Don't run the boring bar into the chuck jaws on the end of the hole

I managed to stall out the mill at work with a 1" end mill. Was going to make a facing cut using the Y axis power feed. Well, the Y power feed and the one for raising the table are pretty close together. I grabbed the wrong one and rapid traversed the table up, shoving the part hard against the endmill. I had the spindle in high gear, as slow as it would go (only because low gear is screwed up) and it came to a belt screeching stop. But it didn't break the endmill.

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I've considered rigging up some kind of e-stop brake. Currently I only have the paddle switch for forward/reverse.
When you're crapping your pants there can't be enough e-stops around... I know this from 15 years of factory work on production lines prone to crashing, even with e-stops every 10 feet, there's never one close enough.
 
Even on newer lathes equipped with foot brakes, And I've operated a few over the years, you still can't react fast enough to push your foot against the foot brake to stop the lathe! The nice thing about the Axelson lathe, you can reach up and grab the clutch lever and shove it into neutral or reverse quicker than fumbling around hitting the foot brake. Your mind is trained to work with your hands when operating the lathe. When you try to throw in your feet to maneuver a lever for a sudden stop, your mind is not fast enough to react because you mind is concentrating on hand movements not foot movements at that split moment. And if you are like me, with rheumatoid Arthritis in my legs, I don't react and move like I used to. So those e-stops spaced every ten feet apart won't do a thing for me but look pretty on their mounts!
 
Fair enough. The line I ran was 100~ feet long and employed 6 people. It was composit spiral winding. Cardboard tubes basically. A backstand with 15 rolls of paper, the winder where all the paper gets wrapped around a mandrel (my job/operator), an automated cutter, and several packers.
On my winder, myself and the manager set up a trip line e-stop under the machine, instead of stepping on something you only had to kick your foot forward. I was quick with that. Snapped the line off countless times kicking it too hard (hard not to get mad when someone blew the line up cause of a dumb mistake)
Over the years, the kick line remained, but we had set up light curtains around the drums. Major in-line running pinch points from a winding belt. It was easy to stop the machine by throwing your hand past that too.

In any event, any addition of a panic button on my machine would be an improvement over the nothing I currently have. The circuit is the easy part, figuring out how to brake the motor/spindle is another story...
 
Hey, I've thought about a trip line setup on the lathe.

Let it trip when your body gets about halfway around the chuck.:eek:

But seriously, it's a thought in the back of my mind to do so some day. Just trying to figure out a position to put it in.

One thing I did on a lathe many years ago. I installed a Warner clutch-brake module on the input shaft of the lathe. I put the push button control on the right side of the apron so you could slap the stop button quickly. Worked out nice. Pretty expensive to do today in the home shop environment.
 
Let it trip when your body gets about halfway around the chuck

Oh we had that covered too. There's a limit switch with a 4" stick on it positioned right above the mandrel in the infeed area. So if you got tugged in your body would hit it. It had only ever been used once... a female operator was wrapping the paper around the mandrel on setup/startup, her hand got caught. Took the tips of her fingers off before the machine stopped... but that's what happens when you put your hands where they don't belong. Never happened before or since, in 105 years of the company's history...
 
I'd take suggestions on how to brake the movement if anyone has any. I don't think I'm interested in changing the motor out for one with a brake. Too expensive. Personally, I'm thinking of something along the lines of a bicycle brake disc/caliper design, with a latching electric caliper of some kind......
Thoughts?
 
Wonder if a solenoid would have enough throw. Fooled around with bikes alot and the caliper brakes don't require much movement to draw tight. Whether they would have enough clamping force to do anything is another matter. Asco Red Hat solenoids are pretty reliable.

-frank
 
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