Homemade Lathe Part 6

Homemade Lathe Part 6

New Head Stock & Compound Slide

This is a bench grinder casting with brass bushings and a new 5/8ths shaft and store bought pulley.

The original set-up just wasn't going to cut it. The casting came from our local land fill with belt.

It looked like somehow the whole assy got dosed with Fiberglass resin. It was a miserable job to scrap and wash it clean, even the factory Black paint is mostly gone.

The base is foam, being fitted for a pour in the near future.

For now, The spindle is squared to the cross-slide ways. The cross-slide has been set to perpendicular with the original bed with a larger steel square.

The new Head stock has 4 holes for mounting in the base, which will be drilled once the face of the headstock base (just poured) is scrapped/filed to parallel with the face of the bed.

All this is prep for how to determine trueness of the head. (jeez, I hope this all works...)

This is it, the head sits flat on the stock and is as true as I can tell in all directions. I'm just about to drill the holes in the base. In between all this I've completely cleaned my shop (once every 2 years whether it needs it or not...).

The base is fitted with 1/4" brass plates and 6 1/4" #20 flat head screws to hold it in place. For now I've made no allowance for "Set-Over" to re-true the head down the road.

When the time comes to adjust the head, I'll make a more complex base with proper adjustment gibs etc...

This is the cross slide with a 1/2" rod threaded to a #13 pitch. The rod is from a dead dot matrix printer, the stepper motors will be in the Foam Cutting CNC Mill.

The base is cut to allow a 1/4" brass gib. The gib side has a groove cut to make allowance for the 3/16th way. This slightly thinner stock may be usable after all.

I've inverted Dave Gingery's design, in that the compound-slide base will bolt from the top and ride with a mating cone to this piece.

After a few tips from the "Backyardmetalcasting.com" forum, I've modified my sprue feeders to get better flow through molds, the results are amazing.

Using rounded or cylindrical feeders, and lots of them plus my own innovation, the pop-can funnel, I have yet to lose a casting (14 different pieces over the last 2 weeks).

My old pre-90's Panasonic SVHS cam is definitely getting worse, but since no offers of monetary support or new cameras have shown-up here, I guess we'll have to stay on budget.

Here the cross-side is test fitted for what turned out to be a marathon scrap & File session. It has since been fitted and adjusted with a minimum of slop.

No it's not the old camera, things are in fact looking blue... I needed a break from the lathe and finally built that little compressor for small paint jobs... but that's another web page.

in case I don't get around to posting the compressor pics soon, I thought that I'd include a shot of the lathe painted so far.

Things are moving along to the point that if I don't paint it now, I may never get around to it.

Compressor Link (inactive for now...)

This will be the source of the metal for the next few pours. This is the tail end of my Dodge 727 Tranny.

Behind the casting is the shaft that was pulled. Now there's a nice chunk of metal, it has to be 1 1/2 to 1 3/4" in places. Presumably it was machined by some 1970's CNC technology, but is still a piece of work to behold.

Above are the base and slide for the compound slide assembly. The base turns smoothly on the post, though the underside of the base is recessed slightly to ensure that the ring and cone that support the post make contact.

Below are the pieces as they were cast, sprue/feeders attached. The orientation of the piece in the sand obviously has an impact of it's cast quality. This about 2/3rds of the Tranny as pictured above.

The compound slide will have 3 T-Plates screwed down to accomodate a removable tool post, angle plate, vise, Jacobs chuck and possibly a vertical slide & Vise for milling (you'll have to stay tuned...)

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