At 9:19 you started the main threading process. In the future: A - use some kind of tapping oil etc B - Make sure to not cut with both sides of your thread tooling. This results in you tearing away material instead of cutting clean threads. I suggest either using the 5:1 method or by angling your cross-slide to 29 degrees. The 5:1 method is 5 lines of travel (0.1mm) in the Y-axis and 1 line of travel (0.02mm) on the compound slide. (note that when using this method it is handy to start test fitting when you are about 1mm away from your total depth of cut.) I am a junior toolmaker, thus take what I say with a grain of salt... but this was the way I was taught and the way I cut threads quick and easy whilst still obtaining a quality finish.
You can definitely cut on both sides of a threading tool without tearing, the clearances are all there on the tool. The problem with plunging a threading tool on a small lathe like this is the increased tool pressure which can lead to chatter. But many people who switch to solid toolpost mounts, where the lack of a compound makes angled advances hard to achieve, plunge their threads with perfect results - the extra rigidity of the solid toolpost combats the chatter.
@@cooperised th-cam.com/video/Lb_BURLuI70/w-d-xo.html This is a This Old Tony Video which basically discuss the theory I tried to explain in my comment above. Though you can cut with both edges... it is far from optimal. Cutting with a single face leaves a better finish and less clean-up work afterwards. (from an industry perspective... time = money...) So what I'm trying to say is... If said process works... it works... but there is an optimal way to do it.
Oh definitely, I did end up using cutting fluid for the deeper cuts which I showed here. As for the 29.5 degree bit, I agree that would be optimal but on this lathe I am making a compromise here. Since this lathe lacks rigidity I tend to ditch the compound for a solid tool post which makes it so much more rigid. Of course I cant do the 29.5 degree trick when thread cutting but in my opinion I get better results from the added rigidity than I gain by using the compound. Of course this is specific to this lathe. Cheers
@@hanrovisser7053 For a counterexample check out Stefan Gotteswinter who has a solid toolpost mount and plunges all his threads, on commercial work - and he is a stickler for surface finish. It's all about rigidity, if the machine is rigid enough to handle the cutting pressure then surface finish is not a problem. Of course as the thread gets coarser it gets more difficult, and even Stefan will reinstall the compound for very coarse threads.
You should be very proud and pleased, to be able to make your own collet chuck from a small billet of steel to that quality and accuracy on hobby machines is fantastic well done and Thank you for sharing it with you.
Heh so many comments about the stickout. It'll be fine, it's probably the same or less than the 4 jaw. You do need to mark an alignment point on chuck and spindle face so you always mount it the same way. Otherwise you could see the runout increase. Nice job.
He could easily reduce the stickout by just cutting the part and re-doing the thread/cone. Every bit of rigidity you can get I personally would like to have. But as you said, it will probably be just fine, and has worked so far.
I really enjoy your channel and your creative way to achieve great results with the little lathe. I have two of those lathes. They are used daily in my business of restoring automotive parts. They have their shortcomings but overall I'm pleased with the results I get from them. I've learned a lot from your channel and appreciate your time and effort in making these enjoyable videos.
From the thumbnail I thought you customized an HSK100 collet tool holder. Great job on that small lathe. Reminds me of the good old days as a teenager using my uncles small table lathe in his garage. Obviously never as accurate and creative like you.
I don't know how long you've had your collets but when mine were delivered, also from China, although they were well packed in clear plastic, oiled and in the usual yellow containers they needed cleaning. I washed them in a shop solvent to get rid of the oil but then I noticed strings of metal in the grooves from the slitting saws used to cut the slots. Using a utility knife, scriber or dental pick and long nosed pliers I went over each and every slot, looking at a light through the slots to make sure all were clean. This certainly cleaned up a fair amount of previously measured run out. My ER 25 collets run less than 0.001" run out. Plenty good enough for what I do. Do you have a video on your tool post grinder setup? Indeed to make one and am gathering ideas.
Love this video...being able to make your own chuck for this lathe is pretty cool. Three things I picked up here: One was manual feed single point threads with the bars. That seems like a great idea for such short threads. Another was using the dial indicator to get the taper right. Nice trick. Finally, using a drill for an improvised feed. Pretty cool. Thanks for those. As for the comments about not using the calipers in the markers in the trades, you should see what people in the trades in the US do with tools, especially electricians. Lineman's pliers? They're hammers, pliers, and reamers. Screwdrivers? Punches and pry bars. At the end of the day, it's just a tool. Some put them in display boxes, some put a little wear on them. All good!
JETH0321, Yeh! He's beginning to be a bit like a fridge salesman unpacking the latest box. I've gone off his channel. Too much gab, not enough do IMHO.
The Scot in me balks at paying for lathe work from someone I don't know when I have a lathe sitting there. How weird is that? I do try and compute the cost of time making as opposed to buying. Some things should be shop made for the education alone.
@@stxrynn can't really compete cost-wise with the chinese and it takes a pretty good machinist to beat them in quality as well. Impossible with hobby machines and not using hardened steels
@@MF175mp Understood. AM is using that lathe to it's potential. He is making very good quality tooling with it. With care, it is amazing what you can make with even rudimentary tools. The exercise of making something is a double benefit: experience and a usable tool. Coupled with the sense of accomplishment, you will soon push yourself to try more complex and/or accurate work. That is a win in my book. Every craftsman has to start somewhere. My skin flint nature has helped me develop skills I wouldn't have if I'd have been looser with my checkbook. There is room for all kinds in this type of work. YMMV.
@@stxrynn I make some tools for myself too. But I have stopped dreaming about making every single tool myself even if I had already the basic tools that would allow to build the tooling up like that
@@MF175mp I looked at your channel. Your comments make total sense. A farmer doesn't have the time to doodle in the shop. I reckon, even in your long, dark winters, there is much to be done. I'm not in that position. I do have some time to fiddle and mess about. Again, you are correct: "making every tool you need is a waste of time". Weighing time vs money isn't much of an issue when I have paying work to do. It only comes to play when I have more time than work to finish. Then, I'll attempt to make specialty tools that are difficult to find or too expensive for me to justify. Your great comments have helped me order my thinking on this subject. I do appreciate that!!! Kiitoksia!
If you are on a budget look for AA grade Chinese collets. There are very good ones available at reasonable prices. Nice job! Loudly agree with the advice to mark your collet and the headstock so you put it back the same way every time.
Seems a lot of people are commenting about how far out the threads are from the backplate, but if the ways covers, when bunched up, prevent the cross slide from coming up all the way, maybe you could machine a relief underneath for the covers to collapse into so the tool can be close to flush against the backplate for those types of jobs. I love your work though and I love that you are always improving your tooling and setup by making parts yourself. Sure you could buy precision ground pieces made of top notch materials if you had hundreds or thousands of dollars laying around, but to be able to get stock or scrap metal and make it yourself just the way you like it must feel very satisfying! I love seeing the improvements you make for your tooling. I'm kinda jealous that I don't have a lathe and the resources to make cool stuff like that!
This is as short as I could make it before I started to run into clearance issues with my way cover and handwheel, and it's still about 15mm shorter than the old collet chuck set up. The advantage now is I can chuck something 20mm in diameter which is as large as ER 32 goes, and I can feed it the full way through the chuck, which I couldn't do before. Cheers
Great explanations, with the added comments. One point from my observations...the chuck holder could be fabricated from a round plate, for fastening to headstock, and a chuck thread or slightly more diameter bar fixed into the back plate ( pinned, lock screwed or welded); this could be made with HS bore diameter for supporting longer bars ( with changeable sleeves) matching the Diameters available in the Collet set. I am looking at saving all the machining of the massive cylinder of solid. The fabricated unit chuck can be Finished-machined True ( as can be done), and the whole attachment used for a CNC- style Process of Profile turning of Round Bar ( or adding CNC to lathe itself). Have saved Video to Hard Drive for future Reference ( I have a Hafco 250G).
If you machine the inside back of the chuck to the dimensions of a 5C collet, you'll be able to use the 5C depth stop with the ER32 collets for making repetitive short parts. Just a suggestion. If you've already machined it larger than the 5C inner bore, I forget what the dimension is, you could always make your own depth stop to suit your ER 32 chuck. Just a suggestion. Keen to see how you do the taper.
An easy way to compensate the runout of cheap collets is to increase the play of the collet chuck on the spindle nose. You can tap it in with a copper hammer.
Good job! Thanks for sharing. I note your comments about the quality of the collets. I too am looking for better quality items but data is lacking except for top quality which come at a price!
My first thoughts were like most others about the stick out! Makes sense to allow for the way cover but I never thought of it! Also someone commented about centre punching some marks to allow to reseat the collet chuck in the same place every time. Good idea! Also if there is a possibility of showing the runout inside the collet chuck I would imagine the runout should be near zero...I hope? Anyhoo, keep up the good work and I am really enjoying this channel!
amazing work dude! if i was you i would reduce the size of the sticking out and make smaller and much closer to the bearing to give much more rigidity, amazing video! relaxing and fun to watch
It's about as short as it needs to be, any less and it will get caught up with the way cover, and I'd rather keep the way cover the way it is. Plus it's rigid enough.
The overhang is not too excessive that it is going to cause rigidity problems. The main bonus being more insert throat capacity than if it were shorter.
That is an ingenious idea, using a drill to run the cross slide back and forth. for cutting the taper and the finishing. sometimes it's better not to discard old parts. such as with the old cross slide. because they can be handy for future use. and I agree with you about using higher quality grinding stones on the final finishing. because the cheaper ones are usually just glued on the Arbor shaft. where as the higher quality ones are better afixed to the Arbor shaft. I agree those are pretty low run out numbers. especially for it not being a professional quality lathe. I'm curious if you have a video on the tool post grinder set up. if so I would definitely like to see it.
Brilliantly informative as well as being just an all round great viewing experience for me my bro.. U have gained some great skills on that cheap 600 dollar Mini Lathe . It's a very decent Lathe for the price and I will be getting my own maybe early next year or possibly for Xmas depending on the funds available. I'm just getting my shop ready for painting after 4 skips of clearing crap out of it. It was full of crap collected for over 25 years. Not my crap but the skips cost me money I needed for other stuff and I've gotta build a new back and front to the garage too. New doors and frames, etc which has eaten into my budget for some awesome new tools. I have my table saw, Jointer/thicknesser and a shed load of other great little hand tools to be getting some great work done with but I really always secretly wanted to own my own Lathe bro. After watching ur video about the 2 year review of ur lathe I was hooked. I said in an earlier video that @This Old Tony was another dude who did a video on the Mini Lathe and his was decent too but I'm astonished at how good they actually are for that little amount of layout. Thanks for showing ur the making of the new jaw? for the collet chuck. That was brilliant to watch bro and I've always loved watching these types of videos anyways so I will be watching more of urs too.. Salute from IRELAND my friend and keep up the awesome work ..
Outstanding…..on another channel (Xanadu, I think? ) a guy called Rob got better runout from cheaper collets by rotating them in the holder to another position. I’ve always meant to try it….seemed to work for him.
Great work dude, I think you’ll be really happy with this tool. The fact it registers on the spindle nose should make for really good repeatability. Don’t forget to mark the Chuck before removing it thou ;)
I know this video has been up a while - but for checking runout you could start by checking the run out of the actual internal taper of the chuck, *before* proceeding to check the runout of a part held in the chuck.
For a project like this a tool post grinder is a big advantage. I'm trying to make an er16 spindle assembly for a tool post grinder myself but i don't know why I ended up with .1 mm of runout, but the bearing journal is concentric with the collet taper. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm using 2 tapered ball bearing at the front and 2 normal ball bearing at the back. The 2 bearing journals have been cut between centers and the collet taper is being indicated on the front bearing journal.
Sorry to hear about that. A tool post grinder is definitely a cool but ambitious project, which is why I settled for using a motor and spindle set up. I'm wondering if you could cut or grind in the 8 degree collet seating in situ with everything assembled to reduce the run out.
@@artisanmakesThanks for the advice. I thought about that but the problem is dialing everythink true and parallel with the steady rest. Because there isn't guaranteed that the outer body is perfectly true with the bearing seats. I've tried once but i didn't have enough time to set everything up. So I'll try again soon. I've invested a lot of time in that project so I need to make it work. The runout problem starts when i put the bearings but they are brand new so I can't figure out the problem. I could try to machine an arbour to mount the tapered bearings on with the correct preload and measure the outer bearing runout.
Try Trefolex cutting compound for tapping and die cutting in steel. Try Eze-Lap diamond files in 400, 600 and 1200 grit for surface clean up. They'll need "breaking in" on a bit of steel first. Eze-Lap also make Swiss file 600 grit sets which are very good for small work. WD 40 makes for a good cutting fluid but use MX4 (from Bunnings) for rust prevention. You can slow rust on steel tools by chemi blacking with various gun bluing liquids and pastes followed by spraying with MX4. If you use G96 dip in bicarb solution after blacking as it leaves residual hydrochloric acid on the steel, which rusts a few months later. Medium carbon steel you used was SAE 1045?
I use trefolex every now and then but I prefer Sutton a viper paste for tapping. And I could be wrong, it has been a while since I did it, but I think it was a piece of BIS 60 alloy.
Great content as always! 👍 I do wonder at your surface finish issues when using those carbide inserts. Maybe the inserts are blunt? I have trouble with inserts on my 7x20 minilathe, it is just not rigid enough to prodcue the right cutting forces and I get a shitty finish. I found HSS tools hand sharpened to a real sharp point give good finish because the cutting forces are small and the machine doesnt deflect and chatter. Some people seem to like those high sharpness carbide inserts sold for cutting aluminium.
Funnily enough the inserts that I was using when I encountered these surface issues were DCGT inserts that were designed for use with aluminium. The HSS I was using was getting eaten up by this Medium High tensile steel so I didn't try with them, but if I get any cobalt in the future I'll have to give it a go and see if I get a better finish. Cheers
It's about as short as it needs to be, any less and it will get caught up with the way cover, and I'd rather keep the way cover the way it is. Plus it's rigid enough.
When you did the scratch pass for the M40 thread, I could see that your part was not running concentric. One purpose of a scratch pass, is to indicate whether you are cutting concentric and that the part is round. It has to be a perfect spiral all round the part, not in some parts, like on yours. You ended up with a thread that is not exactly concentric to the OD of the part. That probably happened when you removed the part to drill the holes. Hopefully it is minimal.
Yeah that was just a result of my hand filing job which I didn't do all that well. Ive made this mistake before and given how small it is, it's never caused any issues.
Well now I feel bad as I purchased the same thing from China and to be honest have not checked the runout. But some very small parts I have made are fine by me. Nice build!👍
The Pin used to measure runout after the first grind is wonkey. If you look at the Reflection of the light in the grind of the pin you can see that the pin was the problem. Otherwise a darn solid video. Keep it going with the lathe Videos.
With the motor set up that I have, i can't get the lathe to spin below 300 rpm or so, which is why I thread stuff by hand. it is a bit slower but I don't cut threads with the lathe on a regular basis
Good job, but u could buy that new for 60 bucks. And you could grind the tools of HSSCo10. Hard to grind but the durability is unmatched. i use them for years and they never get blunt.
Lovely job! Did you use EN8 for this project? People have commented on the stick out, but🙂 given the amount of protrusion could you maybe have used the excess amount to have made it adjustable. Material might be a bit tight side but even M4 grub screws with a ball bearing will do the job. I had to use m4 on a 5c collet chuck making it a tru adjust on my 13 30 lathe when there was limited space and it worked wonderful and obviously 0 run out. Hope you don't mind putting my 2 penno'th in. Kind Regards. Steve
It's been a while since I made.ir but I think it was some low carbon high strength alloy, bis60 maybe. I think the stock pit was a little overblown, it's no longer than the regular 80mm chuck. Super happy with it since I've made it. Cheers
Looks good. I commend the effort gone into making this. That's a big ol' chunk of steel to machine! 👍 Me? I don't know if I could have been bothered tbh 😅 They are readily available over here for not much money. Some are a direct fit to the mini lathe!
Spiral taps as in "spiral flute"? Sure they clear the chips but they are so much weaker than spiral point (gun taps) that the chance of snapping them goes way up. Only use them on soft stuff like plastic. He used a hand tap, which is kind of home brew, but what's weird is he didn't use the spindle to line up the tap??? Free-hand tapping is how mechanics do it, not machinists.
You were switching between various inserts, HSS tooling and also filing. Did you have trouble with the turning ? I get decent performance out of the chinese DCMT070204 VP15TF inserts when turning tensile steel. I only use the sharper DCGT aluminium inserts for boring and finishing passes, they don't last that long.
Yeah turning this size and diameter of steel was quite difficult and time consuming. I was using my aluminium cutting dcgt inserts and I probably broke 5 of them, so I switched between them and hss. To be fair to the lathe it's probably the most I've ever pushed it, and this is a medium high tensile steel, which I don't typically turn. Cheers
@@artisanmakes I have similar issues with 4140, I use TCMT 12mm for roughing and even then it only works if I use pulley reduction to get enough torque at lower speeds. When the lathe struggles or stalls, that's usually the end of that tip. TCMT gives you 3 edges, a bit more economical in that sense. HSS M2 is pretty useless with high tensile steel.
Why are you turning the spindle by hand to cut your threads? Are you just lacking torque on the mini lathe? Just curious. Anyway, great job as always. Big fan of your creative problem solving, you always do a lot with very little.
I love your content so much!! I would love to see you build a LowRider 3 to add a router platform to your capabilities. If you do it, give LinuxCNC and a Mesa card a run. Once you master that platform on your router, it will be easy to add cnc to your other machines.
Interesting suggestion. I used to use Linux CNC with a CNC lathe, great piece of software but I'm a Mach3 guy. Not too knowledgeable with mesa cards, I'll have to look into them a bit more.
Cheers. I don't have that much experience with Chinese or other inport mini lathes, just this one which is a sieg C3/ 7x14 lathe. I get great results from this one, but it is modified
Would it have been possible to machine this in the pre CNC era? They made some amazing parts back in the day with mechanical copy machining and hand tools to finish. Just wondering.....
I’m willing to bet you were closer than .015 out. That material you were using as a test piece looks centerless ground, if it is then it has 3 lobes on it that can easily measure .005-.01 runout.
Yeah im not sure why it looked like that. Sure didn't look or feel like that in person and it turned up looking like that when I rewatched the footage. Cheer
I keep noticing in your videos that black mounting plate around/behind the spindle plate, what is that thing? Somehow I don't recall such a plate on other mini-lathes. I'm sure it is something obvious that I should know, like maybe a machinists stubby holder 😉
Yes it's 20mm through the chuck. Right after I completed this I chucked up some 1/2 inch steel rod that is about 50cm long and I turned it without issue. Any longer and I'll have to set up some support for the material at the back of the spindle bore.
Enjoy watching your ch. i assume your are self taught with no Trade Training ,am I correct ? As a Machinist/Toolmaker, please refrain from useing your Vernier Caliper , a precision measuring tool, as a "Jennie" scriber ! Measuring Tools should be treated with utmost of care. (Just a thought). I admire the quality of your finished projects, & your "can do" attitude 👍 Keep the Vids coming 🙂
I wouldn't worry too much about those callipers, they are cheapo ones that I use only for scribing and they last quite a long while. I do have formal training on CNC lathes and mills but manual stuff is self taught. Always found manual machining more fun anyway. Cheers
Att: Nice video ,but a think are using ,the wrong file .to file the steel taper. For you information to improve your skill the Lathe operator. The Lathe FILE it a single cutt ,one way only. The file have 60* on axis to relize the chips when cutting. Lathe FILE not get stock the material. Nice work , Remember all the taper for collet are calculate TAPER PER FOOT INGLISH. Recomend using sine bar to set up the angle.
Steamedleaf, we on this side(s) of the relevant pond(s) have the same problem with Aussie posts. Do what we do, or at least I do. Enjoy with your first coffee(s) and morning constitutional activities.
It is probably a bit late commenting at this stage. Did you consider designing your chuck as a 'zero adjust' type chuck. You can use your old collets and adjust out eccentricity.
You should contact cce cutyibg edge engineering and grab up all there dropped metal they throw wway lots of usable metal and they are awesome people with big tools
@@mealex303 👊 Many times true. I'll bet most people that haven't spent time around welding and machine shops aren't aware they are some of the original recyclers though. And the wonderful thing about the comments section is you just never know how much experience the person you're talking with has.
You didn't need all that stick out did you? you could've machined it shorter and got more bed space on your lathe. Or maybe it's because of the protector being in the way?
It's about as short as it needs to be, any less and it will get caught up with the way cover, and I'd rather keep the way cover the way it is. Plus it's rigid enough.
No grease on the dead center???‽? I guess no big deal but it looked like the center on the stock was turning blue. I know your removing that, but the center itself won't agree with that treatment over time. Sorry. I've recently began doing alot of od grinding so it was something I was primed to see.
You build things to what they are expected to undergo. The commercial ones are for sure, but this realistically wasn’t going to get much use. The contact area is quite large and the expected wear is so minimal. It’s not like it’s expected to fall or anything. I got 2 years use of of it with no change in the run out. Wear is not something that I would need to factor into this specific part.
I need to get me a little lathe. I have a little drill press with an XY table and a redneck DRO (couple harbor freight plastic digital calipers attached), and for the off times I need to mill a feature ... there's a Bridgeport at work I can use freely (on the weekends and the off shifts, got too much to do when I am working to deal with personal projects) but it seems like I am endlessly needing small round objects with round features that can't be bought easily local (ya know, oddball size screws and standoff's and spacers etc)
At 9:19 you started the main threading process. In the future:
A - use some kind of tapping oil etc
B - Make sure to not cut with both sides of your thread tooling. This results in you tearing away material instead of cutting clean threads. I suggest either using the 5:1 method or by angling your cross-slide to 29 degrees.
The 5:1 method is 5 lines of travel (0.1mm) in the Y-axis and 1 line of travel (0.02mm) on the compound slide. (note that when using this method it is handy to start test fitting when you are about 1mm away from your total depth of cut.)
I am a junior toolmaker, thus take what I say with a grain of salt... but this was the way I was taught and the way I cut threads quick and easy whilst still obtaining a quality finish.
You can definitely cut on both sides of a threading tool without tearing, the clearances are all there on the tool. The problem with plunging a threading tool on a small lathe like this is the increased tool pressure which can lead to chatter. But many people who switch to solid toolpost mounts, where the lack of a compound makes angled advances hard to achieve, plunge their threads with perfect results - the extra rigidity of the solid toolpost combats the chatter.
@@cooperised th-cam.com/video/Lb_BURLuI70/w-d-xo.html This is a This Old Tony Video which basically discuss the theory I tried to explain in my comment above. Though you can cut with both edges... it is far from optimal. Cutting with a single face leaves a better finish and less clean-up work afterwards. (from an industry perspective... time = money...)
So what I'm trying to say is... If said process works... it works... but there is an optimal way to do it.
Oh definitely, I did end up using cutting fluid for the deeper cuts which I showed here. As for the 29.5 degree bit, I agree that would be optimal but on this lathe I am making a compromise here. Since this lathe lacks rigidity I tend to ditch the compound for a solid tool post which makes it so much more rigid. Of course I cant do the 29.5 degree trick when thread cutting but in my opinion I get better results from the added rigidity than I gain by using the compound. Of course this is specific to this lathe. Cheers
@@hanrovisser7053 For a counterexample check out Stefan Gotteswinter who has a solid toolpost mount and plunges all his threads, on commercial work - and he is a stickler for surface finish. It's all about rigidity, if the machine is rigid enough to handle the cutting pressure then surface finish is not a problem. Of course as the thread gets coarser it gets more difficult, and even Stefan will reinstall the compound for very coarse threads.
@@cooperised Yes threads of that size are fine to plunge.
You should be very proud and pleased, to be able to make your own collet chuck from a small billet of steel to that quality and accuracy on hobby machines is fantastic well done and Thank you for sharing it with you.
Heh so many comments about the stickout. It'll be fine, it's probably the same or less than the 4 jaw. You do need to mark an alignment point on chuck and spindle face so you always mount it the same way. Otherwise you could see the runout increase. Nice job.
More likely the grinding tool whipping like a mf with that kinda shank, wheel and stick out.
He could easily reduce the stickout by just cutting the part and re-doing the thread/cone. Every bit of rigidity you can get I personally would like to have. But as you said, it will probably be just fine, and has worked so far.
I really enjoy your channel and your creative way to achieve great results with the little lathe. I have two of those lathes. They are used daily in my business of restoring automotive parts. They have their shortcomings but overall I'm pleased with the results I get from them. I've learned a lot from your channel and appreciate your time and effort in making these enjoyable videos.
From the thumbnail I thought you customized an HSK100 collet tool holder. Great job on that small lathe. Reminds me of the good old days as a teenager using my uncles small table lathe in his garage. Obviously never as accurate and creative like you.
I don't know how long you've had your collets but when mine were delivered, also from China, although they were well packed in clear plastic, oiled and in the usual yellow containers they needed cleaning. I washed them in a shop solvent to get rid of the oil but then I noticed strings of metal in the grooves from the slitting saws used to cut the slots. Using a utility knife, scriber or dental pick and long nosed pliers I went over each and every slot, looking at a light through the slots to make sure all were clean. This certainly cleaned up a fair amount of previously measured run out. My ER 25 collets run less than 0.001" run out. Plenty good enough for what I do.
Do you have a video on your tool post grinder setup? Indeed to make one and am gathering ideas.
It is always inspiring to see what can be done using simple tools. The creativity is in the mind not so much the machine. Nice job.
Oooo, great idea. This is something I need to make. Thanks for sharing.
very well done, inspiring me to make a collet holder like this....cheers from Florida, USA, Paul
This was quite interesting for me and has lots of good ideas one can use in a variety of projects. Thanks for posting!
Love this video...being able to make your own chuck for this lathe is pretty cool. Three things I picked up here: One was manual feed single point threads with the bars. That seems like a great idea for such short threads. Another was using the dial indicator to get the taper right. Nice trick. Finally, using a drill for an improvised feed. Pretty cool. Thanks for those.
As for the comments about not using the calipers in the markers in the trades, you should see what people in the trades in the US do with tools, especially electricians. Lineman's pliers? They're hammers, pliers, and reamers. Screwdrivers? Punches and pry bars. At the end of the day, it's just a tool. Some put them in display boxes, some put a little wear on them. All good!
This is a pretty ambitious project on your little lathe!
I wish you had shown the inner run out of the taper
love your power feed for the cross slide
I'd rather watch your channel than to watch Abom with his unboxing videos. Good job btw.
JETH0321, Yeh! He's beginning to be a bit like a fridge salesman unpacking the latest box. I've gone off his channel. Too much gab, not enough do IMHO.
I did not know a posh australian accent was possible.
Good video man.
I'm very impressed with the quality of cut and the power of this small machine. I'm getting lots ideas for making mine more rigid.
Paulimot are selling these for a good price and low runout. They have also high precision collects. Did work for me.
The Scot in me balks at paying for lathe work from someone I don't know when I have a lathe sitting there. How weird is that? I do try and compute the cost of time making as opposed to buying. Some things should be shop made for the education alone.
@@stxrynn can't really compete cost-wise with the chinese and it takes a pretty good machinist to beat them in quality as well. Impossible with hobby machines and not using hardened steels
@@MF175mp Understood. AM is using that lathe to it's potential. He is making very good quality tooling with it. With care, it is amazing what you can make with even rudimentary tools. The exercise of making something is a double benefit: experience and a usable tool. Coupled with the sense of accomplishment, you will soon push yourself to try more complex and/or accurate work. That is a win in my book. Every craftsman has to start somewhere. My skin flint nature has helped me develop skills I wouldn't have if I'd have been looser with my checkbook. There is room for all kinds in this type of work. YMMV.
@@stxrynn I make some tools for myself too. But I have stopped dreaming about making every single tool myself even if I had already the basic tools that would allow to build the tooling up like that
@@MF175mp I looked at your channel. Your comments make total sense. A farmer doesn't have the time to doodle in the shop. I reckon, even in your long, dark winters, there is much to be done. I'm not in that position. I do have some time to fiddle and mess about. Again, you are correct: "making every tool you need is a waste of time". Weighing time vs money isn't much of an issue when I have paying work to do. It only comes to play when I have more time than work to finish. Then, I'll attempt to make specialty tools that are difficult to find or too expensive for me to justify. Your great comments have helped me order my thinking on this subject. I do appreciate that!!! Kiitoksia!
If you are on a budget look for AA grade Chinese collets. There are very good ones available at reasonable prices. Nice job! Loudly agree with the advice to mark your collet and the headstock so you put it back the same way every time.
lov the battery drill power feed !!! 👍
Seems a lot of people are commenting about how far out the threads are from the backplate, but if the ways covers, when bunched up, prevent the cross slide from coming up all the way, maybe you could machine a relief underneath for the covers to collapse into so the tool can be close to flush against the backplate for those types of jobs. I love your work though and I love that you are always improving your tooling and setup by making parts yourself. Sure you could buy precision ground pieces made of top notch materials if you had hundreds or thousands of dollars laying around, but to be able to get stock or scrap metal and make it yourself just the way you like it must feel very satisfying! I love seeing the improvements you make for your tooling. I'm kinda jealous that I don't have a lathe and the resources to make cool stuff like that!
This is as short as I could make it before I started to run into clearance issues with my way cover and handwheel, and it's still about 15mm shorter than the old collet chuck set up. The advantage now is I can chuck something 20mm in diameter which is as large as ER 32 goes, and I can feed it the full way through the chuck, which I couldn't do before. Cheers
@@artisanmakes yeah being able to fit stock all the way through like that would be very helpful on a lot of projects I'm sure
He didn't cut stock by hand this time. Good!
Good work as usual. We shared this video on our homemade tools forum this week 😎
That was another great video my friend.
Great explanations, with the added comments.
One point from my observations...the chuck holder could be fabricated from a round plate, for fastening to headstock, and a chuck thread or slightly more diameter bar fixed into the back plate ( pinned, lock screwed or welded); this could be made with HS bore diameter for supporting longer bars ( with changeable sleeves) matching the Diameters available in the Collet set.
I am looking at saving all the machining of the massive cylinder of solid.
The fabricated unit chuck can be Finished-machined True ( as can be done), and the whole attachment used for a CNC- style Process of Profile turning of Round Bar ( or adding CNC to lathe itself).
Have saved Video to Hard Drive for future Reference ( I have a Hafco 250G).
Great job for such a small machine!
If you machine the inside back of the chuck to the dimensions of a 5C collet, you'll be able to use the 5C depth stop with the ER32 collets for making repetitive short parts. Just a suggestion. If you've already machined it larger than the 5C inner bore, I forget what the dimension is, you could always make your own depth stop to suit your ER 32 chuck. Just a suggestion.
Keen to see how you do the taper.
An easy way to compensate the runout of cheap collets is to increase the play of the collet chuck on the spindle nose. You can tap it in with a copper hammer.
Good job! Like and subscribed!
Good job! Thanks for sharing. I note your comments about the quality of the collets. I too am looking for better quality items but data is lacking except for top quality which come at a price!
My first thoughts were like most others about the stick out! Makes sense to allow for the way cover but I never thought of it!
Also someone commented about centre punching some marks to allow to reseat the collet chuck in the same place every time. Good idea!
Also if there is a possibility of showing the runout inside the collet chuck I would imagine the runout should be near zero...I hope?
Anyhoo, keep up the good work and I am really enjoying this channel!
Cheers, I'll have to measure the run out next time I'm at the workshop but I'd assume it's almost zero since the taper is ground on the lathe itself
Excellent work.
Thanks for sharing. Very informative video.
amazing work dude! if i was you i would reduce the size of the sticking out and make smaller and much closer to the bearing to give much more rigidity, amazing video! relaxing and fun to watch
It's about as short as it needs to be, any less and it will get caught up with the way cover, and I'd rather keep the way cover the way it is. Plus it's rigid enough.
The overhang is not too excessive that it is going to cause rigidity problems. The main bonus being more insert throat capacity than if it were shorter.
That is an ingenious idea, using a drill to run the cross slide back and forth. for cutting the taper and the finishing. sometimes it's better not to discard old parts. such as with the old cross slide. because they can be handy for future use. and I agree with you about using higher quality grinding stones on the final finishing. because the cheaper ones are usually just glued on the Arbor shaft. where as the higher quality ones are better afixed to the Arbor shaft. I agree those are pretty low run out numbers. especially for it not being a professional quality lathe. I'm curious if you have a video on the tool post grinder set up. if so I would definitely like to see it.
Brilliantly informative as well as being just an all round great viewing experience for me my bro.. U have gained some great skills on that cheap 600 dollar Mini Lathe . It's a very decent Lathe for the price and I will be getting my own maybe early next year or possibly for Xmas depending on the funds available. I'm just getting my shop ready for painting after 4 skips of clearing crap out of it. It was full of crap collected for over 25 years. Not my crap but the skips cost me money I needed for other stuff and I've gotta build a new back and front to the garage too. New doors and frames, etc which has eaten into my budget for some awesome new tools. I have my table saw, Jointer/thicknesser and a shed load of other great little hand tools to be getting some great work done with but I really always secretly wanted to own my own Lathe bro.
After watching ur video about the 2 year review of ur lathe I was hooked. I said in an earlier video that @This Old Tony was another dude who did a video on the Mini Lathe and his was decent too but I'm astonished at how good they actually are for that little amount of layout.
Thanks for showing ur the making of the new jaw? for the collet chuck. That was brilliant to watch bro and I've always loved watching these types of videos anyways so I will be watching more of urs too.. Salute from IRELAND my friend and keep up the awesome work ..
Outstanding…..on another channel (Xanadu, I think? )
a guy called Rob got better runout from cheaper collets
by rotating them in the holder to another position.
I’ve always meant to try it….seemed to work for him.
Am wondering what is the collet holding the grinder to the tool post? Thanks
It’s a er11 collet holder attached to a 500w dc motor
Great work dude, I think you’ll be really happy with this tool. The fact it registers on the spindle nose should make for really good repeatability. Don’t forget to mark the Chuck before removing it thou ;)
I know this video has been up a while - but for checking runout you could start by checking the run out of the actual internal taper of the chuck, *before* proceeding to check the runout of a part held in the chuck.
Good job 👍👍👍Thank you for sharing.
Very nice job.
For a project like this a tool post grinder is a big advantage. I'm trying to make an er16 spindle assembly for a tool post grinder myself but i don't know why I ended up with .1 mm of runout, but the bearing journal is concentric with the collet taper. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm using 2 tapered ball bearing at the front and 2 normal ball bearing at the back. The 2 bearing journals have been cut between centers and the collet taper is being indicated on the front bearing journal.
Sorry to hear about that. A tool post grinder is definitely a cool but ambitious project, which is why I settled for using a motor and spindle set up. I'm wondering if you could cut or grind in the 8 degree collet seating in situ with everything assembled to reduce the run out.
@@artisanmakesThanks for the advice. I thought about that but the problem is dialing everythink true and parallel with the steady rest. Because there isn't guaranteed that the outer body is perfectly true with the bearing seats. I've tried once but i didn't have enough time to set everything up. So I'll try again soon. I've invested a lot of time in that project so I need to make it work. The runout problem starts when i put the bearings but they are brand new so I can't figure out the problem.
I could try to machine an arbour to mount the tapered bearings on with the correct preload and measure the outer bearing runout.
@@lucasandri5462 is the thread machined or put on with a die? The thread is also critical to be concentric with the rest of the spindle
@@MF175mp Yes, I've single point threaded it in the same setup where I've done the taper to ensure concentricity.
9:33 Interesting relative movement during cut.
Nice job!
Great Job👌
Try Trefolex cutting compound for tapping and die cutting in steel. Try Eze-Lap diamond files in 400, 600 and 1200 grit for surface clean up. They'll need "breaking in" on a bit of steel first. Eze-Lap also make Swiss file 600 grit sets which are very good for small work. WD 40 makes for a good cutting fluid but use MX4 (from Bunnings) for rust prevention. You can slow rust on steel tools by chemi blacking with various gun bluing liquids and pastes followed by spraying with MX4. If you use G96 dip in bicarb solution after blacking as it leaves residual hydrochloric acid on the steel, which rusts a few months later.
Medium carbon steel you used was SAE 1045?
I use trefolex every now and then but I prefer Sutton a viper paste for tapping. And I could be wrong, it has been a while since I did it, but I think it was a piece of BIS 60 alloy.
Well done.
runout is just awesome in this non rigid lathe setup
Very nice... Thanks!
Great content as always! 👍
I do wonder at your surface finish issues when using those carbide inserts. Maybe the inserts are blunt?
I have trouble with inserts on my 7x20 minilathe, it is just not rigid enough to prodcue the right cutting forces and I get a shitty finish. I found HSS tools hand sharpened to a real sharp point give good finish because the cutting forces are small and the machine doesnt deflect and chatter.
Some people seem to like those high sharpness carbide inserts sold for cutting aluminium.
Funnily enough the inserts that I was using when I encountered these surface issues were DCGT inserts that were designed for use with aluminium. The HSS I was using was getting eaten up by this Medium High tensile steel so I didn't try with them, but if I get any cobalt in the future I'll have to give it a go and see if I get a better finish. Cheers
You seem to have quite a bit of length to the holder. i. e. space between nut and face
Is there a reason you didn't make it shorter?
It's about as short as it needs to be, any less and it will get caught up with the way cover, and I'd rather keep the way cover the way it is. Plus it's rigid enough.
@@artisanmakes 👍
Amazing
Beautiful
Have you measured the runout when using the mill collet chuck in the lathe? To have something similar to compare the new one you made to
The mose taper collet chuck run run out was somewhere in the region of 0.025mm under no cutting load.
13:38 - Nice you're doing inner diameter grinding.
That is impressive
When you did the scratch pass for the M40 thread, I could see that your part was not running concentric.
One purpose of a scratch pass, is to indicate whether you are cutting concentric and that the part is round. It has to be a perfect spiral all round the part, not in some parts, like on yours. You ended up with a thread that is not exactly concentric to the OD of the part. That probably happened when you removed the part to drill the holes. Hopefully it is minimal.
Yeah that was just a result of my hand filing job which I didn't do all that well. Ive made this mistake before and given how small it is, it's never caused any issues.
I was almost expecting you to pull out an m40x1.5 die when it came time to thread... You really hate single pointing :D
Well now I feel bad as I purchased the same thing from China and to be honest have not checked the runout. But some very small parts I have made are fine by me.
Nice build!👍
Man muß sich nur zu helfen wissen! good stuff mate.
The Pin used to measure runout after the first grind is wonkey. If you look at the Reflection of the light in the grind of the pin you can see that the pin was the problem.
Otherwise a darn solid video. Keep it going with the lathe Videos.
Hi, what steel did you use for this? Thanks
From memory it was an off cut if BIS 60 alloy
@@artisanmakes thanks 😁
You should have put a gutter a the end of the m40 thread
How come you hand fed the threading tool instead of using power ?
With the motor set up that I have, i can't get the lathe to spin below 300 rpm or so, which is why I thread stuff by hand. it is a bit slower but I don't cut threads with the lathe on a regular basis
Would you let us know what kind of tool post grinder did you use?
Looks like a Cnc-style spindle from eBay with a toolpost holder.. not a difficult build
Good job, but u could buy that new for 60 bucks. And you could grind the tools of HSSCo10. Hard to grind but the durability is unmatched. i use them for years and they never get blunt.
I'm going to have to go checkout my mini lathe, I could of sworn it's mt2.
Lovely job! Did you use EN8 for this project? People have commented on the stick out, but🙂 given the amount of protrusion could you maybe have used the excess amount to have made it adjustable. Material might be a bit tight side but even M4 grub screws with a ball bearing will do the job. I had to use m4 on a 5c collet chuck making it a tru adjust on my 13 30 lathe when there was limited space and it worked wonderful and obviously 0 run out. Hope you don't mind putting my 2 penno'th in. Kind Regards. Steve
It's been a while since I made.ir but I think it was some low carbon high strength alloy, bis60 maybe. I think the stock pit was a little overblown, it's no longer than the regular 80mm chuck. Super happy with it since I've made it. Cheers
Sweet.
Looks good. I commend the effort gone into making this. That's a big ol' chunk of steel to machine! 👍
Me? I don't know if I could have been bothered tbh 😅 They are readily available over here for not much money. Some are a direct fit to the mini lathe!
You should be using spiral taps on blind holes like that. You get better threads and less chance of breaking taps 👍
Spiral taps as in "spiral flute"? Sure they clear the chips but they are so much weaker than spiral point (gun taps) that the chance of snapping them goes way up. Only use them on soft stuff like plastic. He used a hand tap, which is kind of home brew, but what's weird is he didn't use the spindle to line up the tap??? Free-hand tapping is how mechanics do it, not machinists.
You were switching between various inserts, HSS tooling and also filing. Did you have trouble with the turning ? I get decent performance out of the chinese DCMT070204 VP15TF inserts when turning tensile steel. I only use the sharper DCGT aluminium inserts for boring and finishing passes, they don't last that long.
Yeah turning this size and diameter of steel was quite difficult and time consuming. I was using my aluminium cutting dcgt inserts and I probably broke 5 of them, so I switched between them and hss. To be fair to the lathe it's probably the most I've ever pushed it, and this is a medium high tensile steel, which I don't typically turn. Cheers
@@artisanmakes I have similar issues with 4140, I use TCMT 12mm for roughing and even then it only works if I use pulley reduction to get enough torque at lower speeds. When the lathe struggles or stalls, that's usually the end of that tip. TCMT gives you 3 edges, a bit more economical in that sense. HSS M2 is pretty useless with high tensile steel.
Yeah definitely, this steel was chewing up my hss if I didnt use coolant. Cheers
Why are you turning the spindle by hand to cut your threads? Are you just lacking torque on the mini lathe? Just curious. Anyway, great job as always. Big fan of your creative problem solving, you always do a lot with very little.
Merci
When you cut the thread on the lathe, it is a good ide to have an exit groove. Great job otherwise. I will make one of these myself.
9:22 once you removed and refitted the ‘collet Chuck’ you created run out, as seen where you did the scratch pass for the thread.
That's just the hand filing that was a bit uneven
nice job man..
At 13:48 that test parts does not look round.
It's a piece of ground silver steel, not entirely sure why it looked like that that on camera, certainly didn't look like that in person. Cheers
I love your content so much!! I would love to see you build a LowRider 3 to add a router platform to your capabilities. If you do it, give LinuxCNC and a Mesa card a run. Once you master that platform on your router, it will be easy to add cnc to your other machines.
Interesting suggestion. I used to use Linux CNC with a CNC lathe, great piece of software but I'm a Mach3 guy. Not too knowledgeable with mesa cards, I'll have to look into them a bit more.
Well impressed with that. Well done. Do you have any knowledge about the best Chinese small lathes to buy?
Cheers. I don't have that much experience with Chinese or other inport mini lathes, just this one which is a sieg C3/ 7x14 lathe. I get great results from this one, but it is modified
@@artisanmakes Thanks for the comment
Would it have been possible to machine this in the pre CNC era? They made some amazing parts back in the day with mechanical copy machining and hand tools to finish. Just wondering.....
I want to make a trance but tNice tutorials looks so difficult!!!
I’m willing to bet you were closer than .015 out.
That material you were using as a test piece looks centerless ground, if it is then it has 3 lobes on it that can easily measure .005-.01 runout.
Yeah im not sure why it looked like that. Sure didn't look or feel like that in person and it turned up looking like that when I rewatched the footage. Cheer
I keep noticing in your videos that black mounting plate around/behind the spindle plate, what is that thing? Somehow I don't recall such a plate on other mini-lathes. I'm sure it is something obvious that I should know, like maybe a machinists stubby holder 😉
It’s a mounting plate for the replacement motor I’ve fitted
You could clean up the collets. Take a look at good old tony.
Nice job mate. Whats the purpose of the black split clamp thingy around your spindle?
It is a spindle lock which is very useful when using thread taps.
That should be a tapered backplate. Almost all lathes have some kind of taper for chuck mounting.
If you look at the spindle nose standard for these lathes, you will see that these are not tapered
@@artisanmakes I did say almost all. You do nice work bud.
Nice job. Would have liked to see what length of material you could mount. I'm assuming full access to the spindle hole?
Yes it's 20mm through the chuck. Right after I completed this I chucked up some 1/2 inch steel rod that is about 50cm long and I turned it without issue. Any longer and I'll have to set up some support for the material at the back of the spindle bore.
A simple 'cat's head' support with 3 or 4 radial clamping bolts mounted on the rear of the spindle is a useful addition.
Enjoy watching your ch.
i assume your are self taught with no Trade Training ,am I correct ?
As a Machinist/Toolmaker, please refrain from useing your Vernier Caliper , a precision measuring tool, as a "Jennie" scriber !
Measuring Tools should be treated with utmost of care.
(Just a thought).
I admire the quality of your finished projects, & your "can do" attitude 👍
Keep the Vids coming 🙂
I wouldn't worry too much about those callipers, they are cheapo ones that I use only for scribing and they last quite a long while.
I do have formal training on CNC lathes and mills but manual stuff is self taught. Always found manual machining more fun anyway. Cheers
Att: Nice video ,but a think are using ,the wrong file .to file the steel taper. For you information to improve your skill the Lathe operator.
The Lathe FILE it a single cutt ,one way only. The file have 60* on axis to relize the chips when cutting. Lathe FILE not get stock the material.
Nice work , Remember all the taper for collet are calculate TAPER PER FOOT INGLISH. Recomend using sine bar to set up the angle.
That is a lathe file. They are Nicholson lathe files.
Bro, why did you upload at like 3-4am? We Aussies gotta sleep the same as everyone else.
Steamedleaf, we on this side(s) of the relevant pond(s) have the same problem with Aussie posts. Do what we do, or at least I do. Enjoy with your first coffee(s) and morning constitutional activities.
It is probably a bit late commenting at this stage. Did you consider designing your chuck as a 'zero adjust' type chuck. You can use your old collets and adjust out eccentricity.
You should contact cce cutyibg edge engineering and grab up all there dropped metal they throw wway lots of usable metal and they are awesome people with big tools
Actually all that scrap is sold for recycling. Decades before recycling was mainstream. It doesn't go to the landfill.
@@bumblebeebob i know that but they will let you take bits
@@mealex303 👊 Many times true. I'll bet most people that haven't spent time around welding and machine shops aren't aware they are some of the original recyclers though.
And the wonderful thing about the comments section is you just never know how much experience the person you're talking with has.
You didn't need all that stick out did you? you could've machined it shorter and got more bed space on your lathe. Or maybe it's because of the protector being in the way?
It's about as short as it needs to be, any less and it will get caught up with the way cover, and I'd rather keep the way cover the way it is. Plus it's rigid enough.
@@artisanmakes I was curious, that make perfect sense!
Do you have another channel about economics? Your voice and economics explained are identical 😅
👍👍👍
No grease on the dead center???‽? I guess no big deal but it looked like the center on the stock was turning blue. I know your removing that, but the center itself won't agree with that treatment over time. Sorry. I've recently began doing alot of od grinding so it was something I was primed to see.
If you look again I did use grease on the dead centre, albeit just regular grease, bit it seems to work just fine.
@@artisanmakes ahhhh my bad, I'm used to seeing really dark black stuff, sorry!
THE COLLET HOLDER NEEDS TO BE HARDENED, IF NOT HARDENED AND THEN GROUND THE HOLDER WILL DEGRADE AFTER BEING USED FOR SOME TIME.
You build things to what they are expected to undergo. The commercial ones are for sure, but this realistically wasn’t going to get much use. The contact area is quite large and the expected wear is so minimal. It’s not like it’s expected to fall or anything. I got 2 years use of of it with no change in the run out. Wear is not something that I would need to factor into this specific part.
I need to get me a little lathe. I have a little drill press with an XY table and a redneck DRO (couple harbor freight plastic digital calipers attached), and for the off times I need to mill a feature ... there's a Bridgeport at work I can use freely (on the weekends and the off shifts, got too much to do when I am working to deal with personal projects) but it seems like I am endlessly needing small round objects with round features that can't be bought easily local (ya know, oddball size screws and standoff's and spacers etc)