The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for the manufacture of metal, wood, plastic, ceramic and composites. We talk about machining, using a lathe to machine metals like steel, brass, and aluminium. We make chips fly!
A three-part series from Mikey over at MachinistBlog.com. Mikey has been a machinist for 15 years, and has come ’round to the belief that high-speed steel (HSS) cutters, rather than the pricier, lower-maintenance, carbide-tipped bits, are the way to go on a hobby-sized metalworking lathe. He also makes a compelling argument for using a belt sander, instead of the traditional bench grinder, for making, shaping, and sharpening HSS lathe tools.
Founded in 1906 in South Bend, Indiana, South Bend Lathe, at one time, controlled almost half of the U.S. domestic metalworking lathe market. South Bend did a lot of things right, to earn their market share and reputation, and one of the smartest was to produce clear, well-illustrated, low-cost instructional materials describing not just how to set up and run their tools, but how to use them to perform all kinds of basic and advanced machining operations.
Quick, handy video tutorial from Jeremy Bloyd-Peshkin of tiny workshop, demonstrating a fast method of centering a piece of round stock in a 4-jaw chuck using a magnetic-mount dial indicator and a pair of chuck keys. If you’ve never seen this operation before, Jeremy’s video makes it clear and simple to understand. [Thanks, Jeremy!]
Three-jaw chucks, of the same general type used to hold bits in most power drills, are also common equipment on metalworking lathes. Though it is not necessarily so, three-jaw chucks are so commonly of the self-centering variety, in which the jaws are not independently adjustable, that “self-centering” is generally assumed from the term “three-jaw chuck.” But…
Quick, now: What are the two most fundamental measurements of the capacity of a metalworking lathe? If you said…
Back in Plastics Month, we featured a simple shop-made plastics extruder built by Instructables user Random_Canadian. Now the arbitrary Canuck returns with this pint-sized metal lathe built with a 14″ piece of precision aluminum T-slot extrusion, and some characteristically resourceful salvage including an electric motor from a cordless weed trimmer, a variable speed switch from a cordless drill, and a tailstock center improvised from a countersink.
Scares off wildlife, starts campfires, melts ice, burns weeds, and works wonders on nose hair. What could possibly go wrong? The grip is built up from laminated laser-cut 1/8″ ply. Nice design from Instructables user PDRWLSN.
