Starting to cut metal

I had quite a lot of fun playing with the lathe - just cleaning it and setting it up - but after about 2 weeks I was ready to cut metal:

Lathe with workpiece in 4 jaw chuck

Here is the lathe all set up to work. My first test was on a 8mm scrap steel bar. I sharpened up a couple of HSS tools I'd acquired with the lathe and after a few false starts was able to make some light rough cuts. I started off with a RPM of nearly 800 but accidentally switched to over 1000 - but it all seemed fine. I didn’t realise at the time but I was trying to cut steel with a tool ground for brass which probably accounted for the poor quality of the cut.

The most obvious problem is wear on the V belt. The motor is from my cheap Chinese bench drill - and its V belt is smaller - so the larger lathe belt is rubbing. I had hoped the belt would settle down - but I was able to determine it played a significant contribution to the vibration so is going to be replaced.

Click HERE for a 7MB Quicktime movie of the lathe running - or HERE for the 2MB AVI version. Alternatively click click HERE for the sound only WAV version (370K).

These video clips were taken with the original headstock pulley and belt. Its not so obvious from the clips - but the lathe vibrates quite a lot so from early on I planned to replace the headstock pulley and belt when possible.

After this initial test the lathe then spent several years of its life with me completely idle but I did buy a decent set of HSS tools (and a few other bits) from a well known dealer in the UK:

http://www.chronos.ltd.uk/

Eventually I got around to having another go:

The picture bellow is one of the tools mounted up in the tool post. Note the pieces of scap metal shimming it to the correct height. Also as the tool is quite thin I had to make sure it was very well supported to stop it flexing on cutting:

This next picture shows the result of the cut. The metal rod is about 10mm in diameter and the cut was significantly better than I was able to achieve before. I’d go as far to say that this simple test piece restored my faith that this lathe could be made to work again.


	*All text and images Copyright © 2000-2011 Roland Givan, unless otherwise stated. All Rights Reserved. Game artwork copyright their respective publishers.*


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