- Joined
- Jul 27, 2021
- Messages
- 221
Greetings,
I had previously posted a thread on my MX-210V lathe and am finally getting around to dealing with the very, very poor surface finish on the bottom of the tailstock that slides on the ways. As the image shows, it is more of a rasp than a machined surface. The tailstock sits a hair high, so I thought I would pop it on my mill and take a nice slow finishing pass over the bottom with a facing mill.
My question is how to determine the appropriate reference surface to use when clamping the tailstock in the vise. When I just drop it into the vice, my dial indicator shows that it is pretty darn parallel to the top with the rasp marks being about the only thing jiggling the dial. I then popped a ground bar into the jacobs chuck and that is well out of parallel with the other surfaces. I am thinking that there are two factors fighting me on this measurement with the first being the cheap chuck and the second being the challenge of running an indicator along a round surface.
My inclination is to just use the existing surface as the reference surface - I am sure they used a setup just like what I am doing but just cranked it through there and got a really poor finish. I am not making parts for NASA here, so that might be good enough.
Thoughts?
Thanks
Tom
I had previously posted a thread on my MX-210V lathe and am finally getting around to dealing with the very, very poor surface finish on the bottom of the tailstock that slides on the ways. As the image shows, it is more of a rasp than a machined surface. The tailstock sits a hair high, so I thought I would pop it on my mill and take a nice slow finishing pass over the bottom with a facing mill.
My question is how to determine the appropriate reference surface to use when clamping the tailstock in the vise. When I just drop it into the vice, my dial indicator shows that it is pretty darn parallel to the top with the rasp marks being about the only thing jiggling the dial. I then popped a ground bar into the jacobs chuck and that is well out of parallel with the other surfaces. I am thinking that there are two factors fighting me on this measurement with the first being the cheap chuck and the second being the challenge of running an indicator along a round surface.
My inclination is to just use the existing surface as the reference surface - I am sure they used a setup just like what I am doing but just cranked it through there and got a really poor finish. I am not making parts for NASA here, so that might be good enough.
Thoughts?
Thanks
Tom