2 Videos: Tools for lathe top slide. Sine bar and a sine bar stand

[Norppu]

I have made a sine bar stand for the lathe top slide.
I made it because I found out that the top slide of my lathe is not as accurate as I had thought.
Setting up the top slide angle for turning a taper required to use a machinist square in addition to the obvious sine bar.
The sine bar stand eliminates some of the inaccuracies and most of the fiddly task of using the machinist square against the side of the carriage.

In the first video I criticize a lathe compound "sine bar" made by Tangent Engineering. For some odd reason, I received exactly that device and in the second video I do a product preview for it. I found out that I had to swallow most of my own words. This little device I actually quite handy and accurate.

Here are links to the videos:

I'm making a stand for a sine bar for my lathe's top slide
Tools for lathe top slide. Sine bar and a sine bar stand

​

 

[Rex Walters]

Wow!

You must enjoy video production WAY more than I do! Kunpa ymmärtäisin dialogin ilman tekstitystä...

Even a 0.0001"/div indicator drives me crazy. A 1um/div (0.001mm, 0.00004") indicator would be even worse. I sleep better now that I only use 0.0005"/div (roughly equivalent to 0.01mm/div) indicators everywhere except on a surface plate. (laugh)

That seems like a very nice lathe. I've read about backlash nuts before, but had never seen one adjusted in practice before. My little hobby lathe has no such thing.

It looks like the gib screws require some special kind of driver? That seems annoying. Why not just use slotted screws or socket head cap screws?

I'm curious about the 0.03mm (0.0018") of total deviation you saw on the side of the compound. It sounds silly, but did you verify with a straightedge that the side of the compound was truly flat? Also, it seems surprising that locking the compound changes the reading. The lock only presses on the gib at one point (not along the entire gib), but I still think that if locking the compound changes the reading significantly it means the dovetail way (on the opposite side from the gib) isn't bearing along the entire length.

Finally, I see I'm not the only one who uses magnets from old disk drives!

I'm looking forward to watching more of your content.