Finally got a lathe

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SkytopBrewster

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Finally, after+/- 3 years of looking and thinking broke down today and picked her up, now gotta get bobcat guy to come and set it and get the electrician out. Got a lot to learn, those threading charts on the machine are like Chinese to me.

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The internet is your friend when it comes to threading.
VERY light passes when you first start, and put a post it note on the cross feed telling you which way is in and which is out. nothing like getting on a wonky lathe and threading something up to a shoulder and spinning the cross feed the wrong way and ruining the part you are working on.
 
It's hard to tell the specs of the unit but it looks good.

When you move a largish lathe, you need to be extremely careful where you lift it.

If it isn't done properly, it will never be true again.

Is the floor the lathe is going to sit on vibration free???? Like concrete? Sometimes heavy wooden flooring or heavy plywood will be OK but I've seen some units that were set up on some pretty light floors. When they are set up like that on light floors, they vibrate, quickly work their way out of square etc.

Hopefully you got a bunch of tooling with her.
 
Going on concrete shop, going to be fun to level, no leveling legs. Came with a 6'' 3 jaw, 8'' 4 jaw, coolant, steady & follow rest, quick change tool holder with 4 holders and a box of 6 assorted cutters with removable carbide cutters. And a toolbox full of other stuff I never went through yet, oh, dead centers, drill chuck, live center. Got a bunch of other necessities I found off ebay Digital mitutoyo mic, starrett .001 & .0001 indicators with magntic holders, machinist level, and a pile of stuff coming from PTG. (All for my 10 year anniversary, now to figure out what to get her)

http://www.moderntool.com/lathes new.htm (its the 0636A x 1000)

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I think this makes sense to me now for the feed speed/threading chart, your help would be much appreciated. It looks to me for example if I just finished threading 16tpi for a remmy, then say had to do a 28 tpi muzzle break I would have to do a gear change from 60-120-60 to 60-120-63, is that right? I know the 120 tooth gear is loaded now, not sure about the others.
 
for metric threads A is on the 127 tooth B on 120 tooth

It looks to me for example if I just finished threading 16tpi for a remmy, then say had to do a 28 tpi muzzle break I would have to do a gear change from 60-120-60 to 60-120-63, is that right?
Click to expand...
yes
for imperial A and B are both on 120 tooth
16tpi levers in A & C --a = 60 b = 60
28 tpi levers in A & C -a = 60 b = 63

I could be wrong-- been a few years
nice lathe btw
 
Be very careful when moving the lathe.... they are incredibly top heavy. The bed it not as rigid as one might like to think.... it will easily twist if not level, and I'm not talking about using a carpenters level. IIRC my precision level is good for .0001 over 10" (maybe you can borrow one). My Summit 19x60 lathe has 6 adjustable hard points in the base and it took me almost a full day to level up. An adjustment to one point affects everything. Level in both directions. If no hard points in the legs, perhaps level between the lathe and the stand.

I keep a notebook on each machine in my hobby shop, with details on lubrication, cutting speeds and feeds for different diameters and types of metal, setups, etc. etc. Some crossfeeds are made so a .001" infeed takes off .001" diameter, and others move in .001" (making a .002" cut). Make sure your lighting is not fluorescent, as the 60 cycle flicker could cause you to think your chuck is not rotating if you are running at exactly the wrong speed (or multiples of wrong speed).

A copy of Machinery's Handbook is expensive but worth having in your shop. The Southbend "How to run a lathe" is a great overall book, no matter what brand you are running.

Have fun, wear your face mask. Cheers, al.
 
You'll also soon find out that once you get used to dialing & tweaking with the four jaw, that three jaw chuck will sit most of the time. BTW, nice machine. I've been out of machining for several years now and miss it a lot. So very, very jealous right now. Good for you bud!

Rooster
 
A lathe is better than no lathe.

Not my first choice, what you got, but learn to use it and you can do as well as anyone on it.

Kinda PITA looking system for changing out gears and cranking knobs to get the feed you need. From the looks of it, you are going to be doing it a lot.

Don't lose those gears!

Foolscap paper makes a pretty good spacer to use when setting your gear train together. Pinch a cut strip of paper between the gears and push them together then tighten the nut on the banjo or arm that adjusts the depthing. Once the whole gear train is assembled, roll the chuck around by hand until the strips come out or can be picked out.

If you are an FNG machinist, skip Machinery's Handbook unless you can get a used copy cheap. It is a collection of information, essentially the mother of all wall charts, rather than a how-to guide. All available online for free if you go looking, and there are a couple other books out there with similar collections now, if you feel the need.

How To Run a Lathe is damn good info.
Buy a used copy of Technology of Machine Tools by Krar. If you had to have just one book, that'd be THE one to have.
Get KBC Tools to send you a catalog. Good outhouse reading!

Buy a bunch of HSS blanks. On sale at Busy Bee these days. You can learn to grind HSS while you are waiting for the replacements to come in for the carbide insert tools, which, unless you pull off a miracle on par with the loaves and the fishes, are going to chip all to misery in pretty short order while you learn to use the lathe. Esp. if the inserts are cheap ones.

A precision level is money not well spent. You can do as well with a carpenter's level to make sure that the coolant drains towards the drain hole.
Leveling the bed out is well and good, but if you do not know how to set the level accurately, using a surface plate and a parallel bar or similar, you may well be laboring under the false impression that you spent your time usefully. The lathe can be leaning visibly. Not important. That the bed is straight is.
Dig out information on cut testing a lathe installation, and how to read the test cuts to see that the lathe is cutting a straight and parallel part. That may occur when the lathe is level, or it may need to be tweaked one way or another. In blunt terms, having the lathe level is of lesser importance than having the lathe cut a straight and parallel cut!

Like as not, you will never use that precision level again.

Cheers
Trev
 
not a bad system. we have an older model of that one at work. down the road when you recover from the expense of buying it you can get a retrofit kit with an SCR drive so you have 3 gears and an infinitely variable turn speed. freak-en amazing to use. all the suggestions above are great. i find it so relaxing to spend half a day working away on a lathe, grab some stock and practice, you can make some pretty cool stuff out of them. just about everyone i know now has a piston and con rod key chain lol.
 
Thanks, got the starrett level off ebay for next to nothing. I assume the gear changes are a result of having metric/sae threading? It does look pretty easy to change the 2 gears when required. I am also going to get a centering bar to assist with aligning tailstock.
 
trevj said:
for the carbide insert tools, which, unless you pull off a miracle on par with the loaves and the fishes, are going to chip all to misery in pretty short order while you learn to use the lathe.
Click to expand...

if you do jam a carbide tip and stall the lathe, don't back the bit towards the tail stock, with draw it towards you. Backing the bit towards the tails stock will chip the carbide almost certainly (at least for me it does)

cheers mooncoon
 
mooncoon said:
if you do jam a carbide tip and stall the lathe, don't back the bit towards the tail stock, with draw it towards you. Backing the bit towards the tails stock will chip the carbide almost certainly (at least for me it does)

cheers mooncoon
Click to expand...

The biggest destroyer of carbide in the shop I worked in for some years, was the FNG's bumping the insert against the work when it was not turning.

Next was getting n a panic and E-stopping the lathe with the tool still in the cut.

Too slow a turning speed, was a distant ways less than the two leading contenders.

Cheers
Trev
 
SkytopBrewster said:
Thanks, got the starrett level off ebay for next to nothing. I assume the gear changes are a result of having metric/sae threading? It does look pretty easy to change the 2 gears when required. I am also going to get a centering bar to assist with aligning tailstock.
Click to expand...

Good on getting the level cheap! The guy you bought it from likely bought it assuming it would prove useful. May be something to that! :)

Save your money on the test bar. Really.
Do a search for Rollies Dad's Method, or follow the two diameters set-up test in the South Bend book.
By turning and measuring a bar in the headstock, you will do a better job of aligning things than you ever will dicking around with a bar and indicators.

Buy yourself a couple sticks of 12L14, if you can get the stuff. Find a metal dealer that will sell you full length sticks, and steer clear of the likes of Metal Supermarkets, unless you really need something they have. Their prices are like buying groceries at 7-11.


The gear changes are the result of the maker failing to spend the money on copying a decent lathe with a quick change gear box. They instead bastardized a combination of a sorta quick change, with the use of several sets of change gears.
They saved the cost of the internal gearing. Like as not it did not save you an money.
Typically there is a 100/127 compound gear that is used for exact metric change (one inch equals exactly 25.5mm, 127 is the smallest factor of 254 that can be used to convert). They used a 120/127 set to keep the set closer in size when they compounded the train.

If this is talking over your head, it may well take you a while to figure out what is being said, but it is not meant to be insulting.

Cheers
Trev
 
trevj said:
The biggest destroyer of carbide in the shop I worked in for some years, was the FNG's bumping the insert against the work when it was not turning.

Next was getting n a panic and E-stopping the lathe with the tool still in the cut.

Too slow a turning speed, was a distant ways less than the two leading contenders.

Cheers
Trev
Click to expand...

vibration is a big one as well. doesn't take much before they start to splinter.
 
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