Radius Turning Tool...

“am seriously going to try to make my own tooling, particularly in a way to get more rigidity for a radius turner. There has to be a better way... I want to be able to put balls on steel sometime.”
Not to hijack the thread but if you can make one of these ball turners , just sayin, it is Shop made by a real good machinist, “ not me” can get about a 1” ball out of it if set up correctly.
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Came from a tooling garage sale , think I paid $10. For it
First pic is the bottom , second is the top ,third is the guts
 
Dlane,I haven't tried that type of radius turner but it does look more rigid than the one King and I are using but I know one thing, if the radius turner I'm using was build bigger and more solidly (like the one Mr pete uses in his video) I'm sure it'll do the job just as well, the difference is ,it is a simpler design , I always like simple and functional tools.
 
I made a ball turner using a boring head, which is mounted in to a Boring Bar QCTP holder. It allows me to have both a Boring Head and Ball Turner in one.

Much like this one:
 
Not to hijack-

Don't be silly. I am here to learn and master radius-turning, etc... I like seeing input on my threads.

Much like this one:

I remember coming across one of this man's videos before on youtube. Was interesting to see that even old-timers still make use of their old 4WTP and not EVERYTHING revolves around quick-changers all the time. :p
 
After doing some thought recently, instead of doing changes to the radius turner, or changing to a different one, I'm thinking my next big thing for the compound I'd like to try is a milling attachement... to turn my lathe into a poor-man's mill. But I don't know, for the price of one single attachment, it almost starts to make sense just to buy a separate mill altogether. Hmmmm!

Busy Bee:
https://www.busybeetools.com/products/milling-attachment-for-lathe-cx704.html

$300, and that's supposedly a discounted value? I just don't know, LOL. Too bad I didn't have my own milling machine, then I could make my own milling attachment!

As for my polishing experiment, I have experimented lately on ignoring sandpapering and just using green Scotchbright, then adding Mother's to it at the end. Seems to work decent, but I am not 100% sure yet about skipping the sandpapering. Will continue doing experiments on this...
 
turn my lathe into a poor-man's mill. But I don't know, for the price of one single attachment, it almost starts to make sense just to buy a separate mill altogether. Hmmmm!
The price difference is huge thou. there's an ad on kijiji(not too far from you) for a round column mill for $1200, it's possible to negotiate the price for under $1000, now that's a decent mill, 220v ,2 hp motor.heavy mill.:

https://www.kijiji.ca/v-view-details.html?adId=1334037004&requestSource=b
 
Hmm, looks like it's gone now. But to have a larger mill like that here, I would have to somehow get it through very narrow doors into my house, and down an old fashioned extremely steep set of stairs, with very little maneuver room, and I would have to get new wiring done to support 240v. Etc...

A lot of more problems for me unfortunately.

For the moment though, I am about to begin a new project. I stopped by Metal SuperMarkets yesterday to pick up a 1.5"x5" roundbar (hot rolled) and some 1/8 steel rod 24".

I want to try to make a decent mandrel for making jump-rings next. Large jump rings that you can't seem to buy. After me and my girlfriend looked around, we decided to just make our own using a self-made mandrel.

Well, this will be my first turning test on my lathe to see if I can cut into real steel for once and not just cheap aluminum. I"m a bit worried here how things will go... I also have carbide tips for my mini-lathe which I know is not suggested for steel on these non-industrial type machines.

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Well, this will be my first turning test on my lathe to see if I can cut into real steel for once and not just cheap aluminum. I"m a bit worried here how things will go... I also have carbide tips for my mini-lathe which I know is not suggested for steel on these non-industrial type machines.
The last few times I turned steel I used my mister instead of cutting oil and the carbide tip seems to cut with less effort, of course I played with speed /feed and depth of cut until I got the right combination, I wouldn't worry too much about cutting steel,I'm sure you'll be alright with your mini lathe.
 
I think that's what I forgot.. oil for cutting. Now I am wondering, (this may be stupid), but can I use normal engine oil they sell cheap, or does that come with too low of a flash-point? I have looked around, and got so much disputed information on that. Oddly enough, I hear Canola oil is actually used a lot. Only problem is it goes rancid and attracts ants. LOL!

Princess Auto sells Cutting Oil specifically for mini-lathes, etc. But at $35 a bottle, that just seems... a little off. Anyhow, I remember watching my father always have a brush in a coffeecup of oil which he wiped on parts when turning. I'll try filling my cup with canola maybe after my next WalMart trip. :p

As for my trip earlier today, I picked up a few items! Yes, it's just a cheap carbon tap & die set, but I'm new to this and will mostly be doing tests on aluminum for a while... Besides, Harbor Freight had a 20% coupon to use today. But I'm such a newbie, I opened it up-side down, spilling it all out the first time. :p

And, also in the pic is my 100mm ER collect chuck... But I'll be putting my 3-jaw on for a while first. Partly because the collet didn't come with mounting bolts I need to buy still. Grrrr.



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