First of all, I'm glad you're uploading again. The main reason to writing a comment is to thank you for putting the playback speed up on screen when speeding up footage. It's very hard to get a real sense of this when watching most machining channels. I don't quite understand why it isn't more common, so it warrants mentioning it, thank you!
Thanks! I do think this is essential, as it's important to understand what's going on. For most setups I try and include at least one example at normal speed, then show the rest accelerated to prevent the video from getting boring. The speed overlay is really there to make it clear which is which.
Your videos are the ones I link to everyone to learn how to properly correct the misalignment in the V way. Why are your's the best? Well besides your pleasant voice and thorough explanations, you solve the issue by adding material instead of subtracting it. This is a very crucial difference I've seen in contrast to many others. In one video I saw a person scrape the V in the carriage until it sit correctly. But because of that, the apron was now too low, which caused the leadscrew to bind on the half nuts. So they modified the half nuts, but then the traversal gear didn't mesh with the rack and pinion, so they had to drill new holes to move the rack lower. It also thinned the carriage so much that it broke through the castings in some places. These lathes already have very thin castings, so they need as much of material as possible. Thank you for your videos and the love.
Hi Alistair. Delighted to see the next instalment of your interesting “rebuild”. The results of your efforts are very impressive. I also love working with cast iron. A lovely metal to machine, despite the mess it causes. 👏👏👍😀
Really nice to see your progress! Your videos were a very enjoyable study break for me when I was in school, studying mechanical engineering. I am really starting to think about getting myself a very small lathe, and tuning it up and possibly upgrading it to create small hobby parts. I’m enjoying the continuation, thanks for the upload!
Here's what I did: My beg was ok after inspection. I spray glued emery paper to the bed ways and lapped the moving parts on it. Validated with blue, worked perfectly.
Wow, this sounds like a DIY project that had been partially assembled before you got it. I'm going to go back and see if there are other videos to watch.
This is one of those slow burn channels, but I love these irregular updates. The lathe is slowly emerging from a bag of bits, to hopefully being a very useful and accurate tool.
yay! more adventures! love to see it. At one point I bought one of these mini lathes, and ended up junking it because of a workshop flood - You've been tempting me to pick up another one to futz around with it.... I'm torn on doing that and waiting to save up for a precision matthews lathe.
They're absolutely great as a testbed for learning on, especially if you can find a source where they're available really cheap like I did with this one. I've learned so much with this machine that it's worth way more than the purchase price even if I never use it.
Love back to you. Ideas: Artisan Makes made a nifty air powered scraper you might be interested in making for future jobs. Also, HAMMERLAND has a bunch of great ideas for the saddle including adjustable gibs and a better designed compound clamp. Give em a look, droogie!
I really enjoyed Artisan Makes last couple of videos, and I was inspired to think about a power scraper myself, though AM clearly demonstrated that it's not a simple task. Thanks for the tip to check Hammerland. It looks like a great source.
For low rigidity machines try polished tooling for aluminum. Tooling for steel has a large edge radius, this makes it last a lot longer when cutting steel, but it also increases the cutting forces. Tooling for aluminum is a lot sharper, this significantly reduces cutting load and thus deflection, as well as allowing smaller depth of cuts without the ripple you were getting. The ripple was the tool rubbing until enough feed pressure initiated a cut.
'old fashioned' workshop manuals have designs for tools used with different materials - brass is quite different. Carbon steel tools are quite adequate for most jobs so long as you keep them cool, HSS & Carbide were developed for rapid production work & are in fact less sharp than Carbon Steel, you can even make your own tools from mild steel then case harden it for 'short run' applications, the advantage of both types of Carbon Steel tooling is that you can saw & file it to shape before hardening & final stoning.
@@pcka12 The sharpness is actually in the other direction, in regards to machining that is. The cutter material needs to be hard enough to support the cutting edge forces, if it is too soft the edge is deformed into a larger radius. Mild steel case hardened: 50-60 HRC surface, 5-10µm edge HSS: 60-67 HRC, 1-5µm edge Ultra fine grain carbide: 75-85 HRC, 0.5-1 µm edge Monocrystalline Diamond: 98-100 HRC, 0.1 µm edge Now if the material to be cut is softer like in a razor or a knife, how fine you can get the edge is how sharp you can get it. Dull knife: >1 µm Utility blade: 0.3-0.4 µm Dull razor: 0.3 µm Sharp razor: 0.1 µm Feather razor: 0.05 µm Obsidian scalpel: 0.003 µm If your looking for a good edge try cheap uncoated ultra fine grain carbide, since carbide needs diamond grinding the edge tends to be a lot better than an equivalent HSS edge.
@ChatNoirLe you fail to mention Carbon Steel, which certainly used to be used to remove the 'chilled' crust from cast iron rolls. If, in the conventional way, you press a hardness tester into the surface of case hardened mild steel, you get quite a low 'resistance' result. However, if you file or machine a piece of mild steel to an acute angle then case harden it you have created a small piece of carbon steel attached to a mild steel support which would be difficult to test with a standard hardness tester, but is certainly hard as cutting tests show.
@@pcka12 Although the case hardened surface(50-60 HRC) is similar in hardness to HSS(60-67 HRC) it still lacks in other areas compared to HSS. The case depth tends to be fairly thin(0.5-1 mm), where the hardness is a gradient to the soft core(20-30 HRC), this doesn't provide much support to the harder edge leading to a lower achievable edge radius. HSS also has a lot of dense hard carbides in it's structure(tungsten, molybdenum, vanadium, cobalt), this give a high degree of edge wear resistance, a case hardened surface lacks these so the edge breaks down quickly to a larger radius. As for chilled cast iron, that is pretty hard(57-67 HRC), that hardness drops away further from the surface, so short of carbide or ceramic, cutting quickly wears your tool. Which is why you take a deep depth of cut, it is so the edge is cutting the softer material while the harder material is peeled off without directly cutting it. For hardness testing a Vickers or Knoop hardness test works for a thin surface.
@ChatNoirLe you don't seem to have got the point! By employing case hardening it is possible to make 'short run' & utilitarian tooling very easily with commonly available tools because 'carbon steel' (an alloy of carbon & iron) can be very hard (as in the surface of files) & so long as it is not allowed to become denatured by excessive heat it will do the job without the need for sophisticated grinding equipment. And the edges of such tools can be very sharp as is the case with traditional steel razors, The development of High Speed Steel & Ceramic tooling was historically a way of speeding up manufacturing by overcoming the problems created by the generation of heat at work surfaces.
Wenn du einen prüfdorn mk3 in den spindelstock steckst ( ohne Backenfutter) wirst du feststellen das auch die Ausrichtung zum Bett nicht parallel ist. Bei meiner musste ich hinten unter die Schrauben 1,5 mm vorne und 2,4mm hinten unterlegen. Wenn du lange Sachen mit dem Teil drehen willst ( bei mir waren es m12x1 gewindespindeln) merkst du mit der bügelmesschraube das man mit diesem Teil nur Kegel drehen kann. Ich hab mir zu guter letzt einen kompletten spindelstock selber gebaut.
I'm afraid my German isn't good enough to respond in your language, so I'll write in English. That's a really great point, and that's something I certainly want to work on later. For this video my objective was to start by fixing the fundamental issues with the fit. Once I have all three parts fitting properly, I plan to work on improving the geometry to make sure the lathe is turning true. Thanks for reminding me of this long-term goal.
I have a Harbor Freight 7x mini lathe. My headstock doesn't have that appallingly bad fit. I die align the headstock but it only took about .002" of shim on one corner to bring it into alignment.
You could have probably scored and snapped those pieces as they are so thin. And you could have machine both shims on either side of the vice so you didn't risk unequal load on the vice jaws as you aren't clamping on just one side then. People complain about working with cast iron but it really is forgiving to machine and can give a really good finish with care.
It would be best if the bed was bolted down and level before the final fit of the headstock otherwise you may be scraping it to match a potential twist in the bed. I sent you a link to a . PDF that might be helpful to you to sequence the process. Looking good!
In my case the headstock is not sitting flat. Even if the 2 bolts are tighten into the way. Whats right in this situation?. I feel it should be best to make the gap look similar all way.
There was a time when attendance at certain industrial/engineering sites in the UK required day long safety inductions mostly involving video presentations - "in the Avent of a continuous siren you should immediately make your way to the nearest muster point which is under the Eiffel Tower". You have the perfect voice for the narration of such videos. Lovely detailed presentation, thank you.
The only valid reference point that I can think of on a minilathe head stock are the bearing surfaces for the chuck and maybe not even those. Close enough is good enough for these guys I suppose.
I am about to venture into the cheap mini machining world. I had my mind set on a mini lathe, but if you had to pick one, would you pick a mini lathe or a mini milling machine first?
I'd definitely get a lathe first. You get more capability for a given size and cost of a machine, and you can add the ability to do some milling operations to a lathe with a vertical slide for fairly little more money.
Cast iron is great to machine but boy is it dirty and abrasive. You do some great work,personally I like Stefan Gotteswinter idea that Chines tools are a kit of parts to assemble properly with the accuracy your prepared to use Cast iron swarf is supposed to be good for grass as well, makes it greener (not a lot of people know that 😁 )
Cast iron swarf and copper filings and even brass filings are good slow release metallic fertilizer... Just better make sure that those were dry cut on a damn clean machine, as otherwise you are putting damn nasty lubricants into the ground or your garden... Brass offers zinc and copper, Iron offers iron and carbon, all of which are essential for plants... Funnily enough, for a machinist, i have actually 2 years of college of agronomy and agriculture education, so i know a bit about that shit, well, more than a bit, but yeah, that part of my ed. is now just anecdotal in the grand scheme... I never thought i would actually own machines, despite learning on my own about machining and all things related for 15+ years... What is better as fertilizer is citric acid used to dissolve rusty scale off of metal... The metals better be soaped up and cleaned off of other sludge before, but clean rust dissolved in citric acid is essentially the liquid iron fertilizer that you can get for tomatoes and other plants... The acid better be fully neutralized or barely acidic(soil will neutralize it and allow it to be enriched by whatever minerals it dissolves) before you dilute it for watering of the plants, but surely enough ferric citrate is EDTA fertilizer - approved and commonly used to offer plants a quick source of iron... You should see the area where i grind shit for weld prep - outside... The dust becomes rust, i pour some acid over it, let it bubble and wash it away when it stops - cleaning the tile back to shiny state(citric acid does not attack ceramic as easily as it does rust), but the grass and weeds that grow just at the ``step`` where the junk is washed down into soil is green as pine needles, and acid always weakens enough in reaction not to even harm the grass and weeds... The only issue is that that is not clean steel, oft has paint on it and so on, but that is not my garden, nor does anything but weeds grow there(well, they try, but that is why we have lawn mowers, now don`t we...)... Cheers and best regards! Steuss
@@camillosteuss That's damn cool response. I gave up on university idea after talking to geology degree guy who couldn't get a job so was working for local council on the trash truck (emptying dustbins five days a week)
@@1crazypj The girl i went to college with has finished a specialization and maybe even has a doctor`s degree(6 years if i recall right) and now she works at a fucking plant pharmacy(agricultural and agronomy supplements, feeds, fertilizers, food for farm animals, plant saplings and such...)... We went to same college, same specialization or class, however you wanna call it... She spent 6 fucking years studying her ass off to be a peasant with a degree... And i don`t mean that in a demeaning way, on the contrary, i want her to do that same job(if it pleases her, it is easy work at least), but to make at least 5x as much as she does for it, because she was one of the few people who like me - actually studied, had a passion and love for botanical and natural sciences and likely could have switched to medicine college if she decided to, as we both had similar zeal for studying as youngins and both studied similar fields, with me focusing more on physics and biology, and her biology and chemistry... Anyways, that is long behind us now, well, more long for me than her, as i booted that shit much sooner, but alas, things turn out the way they do for a reason... At least they have in my case... Also, geology was one of the subjects we both studied at the college, as agronomy and agriculture do not go without geology and pedology and other soil science fields of research and study... Speak not of geology to me, i still recall the formulae for calculating erosion by wind and water, albedo factors of the surfaces and that shit... I`ll have to go downstairs and huff some machine lubricant just to take my mind off of that horror now...
Yes, cast iron is lovely to machine. But ... I removed a kilogram from a cast iron blank to make a custom chuck back plate for my lathe. You do _not_ want a kilogram of iron chips and dust in your shop! Also, paste wax on threads is my choice to prevent sticking (where a silicone plug isn't suitable, that is!)
I got permission to go through the scrap bin at a workshop that does locomotive restoration, and found the bar after digging through. Cast iron really isn't easy to come by.
I would not use a 2 flute endmill, carbide or no - to side mill what is expected to turn out a flat and even surface... Sidemilling is shit at producing even and straight cuts due to cutter deflection over the length(uneven deflection at that, well, even, but evenly changing like a taper)... Add to that a 2 flute config. cutter which is less rigid than a 4 fluter or 6 and more flute cutter(i know, proxy can`t even consider using a 6fl. endmill, but you get my point)... Also, i would have flat lapped the roughed shims and headstock, as the burr must have kicked up some burrs of it`s own, which has added positive bumps to negative furrows that you roughed in for the glue... Ultimately that may not be the worst thing, as dimpling is oft used with about to be brazed parts to achieve a pseudo-standoff between the surfaces - exactly to allow the brazing media to flow between, but that is now entering the field of advanced speculation on the topic of metal bonding and optimal surface finish for that purpose... You also should have checked the vertical alignment of the headstock, as that side of the casting - painted, mind you - could offer some invisible tilt to the setup, which equates to mill-head nod... Otherwise, a nice job... As can be said of what came before... This thankfully is not a great machine in the first place, so it makes for a good practice piece... I also seem to see an interesting casting in the bgrnd of the mill... Funnily enough, i just snagged a very similar lathe to the one behind your mill, tho, mine has damaged ways by some subhuman swine - which will make for a nasty bit of repair work... But it is funny to see another dude`s blurred out ``parts`` which quite resemble one`s own oily, hard slab... Jokes aside, which make is that olden lathe? I know that like 20 makers produced similar designs back in the good old days... Mine is a local reproduction of a design, likely approved by the whoever granted the design, as the castings are really nice and not just a shoddy replica that has no right to be proud of quality - lacking a license to copy the design... Tho, that returns me to damaged ways and the swine which cut into them with an angle grinder to get 1/2inch extra max. diameter swing... But she cost me less than a can of baked beans, so i could not say no... Best regards! Steuss
Thanks, that's a great point. I'm not too worried about that at this stage, as it seems like everything about this lathe was out of alignment to start with. I'm definitely going to focus on correcting the alignment once I have the basic fit corrected.
@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathenot to sound like a dick but that makes no sense ag all . .. he right, if your two ends dont meet at the same elevation then youre back to square one… You can always shim your headstock to raise it to the proper elevation too
It feels like the weakest, and it also feels like the most important. I left it until last because I wanted to improve my skills as much as possible before I started on the saddle, and I think it paid off.
These lathes are the weakest part of these lathes... They are wholly made as an act of worshiping the corporate greed-gods, and not just by being 100% a product of FEA, but also by relying on most wildly sourced materials that would not pass a TUV inspection even as a disc-brake rotor material, let alone as a machine component, but alas, they do make good learning projects and a ``cheap`` entry into the world of machining... That steam loc. fire bar looks like it is 10x better iron than the lathe that is meant to mend... Which is sad as fuck... What is supposed to be literally a piece of a ``fireplace`` being magnitudes better than actual structural precision component of a machine is just not right... That bar sawed nice and the structure appears most good, fine grained, just *chef`s kiss* grade of what seems to be ductile iron, and in a place where the only thing that matters is that it does not melt or crack from heat... I have seen shittier cast iron engine blocks from the 90`s in Elantras and other JDM`s - that had nowhere near as good of a grade of iron as this ``fireplace`` chunk has... Which is ridiculous...
When mixing epoxy or any two part material, you really shouldn't use cardboard or wood because they can suck up the bonding agents and mess your mixture up.
I've had to deal with work hardening of stainless steels, and some of the tougher tool steels like O1, but so far cast iron hasn't caused me any problems. The iron in this video is very old, and has been annealed over decades at the bottom of a locomotive fire box, so it may not be typical compared to modern cast iron.
@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLatheAs I understand it, most Cast Iron does not work harden. It's brittle, and can take very little plastic deformity before it breaks. In fact those 1mm thick shims could have very easily been snapped in half instead of cut with a hacksaw. Steel work hardens, and that is why scraping it is so difficult. The negative rake on the carbide scraper deforms the steel as you scrape it, work hardening it and causing the blade to skip across it.
@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLatheYes, there should be virtually no work hardening with cast iron. It is very likely just inclusions of harder undissolved pieces if it was not a good casting (Chinese quality).
First of all, I'm glad you're uploading again.
The main reason to writing a comment is to thank you for putting the playback speed up on screen when speeding up footage. It's very hard to get a real sense of this when watching most machining channels. I don't quite understand why it isn't more common, so it warrants mentioning it, thank you!
Thanks! I do think this is essential, as it's important to understand what's going on. For most setups I try and include at least one example at normal speed, then show the rest accelerated to prevent the video from getting boring. The speed overlay is really there to make it clear which is which.
Your videos are the ones I link to everyone to learn how to properly correct the misalignment in the V way.
Why are your's the best? Well besides your pleasant voice and thorough explanations, you solve the issue by adding material instead of subtracting it. This is a very crucial difference I've seen in contrast to many others.
In one video I saw a person scrape the V in the carriage until it sit correctly. But because of that, the apron was now too low, which caused the leadscrew to bind on the half nuts. So they modified the half nuts, but then the traversal gear didn't mesh with the rack and pinion, so they had to drill new holes to move the rack lower.
It also thinned the carriage so much that it broke through the castings in some places. These lathes already have very thin castings, so they need as much of material as possible.
Thank you for your videos and the love.
Hi Alistair. Delighted to see the next instalment of your interesting “rebuild”. The results of your efforts are very impressive. I also love working with cast iron. A lovely metal to machine, despite the mess it causes. 👏👏👍😀
Really nice to see your progress! Your videos were a very enjoyable study break for me when I was in school, studying mechanical engineering. I am really starting to think about getting myself a very small lathe, and tuning it up and possibly upgrading it to create small hobby parts. I’m enjoying the continuation, thanks for the upload!
Here's what I did: My beg was ok after inspection. I spray glued emery paper to the bed ways and lapped the moving parts on it. Validated with blue, worked perfectly.
Wow, this sounds like a DIY project that had been partially assembled before you got it. I'm going to go back and see if there are other videos to watch.
This is one of those slow burn channels, but I love these irregular updates. The lathe is slowly emerging from a bag of bits, to hopefully being a very useful and accurate tool.
yay! more adventures! love to see it.
At one point I bought one of these mini lathes, and ended up junking it because of a workshop flood - You've been tempting me to pick up another one to futz around with it.... I'm torn on doing that and waiting to save up for a precision matthews lathe.
They're absolutely great as a testbed for learning on, especially if you can find a source where they're available really cheap like I did with this one. I've learned so much with this machine that it's worth way more than the purchase price even if I never use it.
Love back to you.
Ideas: Artisan Makes made a nifty air powered scraper you might be interested in making for future jobs. Also, HAMMERLAND has a bunch of great ideas for the saddle including adjustable gibs and a better designed compound clamp. Give em a look, droogie!
I really enjoyed Artisan Makes last couple of videos, and I was inspired to think about a power scraper myself, though AM clearly demonstrated that it's not a simple task. Thanks for the tip to check Hammerland. It looks like a great source.
Great to see you. Very informative. Thanks for sharing.
I would suggest putting a piece on the other side of the vise too, so the jaw has more equal clamping force.
I'm rebuilding a small mill right now so I'll keep an eye out for your next video! This one was great too!
For low rigidity machines try polished tooling for aluminum.
Tooling for steel has a large edge radius, this makes it last a lot longer when cutting steel, but it also increases the cutting forces.
Tooling for aluminum is a lot sharper, this significantly reduces cutting load and thus deflection, as well as allowing smaller depth of cuts without the ripple you were getting.
The ripple was the tool rubbing until enough feed pressure initiated a cut.
'old fashioned' workshop manuals have designs for tools used with different materials - brass is quite different.
Carbon steel tools are quite adequate for most jobs so long as you keep them cool, HSS & Carbide were developed for rapid production work & are in fact less sharp than Carbon Steel, you can even make your own tools from mild steel then case harden it for 'short run' applications, the advantage of both types of Carbon Steel tooling is that you can saw & file it to shape before hardening & final stoning.
@@pcka12 The sharpness is actually in the other direction, in regards to machining that is.
The cutter material needs to be hard enough to support the cutting edge forces, if it is too soft the edge is deformed into a larger radius.
Mild steel case hardened:
50-60 HRC surface, 5-10µm edge
HSS:
60-67 HRC, 1-5µm edge
Ultra fine grain carbide:
75-85 HRC, 0.5-1 µm edge
Monocrystalline Diamond:
98-100 HRC, 0.1 µm edge
Now if the material to be cut is softer like in a razor or a knife, how fine you can get the edge is how sharp you can get it.
Dull knife: >1 µm
Utility blade: 0.3-0.4 µm
Dull razor: 0.3 µm
Sharp razor: 0.1 µm
Feather razor: 0.05 µm
Obsidian scalpel: 0.003 µm
If your looking for a good edge try cheap uncoated ultra fine grain carbide, since carbide needs diamond grinding the edge tends to be a lot better than an equivalent HSS edge.
@ChatNoirLe you fail to mention Carbon Steel, which certainly used to be used to remove the 'chilled' crust from cast iron rolls.
If, in the conventional way, you press a hardness tester into the surface of case hardened mild steel, you get quite a low 'resistance' result. However, if you file or machine a piece of mild steel to an acute angle then case harden it you have created a small piece of carbon steel attached to a mild steel support which would be difficult to test with a standard hardness tester, but is certainly hard as cutting tests show.
@@pcka12 Although the case hardened surface(50-60 HRC) is similar in hardness to HSS(60-67 HRC) it still lacks in other areas compared to HSS.
The case depth tends to be fairly thin(0.5-1 mm), where the hardness is a gradient to the soft core(20-30 HRC), this doesn't provide much support to the harder edge leading to a lower achievable edge radius.
HSS also has a lot of dense hard carbides in it's structure(tungsten, molybdenum, vanadium, cobalt), this give a high degree of edge wear resistance, a case hardened surface lacks these so the edge breaks down quickly to a larger radius.
As for chilled cast iron, that is pretty hard(57-67 HRC), that hardness drops away further from the surface, so short of carbide or ceramic, cutting quickly wears your tool.
Which is why you take a deep depth of cut, it is so the edge is cutting the softer material while the harder material is peeled off without directly cutting it.
For hardness testing a Vickers or Knoop hardness test works for a thin surface.
@ChatNoirLe you don't seem to have got the point!
By employing case hardening it is possible to make 'short run' & utilitarian tooling very easily with commonly available tools because 'carbon steel' (an alloy of carbon & iron) can be very hard (as in the surface of files) & so long as it is not allowed to become denatured by excessive heat it will do the job without the need for sophisticated grinding equipment.
And the edges of such tools can be very sharp as is the case with traditional steel razors,
The development of High Speed Steel & Ceramic tooling was historically a way of speeding up manufacturing by overcoming the problems created by the generation of heat at work surfaces.
Wenn du einen prüfdorn mk3 in den spindelstock steckst ( ohne Backenfutter) wirst du feststellen das auch die Ausrichtung zum Bett nicht parallel ist. Bei meiner musste ich hinten unter die Schrauben 1,5 mm vorne und 2,4mm hinten unterlegen. Wenn du lange Sachen mit dem Teil drehen willst ( bei mir waren es m12x1 gewindespindeln) merkst du mit der bügelmesschraube das man mit diesem Teil nur Kegel drehen kann. Ich hab mir zu guter letzt einen kompletten spindelstock selber gebaut.
I'm afraid my German isn't good enough to respond in your language, so I'll write in English.
That's a really great point, and that's something I certainly want to work on later. For this video my objective was to start by fixing the fundamental issues with the fit. Once I have all three parts fitting properly, I plan to work on improving the geometry to make sure the lathe is turning true. Thanks for reminding me of this long-term goal.
Good one. This sure is a big improvement.
Very nice work Alistair!
A pleasure to watch, as always
I have a Harbor Freight 7x mini lathe. My headstock doesn't have that appallingly bad fit. I die align the headstock but it only took about .002" of shim on one corner to bring it into alignment.
You could have probably scored and snapped those pieces as they are so thin.
And you could have machine both shims on either side of the vice so you didn't risk unequal load on the vice jaws as you aren't clamping on just one side then.
People complain about working with cast iron but it really is forgiving to machine and can give a really good finish with care.
It would be best if the bed was bolted down and level before the final fit of the headstock otherwise you may be scraping it to match a potential twist in the bed. I sent you a link to a . PDF that might be helpful to you to sequence the process.
Looking good!
In my case the headstock is not sitting flat. Even if the 2 bolts are tighten into the way.
Whats right in this situation?. I feel it should be best to make the gap look similar all way.
Very nice work sir.
There was a time when attendance at certain industrial/engineering sites in the UK required day long safety inductions mostly involving video presentations - "in the Avent of a continuous siren you should immediately make your way to the nearest muster point which is under the Eiffel Tower". You have the perfect voice for the narration of such videos. Lovely detailed presentation, thank you.
The only valid reference point that I can think of on a minilathe head stock are the bearing surfaces for the chuck and maybe not even those. Close enough is good enough for these guys I suppose.
I am about to venture into the cheap mini machining world. I had my mind set on a mini lathe, but if you had to pick one, would you pick a mini lathe or a mini milling machine first?
I'd definitely get a lathe first. You get more capability for a given size and cost of a machine, and you can add the ability to do some milling operations to a lathe with a vertical slide for fairly little more money.
Cast iron is great to machine but boy is it dirty and abrasive.
You do some great work,personally I like Stefan Gotteswinter idea that Chines tools are a kit of parts to assemble properly with the accuracy your prepared to use
Cast iron swarf is supposed to be good for grass as well, makes it greener (not a lot of people know that 😁 )
Cast iron swarf and copper filings and even brass filings are good slow release metallic fertilizer... Just better make sure that those were dry cut on a damn clean machine, as otherwise you are putting damn nasty lubricants into the ground or your garden... Brass offers zinc and copper, Iron offers iron and carbon, all of which are essential for plants...
Funnily enough, for a machinist, i have actually 2 years of college of agronomy and agriculture education, so i know a bit about that shit, well, more than a bit, but yeah, that part of my ed. is now just anecdotal in the grand scheme... I never thought i would actually own machines, despite learning on my own about machining and all things related for 15+ years...
What is better as fertilizer is citric acid used to dissolve rusty scale off of metal... The metals better be soaped up and cleaned off of other sludge before, but clean rust dissolved in citric acid is essentially the liquid iron fertilizer that you can get for tomatoes and other plants... The acid better be fully neutralized or barely acidic(soil will neutralize it and allow it to be enriched by whatever minerals it dissolves) before you dilute it for watering of the plants, but surely enough ferric citrate is EDTA fertilizer - approved and commonly used to offer plants a quick source of iron...
You should see the area where i grind shit for weld prep - outside... The dust becomes rust, i pour some acid over it, let it bubble and wash it away when it stops - cleaning the tile back to shiny state(citric acid does not attack ceramic as easily as it does rust), but the grass and weeds that grow just at the ``step`` where the junk is washed down into soil is green as pine needles, and acid always weakens enough in reaction not to even harm the grass and weeds... The only issue is that that is not clean steel, oft has paint on it and so on, but that is not my garden, nor does anything but weeds grow there(well, they try, but that is why we have lawn mowers, now don`t we...)...
Cheers and best regards!
Steuss
@@camillosteuss That's damn cool response.
I gave up on university idea after talking to geology degree guy who couldn't get a job so was working for local council on the trash truck (emptying dustbins five days a week)
@@1crazypj The girl i went to college with has finished a specialization and maybe even has a doctor`s degree(6 years if i recall right) and now she works at a fucking plant pharmacy(agricultural and agronomy supplements, feeds, fertilizers, food for farm animals, plant saplings and such...)... We went to same college, same specialization or class, however you wanna call it... She spent 6 fucking years studying her ass off to be a peasant with a degree... And i don`t mean that in a demeaning way, on the contrary, i want her to do that same job(if it pleases her, it is easy work at least), but to make at least 5x as much as she does for it, because she was one of the few people who like me - actually studied, had a passion and love for botanical and natural sciences and likely could have switched to medicine college if she decided to, as we both had similar zeal for studying as youngins and both studied similar fields, with me focusing more on physics and biology, and her biology and chemistry...
Anyways, that is long behind us now, well, more long for me than her, as i booted that shit much sooner, but alas, things turn out the way they do for a reason... At least they have in my case...
Also, geology was one of the subjects we both studied at the college, as agronomy and agriculture do not go without geology and pedology and other soil science fields of research and study... Speak not of geology to me, i still recall the formulae for calculating erosion by wind and water, albedo factors of the surfaces and that shit... I`ll have to go downstairs and huff some machine lubricant just to take my mind off of that horror now...
Yes, cast iron is lovely to machine. But ...
I removed a kilogram from a cast iron blank to make a custom chuck back plate for my lathe.
You do _not_ want a kilogram of iron chips and dust in your shop!
Also, paste wax on threads is my choice to prevent sticking (where a silicone plug isn't suitable, that is!)
Would love to know where you got the cast iron bar stock please!?
I got permission to go through the scrap bin at a workshop that does locomotive restoration, and found the bar after digging through. Cast iron really isn't easy to come by.
@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe You can get rounds but not flats generally, thanks!
@@CandidZulu by rounds, do you mean drain covers? ;-)
@@EmyrDerfel As much as I like free materials. I haven't considered them actually!
Thanks for sharing 👍
I would not use a 2 flute endmill, carbide or no - to side mill what is expected to turn out a flat and even surface... Sidemilling is shit at producing even and straight cuts due to cutter deflection over the length(uneven deflection at that, well, even, but evenly changing like a taper)... Add to that a 2 flute config. cutter which is less rigid than a 4 fluter or 6 and more flute cutter(i know, proxy can`t even consider using a 6fl. endmill, but you get my point)...
Also, i would have flat lapped the roughed shims and headstock, as the burr must have kicked up some burrs of it`s own, which has added positive bumps to negative furrows that you roughed in for the glue... Ultimately that may not be the worst thing, as dimpling is oft used with about to be brazed parts to achieve a pseudo-standoff between the surfaces - exactly to allow the brazing media to flow between, but that is now entering the field of advanced speculation on the topic of metal bonding and optimal surface finish for that purpose...
You also should have checked the vertical alignment of the headstock, as that side of the casting - painted, mind you - could offer some invisible tilt to the setup, which equates to mill-head nod...
Otherwise, a nice job... As can be said of what came before... This thankfully is not a great machine in the first place, so it makes for a good practice piece...
I also seem to see an interesting casting in the bgrnd of the mill... Funnily enough, i just snagged a very similar lathe to the one behind your mill, tho, mine has damaged ways by some subhuman swine - which will make for a nasty bit of repair work... But it is funny to see another dude`s blurred out ``parts`` which quite resemble one`s own oily, hard slab... Jokes aside, which make is that olden lathe? I know that like 20 makers produced similar designs back in the good old days... Mine is a local reproduction of a design, likely approved by the whoever granted the design, as the castings are really nice and not just a shoddy replica that has no right to be proud of quality - lacking a license to copy the design... Tho, that returns me to damaged ways and the swine which cut into them with an angle grinder to get 1/2inch extra max. diameter swing... But she cost me less than a can of baked beans, so i could not say no...
Best regards!
Steuss
Be careful as all this scraping can also change the alignment of the spindle in contrast to the bed.
Thanks, that's a great point. I'm not too worried about that at this stage, as it seems like everything about this lathe was out of alignment to start with. I'm definitely going to focus on correcting the alignment once I have the basic fit corrected.
@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLatheI’m concerned about the height of the tailstock vs the headstock.
@@melgross That alignment will definitely have changed, but the heights were not aligned correctly at all to start with, so no damage done.
@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathenot to sound like a dick but that makes no sense ag all
. ..
he right, if your two ends dont meet at the same elevation then youre back to square one…
You can always shim your headstock to raise it to the proper elevation too
Thanks
Nice job. Thanks for taking the time to upload this informative video.
Regards Doc from Australia.
I'm looking forward to the carriage, I think that's the weakest part of these lathes
It feels like the weakest, and it also feels like the most important. I left it until last because I wanted to improve my skills as much as possible before I started on the saddle, and I think it paid off.
These lathes are the weakest part of these lathes... They are wholly made as an act of worshiping the corporate greed-gods, and not just by being 100% a product of FEA, but also by relying on most wildly sourced materials that would not pass a TUV inspection even as a disc-brake rotor material, let alone as a machine component, but alas, they do make good learning projects and a ``cheap`` entry into the world of machining...
That steam loc. fire bar looks like it is 10x better iron than the lathe that is meant to mend... Which is sad as fuck... What is supposed to be literally a piece of a ``fireplace`` being magnitudes better than actual structural precision component of a machine is just not right... That bar sawed nice and the structure appears most good, fine grained, just *chef`s kiss* grade of what seems to be ductile iron, and in a place where the only thing that matters is that it does not melt or crack from heat... I have seen shittier cast iron engine blocks from the 90`s in Elantras and other JDM`s - that had nowhere near as good of a grade of iron as this ``fireplace`` chunk has... Which is ridiculous...
When mixing epoxy or any two part material, you really shouldn't use cardboard or wood because they can suck up the bonding agents and mess your mixture up.
@22:05 tenths?
Tenths of a millimetre. Not sure I understand what you're asking?
@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe Oh I was thinking .37 to .39 was two hundredths.
@@MatthewHolevinski The target thickness was around 1.1mm before scraping, as the gauge block at the beginning showed the gap at around 1.08mm.
@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe Ahh I misunderstood.
Cast iron is all fun and games until it decides randomly to work harden and absolutely wreck whatever's being used to cut it >.>
I've had to deal with work hardening of stainless steels, and some of the tougher tool steels like O1, but so far cast iron hasn't caused me any problems. The iron in this video is very old, and has been annealed over decades at the bottom of a locomotive fire box, so it may not be typical compared to modern cast iron.
@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLatheAs I understand it, most Cast Iron does not work harden. It's brittle, and can take very little plastic deformity before it breaks. In fact those 1mm thick shims could have very easily been snapped in half instead of cut with a hacksaw.
Steel work hardens, and that is why scraping it is so difficult. The negative rake on the carbide scraper deforms the steel as you scrape it, work hardening it and causing the blade to skip across it.
@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLatheYes, there should be virtually no work hardening with cast iron. It is very likely just inclusions of harder undissolved pieces if it was not a good casting (Chinese quality).
You have most likely seen this, but in the event you need to scrape carbon steel again, th-cam.com/video/FgxjiEBhKvM/w-d-xo.html is very helpful.
Thanks! I've been sent info about this channel a few times, and it's really interesting stuff.
I see Manila The I watch :)
Cast Iron having free carbon in it (graphite) is self lubricating.
mmmmm... if you want some more practice I have a 7x12 that needs the same treatment :-)