Dan's Hobbies » lathe

Finished lathe chip shield

Dan — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 04:06:42 +0000

The magnets I ordered of eBay arrived yesterday, so this morning I finished up the chip shield. The Neodymium magnets are stronger that I expected, so I decided to use two instead of four. They provide enough holding force, that you need to have a firm grip on the knob to move the shield.

Hopefully this set-up with minimize the number of hot chips launched my way, while still providing an unobstructed view of the cutter.

Lathe chip shield

Dan — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:48:01 +0000

I’ve decided it’s time to make some kind of chip shield, so I don’t get burned by flying chips anymore. My self imposed design requirements are as follows:

cheap
easy to install/remove
simple to build

The following renderings show what I came up with.

The design is pretty simple, it’s essentially a bent piece of Lexan, some scrap aluminum, and a few magnets. The Lexan will offer an un-obstructed view of the work, and the magnets will ensure the shield doesn’t move around. The magnets are in the mail, so I can’t start work on the aluminum block until later this week.

Since Lexan is available at most big box stores, I was able to knock out the shield Monday night. I found bending the Lexan to be pretty simple, all you need to do is make a mold to form it against. I used a scrap piece of maple with a 1/2″ radius on the edge as my mold. All you need to do is heat up the Lexan enough to make it malleable, then push it against the mold, and let it cool. The following pictures and video show how I did it. Once I get the magnets, I will post some shots of the finished product.

Ready to be bent

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Heating the Lexan

Cooling down

Ready to be mounted

Ouch! those chips are hot

Dan — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:21:37 +0000

I painfully learned the lesson(again) tonight that blue chips are hot! I was turning down some 8620 to make threaded inserts, and a 2″ long helix flew up over my head, and landed on the back of my neck. After a quick “hot hot” dance, and a bandage I was back to making chips. Five minutes later I took a 9 to the chin that left a nice little mark.

So remember everyone, if you’re making chips that look like this, don’t let them land on bare skin.

Carriage lock

Dan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:11:16 +0000

I recently made a cross-slide lock for my lathe. Half way through the project I found out I needed to replace the carriage lock because it was interfering with the cross-slide lock. My lathe originally had a simple setup: an M8 socket head cap screw in the carriage pulled a cast iron block up against the front way when tightened. This worked fine initially, but I quickly tired of digging through swaf to find the proper Allen key.

Below is the second version of my locking screw( the first one worked, but isn’t as pretty). The clamping bolt is essentially a stainless M8 bolt with a custom head. The handle is a section of stainless turned to a diameter of 5.5mm and then tapped on each end for a M4 socket head cap screw. Since the heads of the screws are slightly larger than the hole in the clamping bolt, the handle can slide from side to side without falling out.

Simple tailstock lock

Dan — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 01:01:52 +0000

After a recent project that required a lot of drilling, I decided I needed a better way of locking my tailstock in place. When I purchased my lathe it came with a 19mm wrench for locking the tailstock. It worked fine for occasional use, but was a pain when you needed to move the tailstock a lot. I considered making a cam lock tailstock, but they can’t provide the clamping force a wrench can.

Below is the solution I came up with, it’s a shortened 19mm reversible ratchet wrench. It’s as quick and easy to use as a cam lock mechanism, with the added benefit of producing a lot more torque. A short stiff spring between the base casting and the locking plate insures enough tension on the bolt to make the ratchet actuate.