UPGRADING THE MINI LATHE
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2019
- I got lots of requests to show what I was doing to my mini lathe spindle bearings last week. Here is the way I decided to change out the spindle bearings to something I could adjust. I also make and install a great way to oil the bearings once installed to keep them lubed. Huge thanks to all my supporters who make this possible. If you would like to support the channel please consider joining my patreon page. If you would like to make a onetime shop donation or monthly follow the link below to my PayPal
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/ stevesummers - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
The bearings I use are in this video are not angular contact bearings as I call them. They are tapered roller bearings. They are better choices than the ones I use here but these were inexpensive. You can get angular contact bearings sealed and avoid some of the issues I have. Do some research and you'll find plenty of good info about these lathes and the upgrades available. They are sites dedicated to these little lathes with far more experienced users than me.
They are also SKF not SFK
@@stevewilliams587 and made in sweden not germany!
@@flightace1
If you look at when Steve is showing the oiler with the bearing installed you'll see it has "made in Germany" stamped on the bearing! 😉
@@BM-jy6cb My bad, i did not think off that Svenska Kullager Fabriken has produktion in severall diffren countries
well it's a lathe th-cam.com/users/postUgkxN9zrzkkhnjUF5PQbuA_B1gYdsfCu9k6z but it wasn't what i would have anticipated. Headstock, tailstock, carriage apron are manufactured from aluminum now not cast iron. The spindle diameter for the bearings is too small allowing for a few play in the spindle so I am using some blue Loctite to take out the play.
Great Problem solving, Steve.....regards from Frankfurt/ Germany
I enjoyed the upgrade and surely it will be better after you’re done.👍 Look forward to all the mini lathe mods👌👊🏻
Great video Steve. Thanks
Enjoyed...nice upgrade
Great video! Very well made and well detailed. Thanks!
great project
Nice work Steve, and you can never go wrong with improving lubrication success. I will be interested to see the development of your outer seals you are designing, cheers!
Hi Steve, Having a mini lathe myself, your video has inspired me to improve it.
Have watched all your other videos and learned a lot.
Thanks. From the uk
When you were starting the lapping process, I swear it looked like a doctor prepping a patient for a minor surgery...
Very astute.well done.👍
Enjoyed Steve! That lap looks familiar ;-)
ATB, Robin
Great idea to put the oilers on each bearing, it is much simpler than creating a sealed box. It is fun watch a real machinist improve these mini lathes.
Great job on the oilers, and good upgrade on the bearings. When you make your cover, machine it for an oil seal.
Easily done and you should be able to find a standard seal to fit the shaft, and make the cover to fit the seal.
Hi Steve I just want to say I love you videos. As far as replacing the ball bearings with tapered roller bearings ( they are not called angular contact bearings) I believe timken makes the tapered roller bearings with rubber seals now. just contact a timken distributor with the proper sizes.and
keep up the great videos.
Awesome video. Thanks for taking the time.
Hi Steve, Just found your TH-cam site, nice little job on the lube system for your mini lathe. it begs the question that always arises.. you need a lathe to fix a lathe 😉 👍
I've got a German made molder with angular contact bearings, in matched sets, pre-loaded via a stack of star washers. They turn @ 6,000 rpm & carry 5+" dia. X 9" long steel heads, cantilevered, for years, grease lubricated. Seems like a pretty good system for moderate use, 8 hr/day. The matched set is on the working end. The belt drive end has a single floating, ball bearing that takes up the heat movement. Big, high production molders can use an oil mist system.
I'm pretty sure you (& your great grand kids) can run your mini's bearings for a very long time. Of course they will have converted it to CNC, auto programmed by brain waves sent from their embedded computer communication device.
When seeing the arbor press again in this video, I remembered I wanted to comment back when you restored it. I have an old engineering manual which shows that the v-groove etc. on the underside is for mounting it directly to the right-hand end of a lathe´s ways, for convenience in pressing lathe arbors and mandrels in and out of parts. I seem to remember you wondered why the bottom of it looks the way it does. Nice video.
I love your work! Although producing all over the world, SKF is a Swedish company (SKF stands for Svenska Kullagerfabriken).
Steve, I particularly like the slow, patient approach that you take. You don't assume that the viewer is an idiot or an old hand at the shop. I remember when I worked at a shop on LI, where you couldn't stop and think about what you were doing or going to do. It also didn't help that I wasn't the right ethnicity and the shop foreman though knowledgeable, got into this country via operation paperclip, as an also-ran, if you know what I mean. Keep doing what you are doing. You make this corona thing tolerable. Thanks.
@25:30 I can recommend two options for making tinning of small items much easier - use ordinary masking tape to hold the work [your copper tubing] down to your vise, or use masking tape to hold the solder pencil on the bench while you do your tinning. The 'tape pencil to bench' is particularly useful when doing repetitive task on many small parts. Stick another piece of tape to the bench directly under the tip of the pencil to catch the drips of solder and flux.
Very cool. Looking foward to the rest of this series.
Morning Steve great content on your wife's mini lathe lol I couldn't pass that one up from when you first acquired it and she wanted it.
The oilers was a great idea and having a mini can be invaluable for many things
Yeah, I had forgotten about that. 👍. I should have had her help. 😁
bigdawgsbusa2 Absolutely.!.!.!.
Always a treat spending my Saturday mornings here Steve. Thanks a bunch for another good post.
Eclipse is almost certainly made in Sheffield in the UK!
and im sure SKF are Swedish...?
countteddy yes. SKF is a swedish company, originaly from Gothenburg on the west coast.
Small bearings, like the one in the video is not made in sweden any more. Only big besrings and special berings are made in sweden.
Greatings from sweden. 😀
Eclipse is no more , any new eclipse is possibly made in china
@@velosapien ? Eclipse is still going strong
Find an oil seal that fits the spindle cover bore, then machine a steel insert to fit the spindle and oil seal bore. You can also machine a recess for an 'o' ring at the bearing side of the insert and be double sealed.. Its a common arrangement on motorcycle output shafts to seal the final drive.
SKF is an old company and is my favorite brand.
I have seen roller spindle bearings (Colchester) preloaded with strong springs mounted in a thick washer against the rear bearing and adj nut that compensate for expansion of a hot spindle. The rear bearing ID is slightly larger than the front to allow the bearing to slide easily when self.adjusting.
Hey Steve, do you need a daisy wheel for that arbor press? I have a NOS Dake wheel left from a project I built. You are welcome to it. I think it's the same size as the original unit on my matching Greenard.
A long video Steve but worth every minute of it. You are doing some creative and innovative shop projects. You are doing a great job of presenting these projects to us. My best to you and your family.. Joe
Geez, i really enjoy your channel. I love that there is no overwhelming music. just that peaceful sounds of your shop.
And a soothing monotone voice:)
Enjoyed the upgrade video!
Hy Steve,
why you do lube the bearings with oil? take grease ! like you would do at a heavy truck axle.
greetings from germany
walter
Good job Steve, great modifications for your little lathe and well thought out. As always your content is fantastic, keep up the good work. A Fan from Aus.
Steve, excellent video thanks for sharing.!.!.!.
Great video on lapping. Thanks
just a thought ... if you have the room ... use greased cord as packing seal as they used to use on the old turbine water wells on the farm ...
Never had any trouble with the Standard bearings !!
I have a 6 inch atlas little lathe for my small projects, 60 years old and atlas used timkin bearings with oilers,, l like useing it as much as my 12 inch,,, less radical. The little guy has no movement at all on dail indicator needle on spindle, found another one last weekend for 100 bucks, lol,, all USA made , l have a 12 x 36 atlas also 60 years old and so precise ways are excacally the same with micrometer and caliper down all 54 inches of the ways, crazy I got another one with sane model number and no wear either but big surprises was in the rusted bucket with it,,, steady rest and follower rest and faceplate with 3 difference dogs and milling attachment,,, 400 dollars for everything and has quick change gear box and nice 3 and 4 jaw Chucks,,,l love the vintage tools. To buy and restore them back to new condition.
Looks like a reasonable up grade. Like the oiler system.
Nice video. Interesting mod to your small lathe. I have a "Raglan, Little John" Lathe, 5" x 24", made in Nottingham UK in the 1960's. The spindle runs on "Timken" taper roller bearings and the lubrication is done in a very similar way to your mod. Holes are drilled into the headstock directly above the bearings and fitted with the spring loaded balls. Squirt the oil in and gravity does the rest. I oil every time I use the lathe. There is a seal around the spindle which helps to retain some of the oil. Keep up the good work!
Good modifications . Cheers .
Steve - I would think a tire bearing seal would work great in sealing the bearing from outside materials.
Tires don't need bearings or seals, so that was an odd comment. Do you mean that he should make a seal from an old car tire or something?
@John Coops actually they do, seal on the back side and dust cap on the outside
I know you were up in the air, but glad you posted this.
Oh yeah I did the tapered roller bearing swap a few years ago. Absolute world of difference!!!
I made rope seals for mine and just used a good wheel bearing grease. Been working good for 4 years. Also I put in steal gears.
I would suggest the joints of the lubricating system with a brass weld. instead of lead solder. Because the vibrations the lathe may produce may cause the lead soldered joints to crack.
Is it not posible to mount a oilseal in there?
I like the oil tube idea, there's a bearing on my shaper that I should have done that with to get away from the open trough that it uses. At some point will pick up a mini lathe like that for here and spindle bearings will be one of the first things done to it. Thanks for sharing!
Very enjoyable video, thanks
Great video, thanks Steve.
wow Steve thats an impressive workshop. Now getting back to step 1 !
Thanks for the great idea on the bearing oiler I put tapered bearings in my mini lathe this spring and was wondering how to lube the bearings
Wow very neat 👍
Like your out-of-the-box thinking on the mini-lathe, Steve! Nice example of lapping, and love the oilers on the headstock.
I just got a job making ss 5" mandrels with .040 diameters and .0005 tolerance. I'm going to make a mini tool post grinder. I want to buy a mini and dedicate it to this job that repeats itself week after week. Question is are the ways on a mini lathe machined well enough to hold .0005 tolerance for 5""?
You might consider a full-face cartridge mask. I was doing a similar job with fiberglass and the airborne glass made it into my eyes. Thankfully I could flush them out and was ok..but never again.
If you don't find a correct size lip seal, consider a felt seal and also a plastic (industrial ) spacer. In hindsight, the oil tubes can also be plastic, screwed with clips and an elbow to channel oil to the bearings.
You and this old Tony are the best.
Beautiful job fitting the oil lines. I've looked at variants of mini lathe headstocks a few times and why not just pour resin in the bottom to seal it then use oil in the head stock as the oil will help tremendously in reducing resonance from the head / bearing wear??? Does your lathe have a geared headstock?
My new favorite channel.
Round broom type shaft wiper.
Holy work Batman, just use every cloth lol. Awesome job, keep the videos coming!
Hi Steve like your upload, it shows a lot of skill and knowledge , but maybe it is missing the point.... the people own a mini lathe do not have a work shop like yours and the bucks to ask some one to make the tooling you did show ( if they had they could afford a good lathe ......) keep up the good work
22:22 hmmm so that's why the Hubble space telescope had mirror issues :P
Does it really matter to seal to backside since it has its own cover? My idea was to drill angular holes in the bearing retaining plates down to the bearing for oil lube. Quick and easy. Maybe even use a little silicone to seal the bearing back plates to headstock itself to ensure oil runs through the bearing before leaking out
Thermowells also isolate the thermocouple from the process while allowing for good heat transfer. I really enjoy your videos.
i had not seen this before, great stuff, subbed ;)
Thanks Steve, only just started watching and liked already. Oh year, First! :)
Nice to see you using the mill Steve. How did you ever get by without it.
If you are going to make a bush for want of a better word over the back taper roller bearing and it's cover why not make it from Ally and put a groove inside to take a neoprene O ring ? Just a bit of grease or oil on it every year and that then will completely keep the crap out of it Steve. Over the pond here in England 6.8 mm is the tapping size drill for M8 not 6.7 mm
Kluber grease would have been a better option for the bearings and probably for the gears too?
The $64,000 question is what can you do to improve the mini lathe without having access to a good mill and larger lathe to start with.
99% of the bearing swaps I've seen didn't require / use a mill or a larger lathe. Its pretty common just to change out the bearings and go with it as is.
I believe if the original bearings start with number 6 take the same number only starting with 7 and add something to the spindle to control preload and you would barely need a cordless drill to complete the job
I split my lap on a table saw with a carbide blade. And bored the hole with a hole saw then cleaned up the bore with a adjustable hand reamer.
@@34k5 yeah, that's really common 👍 Works just fine. Thanks for watching
Poke around for "Gingery Lathe", the books by David Gingery, or bloggers/vloggers of same.
The lathe happens to be the *key* tool. A crappy lathe, (assisted by rudimentary casting and blacksmithing) can make a better lathe. And thence most everything else in a 1950's shop. The most tricky parts of the entire video are the micrometer and precision threads. A crappy lathe can be really, really crappy and still be useful for making a better lathe.
For the lapper, imagine you're making a new spindle instead of fixing the one you've got. (Because you need the functioning lathe). But you have atrocious runout/problems/whatever in the head. You run "between centers with a lathe dog". When you're running a part like that, after you've cut your centers, the *rigidity* is still important, but you've minimized (or eliminated!) several of the precision problems. Chucks are much happier than running between centers ... but between centers can get you a "truer than the original" spindle straight off. Or make a boring bar (as the piece that's spinning!) and slide the lapper over it.
A "D-bit", which is easy (a file is the key tool) is simultaneously "drill bit" and "reamer".
I don't know who sharpened that big drill bit but I wish they would fix all my bits to cut like that
I also would recommend getting a set of steel gears to replace the plastic ones, you can get them at Little Machine Shop or make them yourself. Keep up the good work I look forward each week to you youtube post.
I think everyone who tried lapping just a little bit has that set of diamond lapping compound syringes
Grate job. I AM from Brazil.
Nice upgrade Steve ... like lube the pipework straight on to the bearings ... from over here 🇬🇧🇬🇧
Obviously this is an old video, but did you consider adding some type of seal to the front and back of the housing, add fill and drain holes and then fill the whole caboodle with a lightweight oil? Would mean no regular oiling, just intermittent oil changes, and you'd have the gears bathed in oil too.
I did this mod to my mini lathe and mini mill they both also have 3ph motors on them and all metal gears now with VFDs and the mini lathe has an electronic lead screw on it now
I have the same lathe, and I recently changed the drive gears to metal, instead of oil in mine, all I did was drill a grease nipple into the top side and filled it with grease, took a lot of noise out and have had no troubles since. Just and idea for anyone!
I think your solution is the better solution, because this kind of bearings needs grease not oil! My 1967 Maximat Compact (Emco - Maier from austria) has exactly this solution build in by Emco and still the first bearings!!!!
SKF bearings are made in Sweden
Why not use an oil seal and use the cover plate as a retainer? Check with C/R, they make a Scotts seal plus where the deal rotates with the shaft and the outside is fixed in the retainer.
Question: I know that you do not want to "squeeze" the lapping block trying to hold it on the shaft but it does look a bit scarey trying to keep a grip on the block while the lathe is turning the shaft. Could you weld a small rod or flat stock along the side opposite the split to aid in holding the block?
Hello, I'm thinking a block alone slipping out of your hands is more safe than a block and handle. That could be bad. Personally, i would use the back of a sanding belt or a leather strip with a few drops of lapping paste.
@@mrjohnnydrinkard322 Actually I was thinking long enough that it could be propped to the frame in some way - not to hold in the hand.
@@clydedecker765 thats still dangerous, you'll risk the spindle being damaged if it snags....or in the same instance it snags it could break sending your welds flying at you. Although it's square and awkward holding it by hand is probably best or tool post , but as far as tool posting it , may as well put the work on center and emery a pass.
Hello Steve, great videos and mix of different machining processes. The 'Eclipse' magnetic block is an English brand from the UK, and possibly made in Sheffield,. Eclipse is a brand with a long history. Keep up the good work!
I wasn't sure, I tried to look it up but found conflicting info. Thanks for watching and the info👍
They still make some of tooling these days, but not as big of a range of equipment as they used to make. I have some eclipse tooling mag stands and tap holders and hacksaw frames etc and I have had it for years, it's good quality in my opinion. It's all part of the Spear and Jackson group, which include Bowers and Moore and Wright etc. Here is their website ;)
www.spear-and-jackson.com/about-us
www.eclipsemagnetics.com
Is the head slightly out of true on the mill? since it didn't leave a mark from the backside of the face mill...Love the vids
Yes, it's out of tram slightly.👍 leaves a slightly concave surface. Not by much thought.
There has to be hundeds of guys that can find this useful. Great way of working through it. It will be interesting to see what else you do. Thanks for sharing
WD-40 that's some nasty stuff ! Not a cutting oil or lubricant ! Some light sewing machine oil would be safer to inhale. I remember the safety data sheet on that stuff ! Enjoy your show !
Good thinking, good procedures, flawless execution, very nice video presentation, etc.
BUT what a damn waste of time. LOL :-)
There's a limit for the reasonable and this lathe, although can be turned (no pun intended) into a work of art. It's still a cheap machine from the ground up. Somewhere the focus was lost, but makes for a perfect TH-cam video. :-)
Cheers
I think I would have used a soft "silver bearing" solder for the Oilers. That works at low temperatures very similar to lead solder, but is WAY stronger. However, once the oilers are in place they will never see any stress so I agree that the lead solder is "good enough".
As I was watching you I was thinking that a hobbiest wanting to rebuild a larger lathe would be wise to obtain one of these mini lathes and do some of the modifications to gain experience before tackling a larger machine rebuild.
The angular contact single row ball bearings are advantageous for that application as they are available as sealed bearings and are more than rigid enough for that little machine
Maybe it would be better to make a new one from the beginning.
Good job!!
All this effort. Its much easier just to buy the correct 7025 Angular bearings insert and all over done for life.
Mr. Summers thank you for sharing, excellent work, better, and more ideas for my mini G4000. It seems that the modifications for the mini lathes never ends, if one day I like to sale I will charge for every mod that I have made, LoL.
Good works, excellent video, thank you. From the distance (Montevideo) have a good day, and please be safe.
Great effort on the oiling mechanism but I am not sure how much you will gain from it. These tapered roller bearings are used in the wheels of vans where they are exposed to much harsher conditions and a heavier duty cycle and loads than they would ever face on a mini-lathe. The grease doesn't get flung out and dried off every few months in this application. If you pack it well, there should be enough grease left to last for many many years of home shop use. All you need for effective function is a thin film of grease on the contact surfaces. If you pack it properly, there will be plenty in reserve where it can't be flung off from and the temperature cycling will redistribute enough to keep it adequately lubricated.
I would worry about the oil you plan to squirt into the bearings washing out all the grease packing and making the situation worse. A little drip feed oiler pot might work better with the set-up you have installed.
Don't bother with a new back cover. If you keep the change-gear safety cover on, it will provide adequate protection from swarf.
34:20 No auto feed for that, I feel for you.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for this video. Want to make the mod to my lathe. May place the oilers in the plastic shields if there is enough room. Will keep an eye for the second video on the adjustment method you design.
What does it say that the first thing to come to my mind for precision lapping was ALSO satellite telescope lens!
Tapered Needle Rollers....Grease, not oil...Castrol LM to be specific...