Hello all. I have made some progress over the weekend along with other jobs.
I made up a "peep sight" to align the head with the tailstock live centre point. I used a piece of 23mm idiameter alloy roughly 3" long cut off the 11" bar from earlier on. Bored it out with a 1/8" drill bit. I knew that I had a piece of alloy that was an offcut from one of my Dad's jobs 3 decades ago, so went and fished that out. Other than the hole being a bit big, it was a lovely fit as was into the spindle. You have to win some!
So inserted some alloy sheet metal and drilled it to 1/8".
Sighting through the plug, then through the the bar, allowed me to aim the headstock at the centre point. The peep sight concept meant I could move to and thro and forward and back until the various circles touched each other and gave the desired accuracy. I did need to black the centre and then highlight the last 5mm of the point with white paint. I also need to black the plug, but even then reflections made a nuisance of themselves so hung a cardboard box over it as a hood.
See photos.
The headstock was aligned as best I could, then verified by my wife and a friend who dropped by.
The other job today was to pull the 4 jaw and 3 jaw chucks apart and clean them out. Multiple
reasons, one is Bob insisting I do it, the other because the 3 jaw had a noticable tight spot
about mid jaw movement. But mainly it was so I could clean out what I suspected was a swathe
reservoir between the mounting plate and the chuck proper.
- 4 jaw - removed cap screws, but cannot separate it. Any suggestions? Don't want to force
anything into the gap as don't want to risk burring mating faces.
- 3 jaw - came apart very nicely. See photo for what awaited me. After cleaning everything up,
I greased it with graphited grease and reassembled. Now that the swathe reservoir is empty,
there was no issue with screwing it back onto the spindle. This proved itself when I did a test
cut on the bar and the runout of the work is 1 thou.
The runout of the back plate and chuck are both 4 thou, the same as before disassembly and
cleaning, looks like nothing can be done about that.
Now to the swathe reservoir - what a dumb design! My first thought is to put a bead of silastic in there. Does mean that it must be cleaned off next
time chuck is pulled down and will make doing so difficult, but it will stop the swathe collecting in there and then constantly finding its way into the chuck inards: but mostly stop it finding its way onto the spindle thread every time I screw the chuck back on. I did consider an O ring, but the natural curve of the ring will still allow fine swathe to build in that area.
Does anyone have any other suggestions what I could use that will compress easily and block that area off?
Regards
Doug
I made up a "peep sight" to align the head with the tailstock live centre point. I used a piece of 23mm idiameter alloy roughly 3" long cut off the 11" bar from earlier on. Bored it out with a 1/8" drill bit. I knew that I had a piece of alloy that was an offcut from one of my Dad's jobs 3 decades ago, so went and fished that out. Other than the hole being a bit big, it was a lovely fit as was into the spindle. You have to win some!
So inserted some alloy sheet metal and drilled it to 1/8".
Sighting through the plug, then through the the bar, allowed me to aim the headstock at the centre point. The peep sight concept meant I could move to and thro and forward and back until the various circles touched each other and gave the desired accuracy. I did need to black the centre and then highlight the last 5mm of the point with white paint. I also need to black the plug, but even then reflections made a nuisance of themselves so hung a cardboard box over it as a hood.
See photos.
The headstock was aligned as best I could, then verified by my wife and a friend who dropped by.
The other job today was to pull the 4 jaw and 3 jaw chucks apart and clean them out. Multiple
reasons, one is Bob insisting I do it, the other because the 3 jaw had a noticable tight spot
about mid jaw movement. But mainly it was so I could clean out what I suspected was a swathe
reservoir between the mounting plate and the chuck proper.
- 4 jaw - removed cap screws, but cannot separate it. Any suggestions? Don't want to force
anything into the gap as don't want to risk burring mating faces.
- 3 jaw - came apart very nicely. See photo for what awaited me. After cleaning everything up,
I greased it with graphited grease and reassembled. Now that the swathe reservoir is empty,
there was no issue with screwing it back onto the spindle. This proved itself when I did a test
cut on the bar and the runout of the work is 1 thou.
The runout of the back plate and chuck are both 4 thou, the same as before disassembly and
cleaning, looks like nothing can be done about that.
Now to the swathe reservoir - what a dumb design! My first thought is to put a bead of silastic in there. Does mean that it must be cleaned off next
time chuck is pulled down and will make doing so difficult, but it will stop the swathe collecting in there and then constantly finding its way into the chuck inards: but mostly stop it finding its way onto the spindle thread every time I screw the chuck back on. I did consider an O ring, but the natural curve of the ring will still allow fine swathe to build in that area.
Does anyone have any other suggestions what I could use that will compress easily and block that area off?
Regards
Doug