A simple manual tracing attachment for any lathe.

george wilson said:
xalky: What mask of lathe is that?

I used to make all of the steel spinning chucks for the PGA trophies. I did the same thing as you,except my setup was more crude. I have T slots running in the in and out direction of the cross slide. I just made a finger,hardened it,and screwed it into a T slot with a t slot nut. To hold the template,I just welded 2 arms on each end,and clamped them to the lathe bed with powerful metal clamps.

These templates were quite large,being trophy size. I'd start from the high spots and hand been in the down hill direction. When the roughing was done,and I was down to finishing cuts,I could switch to power feeds,still holding the finger to the template with my hand on the cross feed handle.

Years ago,LeBlonde offered a simple tracing attachment that relied on a heavy weight ion a cable to pull the disconnected cross slide towards the metal. Seemed very primitive,but worked. I have not found that a heavy hand or weight was necessary. I preferred to use hand pressure turning the cross feed handle in case something got over loaded. I could easily back off if that happened.

I have a mechanical Lehigh tracing attachment,but it only moves 1 1/2". Not enough for a 8" diameter trophy urn shape.
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The lathe is a select 1230G. It's taiwan made. This lathe was also sold under the Dashin Prince brand name. It's from the early 90s. It's not a bad lathe. It's very similar in a lot of respects to the Grizzly 12" models. The ways casting all seem to be the same configuration on all these 12" Asian lathes evn the ones sold today. I bought a steady rest from grizzly for one of thier 12" lathes and it bolts right up.

I thought about having some sort of spring loaded follower for it but I wasn't sure if it would work. I could picture it in my mind going into a harmonic bounce...or worse smashing the tool into the work. The other problem with that type of setup is if the ramp angle is too steep, it'll just get hung up on the pattern.

I did find a guy who had a Lehigh tracer online, and he showed how he used it. I was gonna try to copy that but I really didn't like that design all that much, it seemed a little flimsy from the photos.

You're right, the hand pressure seems to work the best and it's also the easiest to implement. It took me all of about 2 minutes to get the "feel" for it. I haven't tried it on steel yet but I will in the next week or so, because i need to make a handle for my giant rotary table to replace the bolt the last guy put on there.

I was gonna make a ball turner attachment, but I think this is way more versatile. I can picture myself having a whole stack of patterns on hand for different things. I can put 2 different patterns on one piece of sheet meta, on opposite sides. Given the amount of available travel with the blocks mounted up, I can do a pattern thats almost 18" long with the tailstocK mounted. That aint bad!


Marcel
 
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jam said:
thinking outside the box
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Yeah, story of my life. I don't do very well inside the box. They've been trying to mold me into what they'd like me to be my whole life and I kick back every step of the way.:shotgun:
 
Actually,the Lehigh tracer is not flimsy at all. I have had mine for over 40 years,and it has never given me a bit of trouble,or produced a bad surface in any way. The faults with it are: 1; The aluminum parts that clamp down to the ways could be stiffer. On too steep an angle in the pattern,they can lean sideways a bit and they hold the 1/8" sheet steel,or more ideally precision ground and hardened pattern made of tool steel(I have never made a hardened pattern). and 2; The tracer traces from the INSIDE curves of a pattern,and it can give a bit of a strange interpretation of the shape you really want until you figure out how to adjust the internal curves of your pattern. Hope that makes sense. I did make the radius of the hardened steel follower finger a bit larger. It had too small a radius,and I did not want it to dig into the pattern.

But,flimsy? No more flimsy than a good Aloris tool post. It does have linear ball bearings. Everything is highly precision made and hardened tool steel. Not a bit of slack or backlash in anything.

I am lucky to have one. They never show up for sale. I have used it to make 2 large tough as blazes Naval bronze cannon from 5" dia. round stock. I made the patterns for the breech and cascabel knob in 2 separate patterns to get the contours fully formed. Did a beautiful job requiring minimal polishing on a LARGE lathe. I made another on my 16" Grizzly lathe,and it needed more polishing work. The Grizzly just did not cut as smoothly as the 19" swing lathe I made the other one on. It was a Promaster from MSC Co.. Listed as a 17" lathe,it would actually swing 19" over the ways. That was the first lathe I ever saw UNDER rated for swing!! Usually they are a bit short of their rated swing(like 1/4").
 
Is the cross slide feed screw or compound feed screw dis-engaged for this process or is it a matter of careful dexterity in the use of lead screw handle and cross feed handles?
Thanks
 
As I read it, you're using the carriage and crossfeed cranks to move the tool (with the compound as a final adjustment). The tracing template acts as a limiter to stop your movements when the stylus makes contact with it. For a given longitudinal position, the crossfeed can only move in until it hits the template.

Seems like a small CNC mill could do a good job of making templates.
 
Yes, it's entirely the operator feel on the feed handles that makes it possible. It takes a few minutes to get good at it. Very similar to using an etch-a-sketch, except that there's a stop along the pattern as you go along.
 
xalky said:
Yes, it's entirely the operator feel on the feed handles that makes it possible. It takes a few minutes to get good at it. Very similar to using an etch-a-sketch, except that there's a stop along the pattern as you go along.
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It has been a year since you posted this. Any chance of a video now?

You don't need a tripod. In a couple of my videos I just leaned my iPhone against something as a makeshift tripod. In one video for an overhead shot, I just set a new roll of paper towels on the table and set the phone on the paper towels with the camera pointed straight down.

For or this video (which was a response to a geometry question in another forum) I just set my phone on top of my computer which can be seen in the top of the shot. http://youtu.be/_E2lPws3rqo

I propped my phone up against the side of a drawer of a rollaway toolbox for several of my videos. It makes a surprisingly good tripod.

Chris
 
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No chance. I no longer have that lathe. The New lathe I have has a hydraulic tracer on it, which I've not yet put to use.
 
How dumb am I? I was thinking about this the other day and wondered if it would be possible.
I already asked that question and the answer was yes.
well it was 6 years ago so I guess for an old fart thats the norm.
I'm determined now to give it a go.
 
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