitive (fingertip) operator control. When I have multiple workpieces to tap, when reversing the spindle to back out I often also spin the wheel backwards by hand to improve throughput -- as with a planetary drive tapping head, but minus the complexity.
Stefan, you just keep costing me money! After seeing this I had to buy a new Rohm chuck an adapter for a 3/4" 5C collet AND a 5C collet holder for my QCTP. You're making it difficult for a retired guy!!! lol Keep it up!
Stefan, thanks for the presentation. Totally agree with the threading using 90 degree feed. There is a minor advantage on using the compound for feeding since the compound "remembers" the last cut depth. With 90 degree feed one has to make a mental note on current cut depth. I would be very careful when tapping smaller threads with carriage feed metod.. M8 is probably not a problem but when the tap size gets smaller, the tap just cannot drag the carriage with it so some other solution might be needed. If one has a small and affordable eastern world made lathe then chances are that the tailstock quill has a very short stroke. When I had mine, that stroke was about 40 millimetres. This meant that drilling with tailstock involved a lot of moving the whole tailstock around. With carriage feed even the smallest lathes have enough "strioke" to be able to drill with ease.
I tap down to M2 with this method, the carriage on the Super11 is not exactly hard to move :-D On larger lathes it will be different. Yes, you have to memorize the last depth when threading like that, but I never found that to be a nuisance - Especially with a DRO :)
WRT tapping small threads: You can just set up the lathe as though you were single-point threading that size, and then use the carriage feed. It'll move at exactly the right rate for the tap, since the tap has the same pitch as you just set it to move at! No issue with it being unable to pull the carriage along and breaking the tap. When that becomes necessary depends on how hard it is to move the carriage on your lathe. But it's a lathe carriage, it had damn well better be able to cut accurate threads when the change gears/gearbox are set correctly.
That's correct. You can set up a "feed rate" that is actually the thread "pitch" of the tapped thread. With this setup I would have a hard time to remember to act properly when threading the tap out of the hole. You probably would need to disengage the feed and then somehow manipulate the tap out of the hole without damage. This is because there is always a big backslash in feed gears which causes the carriage to get out of thread sync when run the opposite direction.
@@FinnoUgricMachining I would unchuck the tap and remove it by hand. Once it's loose probably hold with fingers and reverse spindle, IMHO. Good point! 👍😎✌️
Thank you for the timely video Stefan. I am just around the corner from buying a carriage drill for my Aloris set up. I may simply use a boring bar holder as well. Food for thought. Cheers.
We use an Aloris QC with a 5C collet holder to do this. WAY better than drilling with the tailstock except very large drills like 1.5" and up. We cut short tapers all the time so a compound is necessary.
Hi Stefan - do you dowel your Multifix to the solid toolpost to prevent it rotating, or just rely on friction? I was considering using a dowel, but unsure how to accurately drill the dowel hole down through the Multifix.
I did use the multifix body as a drill guide 😂 Mounted the Multifix to the solud toolpost, aligned it, took the entire solud toolpost off, to the mill drilled and reamed trough the multifix.
Any lathe can be a "chucker" lathe if you ignore the tailstock. And if you set up an independent carriage motor (eg Clough42's "electronic leadscrew") you can get close to having a Hardinge HC (though probably not as precise/accurate unless you're starting with a similarly nice lathe). As for tapping, you can also set up the lathe for threading at the thread pitch of your tap and power feed. Preferably with a machine tap of course. More useful if your carriage has a lot of drag.
You are just sensational........I have been puting it off for some time now, BUT, I am going to start the compound replacement tomorrow.....thanks for the inspiration........and the 20 hours work.....haaaahaaaaaa
Really interesting ideas. I am getting rid of my compound slide tomorrow. Using the superb instrument (the human eye) to detect the centre is something you might think an instrument would do better - but the eye does it better.
I quickly built an adapter for a keyless chuck to fit into a quick change tool post holder for my lathe. It is very good - the regular feed of the carriage makes a much better hole than doing it by hand with the tailstock, and stops snatching pulling out the morse taper etc. You have also got the depth control using the DRO, or in my case you can set the penetration depth and the carriage reverses direction when it has reached that depth. Thanks for the idea. The drill size is limited to 13mm but I may think about an adapter for larger drill sizes.
All great points... The thing that has me considering changing to this method of drilling is that I have come to rely on using a similar DRO on my lathe and don't have feedback from my tailstock.. Another highly annoying thing to me about using the tail stock for drilling is the very limited amount of travel my particular tailstock has, so deep holes are a lot more work having to play a game of relaying between moving the screw in and out as well as moving the tailstock itself in closer as I drill. When I need to control the depth of the hole I end up doing cheesy things like marking the drill bit itself.
Excellent demonstration with the pcb drills -I'm definitely going to try this with an ER11 parallel chuck/spindle in a boring bar holder (I must remember to order a slab of steel big enough to make a monolithic rigid toolpost too)
Cast iron is, I think, the goto material for a solid toolpost since it absorbs vibration a bit better than steel. Solid carbide would be even better...
@@robertsneddon731 carbide might exceed the price of my entire lathe! Cast iron seems expensive compared to steel in the size range I need, but may well be worth it [edit: in terms of ease of milling], cheers👍
On one of my lathes I some time ago acquired some #2 Morse taper holders (Dixon style) and as I do not have a DRO, I made a removable distance rod (like an inside mic, but of a fixed length) which lets me quickly and reliably set the crossslide in the correct position to bring the drill chuck central. Naturally I have to set the compound to 0 deg, but that's where it normally resides on that lathe, because the tailstock casting is nicely arranged not to interfere with the handwheel of the compound, unlike several of my smaller lathes. Some lathes do not have very strong keepers to hold the saddle down against the ways, and in such cases it would not be advisable to use big drills from the carriage, due to the high thrust load and high line of action, combined to provide a considerably higher moment in the vertical midplane, in comparison with the usual roughing cuts with a RH tool. Towing the tailstock should be OK, though, provided the towing attachment (and hence line of action) is as low as practicable, close to the line of reaction which is the rack. But the tailstock will probably need the clamping arrangements re-engineered if the tailstock was not specifically designed for drilling with the clamp loosened. (Some DS&G lathes were so intended, and I'm sure there will be others) The ideal arrangement is box ways rather than prismatic for this particular service, but my only lathes with box ways do not have a feed shaft, so the leadscrew would have to provide the reaction, which is not ideal. I'm thinking of fitting a separate pinion with a star wheel handle on one of these lathes (similar to the cranks on very large lathes) with its own pinion engaging the existing carriage feed rack. I would mainly use this to move the entire tailstock for deep hole drilling, where it gets tiresome winding the tailstock handwheel, despite (in this case) it using a 3 start thread.
I agree with all Your points, set a limit to the drill size/force for drilling with the feed for the particular lathe. A solution to help spinning the tail wheel I used once is to machine a heavier adapter or or a new heavier larger tail wheel so it can be flicked and spinn freely. Worked fairly well. I also saw a video on Paul Brodies channel about this recently. One of my lathes has a 10 mm rod with 2 clamps arranged so it can be used to reset the cross slide to center quickly. (My compound is kept 0 normally). In my experience it is surprisingly easy to center a drill well by feel though. For larger drills, looking at equal size ship spirals works well.
My biggest lathe is temporarily missing its tailstock as I am hard chroming the barrel preparatory to lapping the casting to return it to like-new performance. A few jobs have come in requiring holes to be drilled up to 32mm, and I have resorted to 1/2" shank drills held in a conventional lathe toolholder in the Dixon style toolholders, some of which have a full length V machined into the face the tool sits on, for holding boring bars. Naturally I use a heavy packer on top of the shank (along which I have machined another V) rather than having the clamp setscrew tips digging into the shank. Because the drills all have the same shank size and position it's actually a reasonably nice workflow, but of course I have to use finer increments to achieve a big hole than if i could do the usual "taper shank drill in tailstock" progression. Being a big lathe, it's no hardship pushing a fairly big drill with the carriage feed.
Just rewatching this for a little inspiration. Any reason you wouldn't use an ER Collet chuck in the tool holder on the smaller drills and would you generally get lower runout?
Many thanks for sharing this info. I was wondering. Do you have or do you know of a video comparing spot drills and center drills and their usage? I was fascinated by your little pyramid spot drill.
If you still have a compound on your lathe you can chuck up a gauge pin in the drill chuck and use a collet or the lathe chuck to clamp on the other end for quickly re-aligning the compound after changing it.
I wonder if you could drill a hole in a piece of round bar using the tail stock, then use a piece of precision steel to locate the hole in the chuck. I think it would work pretty well the first time, but would need to be indicated if your alignment gets out of wack in the future.
The pcb drill looks canted to one side (left) on the video, is that parallax error from the lens? Beautifully sharp 10mm drill, perfect even ribbons coming off of both flutes.
I have found with small drills and peck drilling, the hole diameter enlarges towards the hole opening. I’m guessing due to drill chuck run out or just the motion of dragging the bit tip and flutes in and out. I’m talking like a 0.004” enlargement in a 1” deep hole, pecked a dozen times or so with a 0.0625” drill (1/16”).
Absolutely LOVE that you lower the volume when doing the actual machining operations. So many machining videos feel like they want to give me ear damage. Here it feels like you give us workshop hearing protection like if we were with you in the workshop :D
I love when that is noticed :-)
Its a significant part of editing and takes time, but I dont like to get my ears blown out either :-D
@@StefanGotteswinter Yes we notice Stefan. Thankyou. Its appreciated. 🙂 But as my background is sound editing, I just can't resist spending as much if not more time in sound editing on my videos (see my last machining video on my channel if interested).
I thought you just had a very quiet lathe 😊
@@StefanGotteswinter Definitely appreciate.
Thanks for the information, I learn a lot from your channel.
@@machineshopatthebottomofth3213 me too 😂😂
I love it when you bust myths in your videos. It’s so bizarre how people get stuck on certain methods and have no idea why they do it but insist it must be done.
Dear Mr. Gotteswinter, I really appreciate your practical approach to everything and your generosity to share your knowledge and experience. Thank you. Long time subscriber
I'm not sure if everyone appreciates the quality of the knowledge given back to the world.
@@minigpracing3068 i sure do
@@minigpracing3068 But many of us do, and that is the important thing! I find it wonderful that these people have a platform to share the knowledge they have acquired. Consider in the past a master may have passed their knowledge to a very few people, now many may benefit!
Wow, I knew it was practical to drill with the carriage but some of these tips really blew my mind.
Had never even considered how practical it would be for use with taps!
I only just did this myself for the first time recently. I have built a multipurpose spindle, optionally powered, which I can fit to the toolpost of several of my lathes, mainly for drilling PCDs (with the lathe spindle locked) and wobble broaching (mainly for internal hex holes), but I recently had to tap a large number of M3 threads in gnarly work-hardened stainless, and so I used the spindle (which has an integral ER32 collet holder) as a passive tap holder in my sensitive little instrument lathe, whose carriage moves wonderfully freely. I provided sensitive and quick-releasing torque restraint by hand-holding the collet nut. This worked really well and I broke no taps. (The lathe has a nice progressive clutch on the spindle drive)
27:12 I've really come to appreciate your filming skills as much as your machining skills. Thanks for the ideas as always
Stefan mentions disengaging the carriage feed to break chips. On some industrial lathes the feed rod, where it emerges from the gearbox, has a tripping and self-resetting overload clutch which can be easily adjusted and which is cleverly designed not to suffer undue wear from being called into play. In such cases you can break chips regularly without disengaging the feed, by momentarily applying a bit more (reverse) load to the carriage handwheel than the clutch will currently overcome. This is very quick and convenient in comparison with disengaging and reengaging, and arguably is less inclined to wear out the mechanism for doing so.
Thanks for the mention Stefan and I agree on every point you mentioned :)
ATB Robin
Thank you Robin :-)
Gentle giant bends over a small lathe and drills 0,2 mm holes with only eye side adjustment. I, too short for my weight, climbing on bigger lathes, learned a lot. Thank you Stephan!
Your english skills are starting to match your own workshop skills, gratulliere. There is much wisdom you have to convey. Thanks
This is one of my favourite videos in the whole wide world :-) I watch it often, especially if I'm feeling a bit glum. Thank you Stefan.
Very impressed you get to put your < .5mm drill bits back in their case. I don't think I've ever got to return such bits to the holder ... rather the stub into the bin so some great tips here.
And here I am having used center drills all these years... never old enough to learn!
I love this, there are so many positives using this method, this has made me rethink the drilling operations on my lathe, thankyou for your continual practical logic, fantastic!
I'll second that sentiment
I really like it when you and @robrenz cover the same concepts. Often you will each emphasize different aspects which provides me with a more complete understanding.
I love doing this on my CNC conversion. Basically I indicate it in with a coaxial indicator in the chuck that I got for my mill. I indicate it into the bore of an ER16 collet thats in the tool holder. It works amazingly and is surprisingly precise. At least for my needs. I never use the tailstock other than for turning between centres.
I like this as much for the rebelliousness of it as for the technical strengths!
I don't even own a lathe, but I'm sitting here thinking how much easier doing this would make my life If I had one. Now I want a lathe. Thanks Stefan.
If you are in the U.S., Craigslist can be a great source for machinist tools if you use it well. You can set up a listing search filter such that when someone posts a listing for a lathe you will get an email alert. That's how I got my 9x20 Central Machinery lathe 4 years ago for only $200 (including loads of tooling). Between that and a minimill I've setup a fairly decent hobby shop.
spectacular as always, particularly the tiny hole drilling. Very flexible setup.
A flexible setup for a solid result! 😀
This is brilliant! An additional feature of this method is that the carriage has a much longer range of movement than a tailstock. Mine is theoretically 75mm but the chuck tang drops this to ~60mm. Obviously, the carriage moves further than 60mm and so long drills can use a single pass.
And I can now ditch my (expensive) Akon tap- and die holder set which goes into the tailstock. Even last year I spent money for an MK3 adapter as I only had the MK4 for a previous lathe. Mr. Gotteswinter, you are a life saver!
Just an idea for someone without a digital readout on their lathe that might be interested in doing this. I've seen arrangements that hook the tailstock body to the carriage. This allows the carriage to drag the tailstock. There may be another option. On a lathe that on might typically find in a home shop. 9"/225mm up to 12"/300. This also depends on just how the compound is mounted to the Cross Slide. If the lathe has tee slots in the Cross Slide it makes things easier.
1) Remove the compound.
2) Build the device that you want to hold drills etc in. But do not final bore the holder
3) Position the Cross Slide in the center on its travel. Mount the Drill Holding Device to the Cross Slide. Mount this so that the device is pretty well centered to the Spindle.
4) Now drill and ream one or two holes for locating pins through the Drill Holder, the Cross Slide and into the Carraige.
5) Install pins. These could be straight dowel pins, tapered dowel pins or straight shear pins. Shear pins might be a good option as to provide a failure point if you have a crash.
6) Now finish bore the drill holding device so that when the locating pins are in place the the unit is installed on the lathe with the locating pins in place
7) When not in use place short dummy pins in the Cross Slide portion of the holes to prevent chips etc from getting into the sliding surfaces.
On industrial machines I used to run there was another option on the tailstock. The hand wheel was mounted on a two speed planetary drive that allowed fast and fine feed. The fine feed made it possible to use larger drills without having to use cheater bars or have arms like a gorilla's.
I don't have DROs on any of my lathes but I do have 50mm travel Dial indicators (100 mm on my big lathe) which read z axis movement relative to a datum anvil repositionable along the bed, on the far side of the carriage from the headstock. When Stefan talks of the benefits of a DRO for following the progress of a drill when using the carriage, I can't help thinking that an analogue dial is even more convenient and restful, as for 95 percent of the time are processing the smoothly changing angle of a pair of needles, only looking at the graduations and numbers when you need to, right at the end, when in any case you are creeping up to a size. With a DRO it's a much bigger cognitive burden, processing rapidly changing (and hence flashing) digits in base 10, increasing or decreasing, and converting them to an analogue "sense" of the drill location in relation to the ultimate depth.
With difficult ultra workhardening materials like Inconel and Nitronic, it's really important to know just when the drill is about to reengage, as you have change the rate of advance so as to "hit" the work with just enough speed and follow-through to be instantly cutting but not too aggressively (which would might chip the cutting edge), and yet be ready to increase that force considerably as the drill starts to work and has to be fed at the optimum rate to avoid strain hardening, which latter would instantly take the edge off and probably weld the drill down the hole. Anything which reduces the cognitive burden is a big help, as you can't always be on your A game.
I do have a genuine Trav-a-Dial I plan to fit to my big lathe, which I think would be even more convenient, as it has unlimited travel, and that is a long lathe. Once again, an analogue dial.
I think the perfect solution would actually be an electronic three-axis DRO (tailstock or compound being the third) with a high resolution screen and (as a selectable option and conceivably not on all axes) analogue dial readouts, like the analog clock displays which are optional on a mobile phone -- but much handier on a DRO, because of the rapidly changing positions being monitored, in comparison with the slow and steady pace of time.
It occurred to me that a better analogy would be with altimeters particularly those used by jumpers. wingsuit maniacs, etc, where the readings can change very rapidly and the jumper has other demands on their cognitive abilities. Sure enough, there is a very sophisticated digital altimeter with an analog display which has recently been released, the Larsen & Brusgaard Altitrack.
A really Rolls-Royce implementation would process the sum of two scales for the tailstock, to track the position of the tooltip, regardless of unclamping and moving the tailstock casting.
@@Gottenhimfella
Having used both DROs and Trav-a-Dials on manual lathes I really prefer the later. It is much easier to track just when you are coming up to "zero". Other options I've used to set bed stops on lathes is an inside micrometer. Or solid stacks of gage blocks
Thank you for expanding this topic. Now that I have seen the micro-drilling demonstration, I am more than convinced to give carriage drilling a try. ATB from Massachusetts.
I just got a MT3 quick change holder for a project I was doing for work (I work at a lab and all machining requiring more than a drill press is done at my house machine shop). I was working on something where I needed to do 1/4" deep drilling on 20 pieces of PTFE. I made a few prototypes using the tail stock and got fed up with that quickly. Glad I can run the drill on the carriage now.
Love the amount of "meh" for sub-par methods :)
Also I am about to fit a DRO to the lathe and didn't like putting the scale in front for workpiece clearance issues or behind for tail-stock clearance thinking it affects the stickout of the quill BUT if I drilled with the carriage....
Keep up the good work
Great video 👍I think the most important thing in this tutorial tells us "Gravity" is always present.
Wonderful content Stefan. Thank you.
Brings to mind the old pre-cnc capstan lathes with multiple drill chucks in the rotating capstan head.
@Mark I have a small one of those as a second op lathe. It is still very useful for prototyping and small series etc, quick to set up. I find I use it a lot. Essentially a Schaublin 102 with a turret head and F38 collets. These have frequently been on the market for cheap, i got mine with lots of tooling for about 1000$, great quality machine for the money.
@@erikisberg3886 I bet there are a lot of capstan lathes on the market due to the penetration of affordable CNC machines into small and medium sized shops. At the school where I was teaching we briefly had a medium sized machine with lots of tooling but it was sold on to a guy who just wanted a few parts off it. I just realised that I have a BXA tool holder with a bore big enough to take a 10mm keyless chuck so I think I will have a go at trying Stefan's technique although I don't have a solid toolpost. Repeatability might be an issue but for the occasional use it would be great.
Another delightful video.
A few times Stefan you dropped the comment that drilling was a kind of roughing or bulk material process.
Once I got that idea in my head I was able to confront my fear of carriage drilling. I'm already set up with Aloris style tooling and I just invested in a split cotter style boring bar holder with a straight shank to JT on my drill chuck.
I was puzzled about how to use it without DRO though. I was faced with some operation requiring deep holes and necessity was the mother of invention. I just eyeballed the center drill (sorry I use them for spotting 🙂) and with a couple of tweaks had the drill lined up by eye good enough for a roughing operation. I just couldn't face all that cranking on the tail stock to clear the chips.
So again you and Robin do great service to those of us that only aspire to be better with our wiggly old home shop lathes & gear.
I recall you had fitted a rack and pinion drive to your tailstock on an earlier lathe. I can see some advantages to that idea also for some kinds of production runs.
Thanks!
That was a real game-changer for me. Thanks!
I have on occasion used the carriage to drill with using a power drill in a holder so it is like live tooling on my lathe. It saves a lot of time versus setting back up on the mill to do the holes and with a 40”chuck I get good rotational accuracy just using degree markings.
This was a very instructive and useful video. I especially liked the sequence with drilling with small drills.
Excellent video, explanation and demonstration. I’ll be testing carriage drilling for sure, but as importantly I really think I am going to remove my compound and make a solid post mounting block. Thanks again.
Great video. Not that this would be a problem with your setup. One place I worked the guys that ran some larger machines than yours. On 19" and 21" Leblond lathes. They would run larger drills with the power feed like this. Now what drives the carriage is the pinion gear on the rack mounted to the underside of the ways. They would either bend the pinion's shaft or strip the teeth on the rack (Or usually both) by the loads of large drills. But they were usually drilling with larger than 1.50" diameter drills to make this happen in tougher materials.
Great instruction video Stephan! I've been contemplating adding this feature to my Clausing lathe. My carriage has a light feel and I like the idea of not having to reposition my carriage and cross slide especially running multiple parts... Going to purchase a morse taper Aloris holder for my tool post and use the dro feature you demonstrated. Great trouble shooting explaining in the video! Thanks for your time and sharing Stephan! 👍😎✌️
I'm revisiting this video to find the "if you did that in my shop i'd fire you" comment :)
Might have gone lost ;)
@@StefanGotteswinter Sad! I had a clever retort for him! :). (Diplomatic, of course...)
we all are haha
An interesting and thought provoking video. Looking forward to adding something similar to my Myford Super Seven. 👏👏👍😀
I was just about to comment and realized that Kezyka said pretty much the same thing...which is..that Emco makes less noise then my powered toothbrush! Man o man those are nice machines. This was a super informative video Stefan. I absolutely love what I learn while watching your content.
Excellent tutorial and reasoning on the pro's on carriage drilling. During my apprenticeship, one of the lathes I used, the lathe tailstock was so large I wasn't strong enough to slide it on the bed, there was a short lifting strap which hooked over the tool post to pull it towards the chuck, pushing it back was done by using the carriage.
There was a Dean Smith & Grace lathe, that had a cross slide Morse taper holder, cleverly the was a stop on the carriage, that this was pushed against and locked, always on centre line.
Great content and video, thanks for sharing.
Best regards form the UK.
I'm so glad you pointed out that center drills are a different tool for a different job. It always drives me nuts when people spot with a center drill, it completely goes against the point of spot drilling!
I like when people snap off the end of a center drill and try to get it out again. Comedy gold :)
Enjoyed!!!…excellent video production/discussion/demonstration…..great lessons
yes I do it with sbha toolholder combination qcth you can working so flexibility on the lathe
This is how I prefer to drill. Not only because when I bought my lathe and it didn't have a tailstock. But that helped force me into it and now that I've done it, it's so much nicer most of the time. Getting the chuck dialed in isn't any more difficult than most other precision operations on a lathe IMO.
Excellent demonstration and discussion. Thanks.
Love the rage on aluminium swirls at the end. Great video, thanks
I just this week had to drill some MD filled Nylon to 63mm x 250mm deep. Using the carriage was the only viable way, given rapid peck drilling and clearing is required to prevent melting the Nylon.
The lathe I was using doesn't have a DRO, so to keep track of depth progress I use a small pot magnet with a thin piece of plastic glued to the face. I just stick it to the lathe way and let the carriage push the magnet along as the depth increases. When I retract the drill (or boring bar for that matter) the magnet stays puts and acts as a tell tale. Using that method I can use the rapids on the carriage to retract and return to work without fear of a crash.
On my smaller lathe that has a DRO, I use a needle bearing inner ring in the chuck and a ground dowel pin in the drill chuck along with the 1/2 function on the DRO. Very quick and no indicator involved.
Morning, Stefan! This clearly is the "This Old Lathe" channel :)
Walking through the step by step process on the touchpad is next level shit, thank you!
Very cool video, as always. Danke Stefan
Get rid of the tailstock and the cross slide, and have a quick, accurate and versatile setup. I like it. Always thx for the lessons Stefan.
Great video, picked up many good tips!
Been using my multifx with a drillchuck and an ER16 collet holder similar to this for many years in my Weiler Condor, a slightly larger lathe. I usually have a lever feed in the tail stock and it is fairly cumbersome to change to the original screw feed. For drilling grabby materials like plastics and brass the carriage method really saves the day. I am a bit concerned about running larger drills than the lathe likes though. Straight thread in feed is the way to go, has been doing it that way for a long time despite other opinions. but perhaps on older crappy lathes angled infeed made more sense.
Started using core drills after I saw it on Your channel, works really great!
For me the lever feed works well down to sub mm drills though. For really small drills I made a small pin vise on a ground shaft that I just feed with finger pressure. Works really well because the fingers feel both the torque and feed pressure nicely. It seems to me that a single lip D bit centerdrill is preferable for small drills. Would be interesting to hear others experience on this.
I also recommend the plastic squeeze bottles with blunt syringe tips, they really work well, I use them for everything. Denaturerad ethanol is good for machining aluminum and is not to bad for the health compared to the number of beers You may ingest anyway (within limits of course...). Big advantage is that the surface after machining is essentially oil free. I glue a lot of Al parts with heat curing epoxy and this saves a lot of prep work compared to cutting fluids.
I made a similar tool holder for my multifix, but rather than taking a boring bar or Morse taper, it's bored 0.75in so I can use er16 collets on tormach TTS holders.
It's wonderful to change tools and maintain offsets when doing a small batch of parts.
I really like that 3 edge spot drill, crazy small! :) thanks for sharing!
Aw yes finally ive been waiting for this one this is awesome. It's got German precision all over it. Love it! Thanks so much Stefan
Excellent video !. Using a sliding dieholder in place of a drill chuck on the multifix is another way of not having to drag the tailstock up and down !. I suggested this application on a forum I used to go on here in the UK and was literally laughed at .....
HA! I forgot to show that - I have a sliding Die holder that goes in the boring bar holder, for exactly what you describe there. Works brilliant.
Sliding tapholders are similarly brilliant. I made a sliding quill which plugs into the morse taper of several of my tailstocks, about 300mm linear travel, with a 1" Jacobs Super Ball Bearing chuck at one end and a gokart steering wheel at the other. The spindle is free to turn, restrained by the operator. The wheel is big enough that it is relatively easy to hand hold for tapping M16 with a spiral fluted tap in mild steel, or (using serial taps) in tool steel or stainless, but it is delicate enough to use down to about M5. I've never broken a tap even using it from the MT5 tailstock of my biggest lathe. Both the feed and the torque are under full time sensitive (fingertip) operator control. When I have multiple workpieces to tap, when reversing the spindle to back out I often also spin the wheel backwards by hand to improve throughput -- as with a planetary drive tapping head, but minus the complexity.
Thanks, great video . Have been drilling with a lever operated lathe carriage so your tips and advice most welcome and useful to me
Cheers👍
Stefan, you just keep costing me money! After seeing this I had to buy a new Rohm chuck an adapter for a 3/4" 5C collet AND a 5C collet holder for my QCTP. You're making it difficult for a retired guy!!! lol Keep it up!
Stefan, thanks for the presentation.
Totally agree with the threading using 90 degree feed. There is a minor advantage on using the compound for feeding since the compound "remembers" the last cut depth. With 90 degree feed one has to make a mental note on current cut depth.
I would be very careful when tapping smaller threads with carriage feed metod.. M8 is probably not a problem but when the tap size gets smaller, the tap just cannot drag the carriage with it so some other solution might be needed.
If one has a small and affordable eastern world made lathe then chances are that the tailstock quill has a very short stroke. When I had mine, that stroke was about 40 millimetres. This meant that drilling with tailstock involved a lot of moving the whole tailstock around. With carriage feed even the smallest lathes have enough "strioke" to be able to drill with ease.
I tap down to M2 with this method, the carriage on the Super11 is not exactly hard to move :-D
On larger lathes it will be different.
Yes, you have to memorize the last depth when threading like that, but I never found that to be a nuisance - Especially with a DRO :)
WRT tapping small threads: You can just set up the lathe as though you were single-point threading that size, and then use the carriage feed. It'll move at exactly the right rate for the tap, since the tap has the same pitch as you just set it to move at! No issue with it being unable to pull the carriage along and breaking the tap.
When that becomes necessary depends on how hard it is to move the carriage on your lathe. But it's a lathe carriage, it had damn well better be able to cut accurate threads when the change gears/gearbox are set correctly.
That's correct. You can set up a "feed rate" that is actually the thread "pitch" of the tapped thread.
With this setup I would have a hard time to remember to act properly when threading the tap out of the hole.
You probably would need to disengage the feed and then somehow manipulate the tap out of the hole without damage.
This is because there is always a big backslash in feed gears which causes the carriage to get out of thread sync when run the opposite direction.
@@FinnoUgricMachining I would unchuck the tap and remove it by hand. Once it's loose probably hold with fingers and reverse spindle, IMHO. Good point! 👍😎✌️
Excellent as always. Thanks for a fantastic channel.
Thanks Stefan for another great video very informative and very well presented
Thank you for the timely video Stefan. I am just around the corner from buying a carriage drill for my Aloris set up. I may simply use a boring bar holder as well. Food for thought. Cheers.
We use an Aloris QC with a 5C collet holder to do this. WAY better than drilling with the tailstock except very large drills like 1.5" and up. We cut short tapers all the time so a compound is necessary.
Lovely! I have used those tiny drills in a 2.5m tall milling machine. Not a lot of feel but absolutely doable at modest RPM with patience.
Worked manual lathe in the 1960's with attachment for saddle drilling. Pushed 2" Dia drill thro work piece. We had to get things done to make bonus.
Another great video. Interesting and informative. Thanks!
Stefan, thank you🙏. You’ve definitely converted me. 👍👍😎👍👍
Excellent tutorial! Thank you for the great content!
Hi Stefan - do you dowel your Multifix to the solid toolpost to prevent it rotating, or just rely on friction? I was considering using a dowel, but unsure how to accurately drill the dowel hole down through the Multifix.
Supposedly you can use the multifix body itself as a drill guide. (Never tried it)
I did use the multifix body as a drill guide 😂
Mounted the Multifix to the solud toolpost, aligned it, took the entire solud toolpost off, to the mill drilled and reamed trough the multifix.
@@StefanGotteswinter Thanks Stefan - great advice. I think I will do the same.
Thank you for this. Enjoyed! Thanks, -Tom
Any lathe can be a "chucker" lathe if you ignore the tailstock. And if you set up an independent carriage motor (eg Clough42's "electronic leadscrew") you can get close to having a Hardinge HC (though probably not as precise/accurate unless you're starting with a similarly nice lathe).
As for tapping, you can also set up the lathe for threading at the thread pitch of your tap and power feed. Preferably with a machine tap of course. More useful if your carriage has a lot of drag.
Yet another great video Stefan. Thank you very much for sharing and informing!
An edge finder (the sprung slide type) can work quite well, just using the feel between the sliding ground parts.
You are just sensational........I have been puting it off for some time now, BUT, I am going to start the compound replacement tomorrow.....thanks for the inspiration........and the 20 hours work.....haaaahaaaaaa
This was a very interesting video. Thanks for sharing
This video is gold (again) thanks so much Stefan for your time in making these.
Really interesting ideas. I am getting rid of my compound slide tomorrow. Using the superb instrument (the human eye) to detect the centre is something you might think an instrument would do better - but the eye does it better.
I quickly built an adapter for a keyless chuck to fit into a quick change tool post holder for my lathe. It is very good - the regular feed of the carriage makes a much better hole than doing it by hand with the tailstock, and stops snatching pulling out the morse taper etc. You have also got the depth control using the DRO, or in my case you can set the penetration depth and the carriage reverses direction when it has reached that depth. Thanks for the idea. The drill size is limited to 13mm but I may think about an adapter for larger drill sizes.
The fact that a 0.2mm drill exists at all makes my brain itch.
Thanks for showing. Very insightful.
Yes, we definitely enjoyed it! 👍
All great points... The thing that has me considering changing to this method of drilling is that I have come to rely on using a similar DRO on my lathe and don't have feedback from my tailstock.. Another highly annoying thing to me about using the tail stock for drilling is the very limited amount of travel my particular tailstock has, so deep holes are a lot more work having to play a game of relaying between moving the screw in and out as well as moving the tailstock itself in closer as I drill. When I need to control the depth of the hole I end up doing cheesy things like marking the drill bit itself.
Concept, Concentration, Common Sense and Control! Great demonstration, thanks.
Excellent demonstration with the pcb drills -I'm definitely going to try this with an ER11 parallel chuck/spindle in a boring bar holder (I must remember to order a slab of steel big enough to make a monolithic rigid toolpost too)
Cast iron is, I think, the goto material for a solid toolpost since it absorbs vibration a bit better than steel. Solid carbide would be even better...
@@robertsneddon731 carbide might exceed the price of my entire lathe! Cast iron seems expensive compared to steel in the size range I need, but may well be worth it [edit: in terms of ease of milling], cheers👍
I made one, now I know how to use it. Thank you
On one of my lathes I some time ago acquired some #2 Morse taper holders (Dixon style) and as I do not have a DRO, I made a removable distance rod (like an inside mic, but of a fixed length) which lets me quickly and reliably set the crossslide in the correct position to bring the drill chuck central. Naturally I have to set the compound to 0 deg, but that's where it normally resides on that lathe, because the tailstock casting is nicely arranged not to interfere with the handwheel of the compound, unlike several of my smaller lathes.
Some lathes do not have very strong keepers to hold the saddle down against the ways, and in such cases it would not be advisable to use big drills from the carriage, due to the high thrust load and high line of action, combined to provide a considerably higher moment in the vertical midplane, in comparison with the usual roughing cuts with a RH tool. Towing the tailstock should be OK, though, provided the towing attachment (and hence line of action) is as low as practicable, close to the line of reaction which is the rack.
But the tailstock will probably need the clamping arrangements re-engineered if the tailstock was not specifically designed for drilling with the clamp loosened. (Some DS&G lathes were so intended, and I'm sure there will be others)
The ideal arrangement is box ways rather than prismatic for this particular service, but my only lathes with box ways do not have a feed shaft, so the leadscrew would have to provide the reaction, which is not ideal. I'm thinking of fitting a separate pinion with a star wheel handle on one of these lathes (similar to the cranks on very large lathes) with its own pinion engaging the existing carriage feed rack. I would mainly use this to move the entire tailstock for deep hole drilling, where it gets tiresome winding the tailstock handwheel, despite (in this case) it using a 3 start thread.
I agree with all Your points, set a limit to the drill size/force for drilling with the feed for the particular lathe. A solution to help spinning the tail wheel I used once is to machine a heavier adapter or or a new heavier larger tail wheel so it can be flicked and spinn freely. Worked fairly well. I also saw a video on Paul Brodies channel about this recently. One of my lathes has a 10 mm rod with 2 clamps arranged so it can be used to reset the cross slide to center quickly. (My compound is kept 0 normally). In my experience it is surprisingly easy to center a drill well by feel though. For larger drills, looking at equal size ship spirals works well.
My biggest lathe is temporarily missing its tailstock as I am hard chroming the barrel preparatory to lapping the casting to return it to like-new performance. A few jobs have come in requiring holes to be drilled up to 32mm, and I have resorted to 1/2" shank drills held in a conventional lathe toolholder in the Dixon style toolholders, some of which have a full length V machined into the face the tool sits on, for holding boring bars.
Naturally I use a heavy packer on top of the shank (along which I have machined another V) rather than having the clamp setscrew tips digging into the shank. Because the drills all have the same shank size and position it's actually a reasonably nice workflow, but of course I have to use finer increments to achieve a big hole than if i could do the usual "taper shank drill in tailstock" progression. Being a big lathe, it's no hardship pushing a fairly big drill with the carriage feed.
Damn, that tiny drill runout was huge. 0.1mm - 0.15mm I wasn't expecting that!
Just rewatching this for a little inspiration. Any reason you wouldn't use an ER Collet chuck in the tool holder on the smaller drills and would you generally get lower runout?
Yes! That works well, but you have the slower changeover time. I do that If I need a certain drill on a series of parts a lot.
Many thanks for sharing this info. I was wondering. Do you have or do you know of a video comparing spot drills and center drills and their usage? I was fascinated by your little pyramid spot drill.
Very nice demonstration. When would you use the tailstock and why? Beautiful use of the DRO. Many Thanks Stefan.
To support work with a live center ;)
(Or for extremely large drills in hard to cut materials.)
@@StefanGotteswinter Thank Stefan.
You never disappoint!
Your videos are always interesting and informative!
Thank you! :)
I love these tips and techniques videos. Super helpful
If you still have a compound on your lathe you can chuck up a gauge pin in the drill chuck and use a collet or the lathe chuck to clamp on the other end for quickly re-aligning the compound after changing it.
Very informative Stefan, thank you for sharing,
Yes I’m convinced with your talks. Moreover my tail stock can’t be aligned. It has vertical offset, a manufacturer’s error.
Thank you Stefan, always very interesting 👍😊
And now I know , I could never figure out what using the carriage for drilling was all about , thank you .
I wonder if you could drill a hole in a piece of round bar using the tail stock, then use a piece of precision steel to locate the hole in the chuck. I think it would work pretty well the first time, but would need to be indicated if your alignment gets out of wack in the future.
I've been waiting for this so thank you, Stefan! 👍👍
I'm definitely going to give this a try on my lathe as I hate messing with the tailstock also.
I am so going to do this on my lathe soon hopefully. Thanks Stefan!
The pcb drill looks canted to one side (left) on the video, is that parallax error from the lens?
Beautifully sharp 10mm drill, perfect even ribbons coming off of both flutes.
Nope, thats what happened, it bent slightly, since my alignment was not perfect :D
A really interesting approach.
I have found with small drills and peck drilling, the hole diameter enlarges towards the hole opening. I’m guessing due to drill chuck run out or just the motion of dragging the bit tip and flutes in and out. I’m talking like a 0.004” enlargement in a 1” deep hole, pecked a dozen times or so with a 0.0625” drill (1/16”).