My Workman (G0602), my way

Here's a shot of my compound slide.

Compound slide.jpg

It has a Chinese QCTP which I fitted. Note extra gib adjuster screws. There are 5. The 6th is not for pushing the gib key over. I'm going to drill and tap the gib key so the function of this screw is to stop it sliding back and forth instead of relying on a slot that's machined across the face of the gib. Currently the original gib is installed, its made out of cast iron. I'm going to replace it with a brass unit in a while. The horizontal mating faces have been scraped which made it much smoother to operate. The dovetails will have to wait until I can fabricate a scraper small enough to fit in.
I also had to file the daylights out of the gib key as it was forcing the upper slide to lose contact when I adjusted the gib screws (only on the screw side). I feel the cause of this was the adjusting screws were situated too high in combination with no dimples for the grub screws to ride in and help push the gib key into its correct position. So the gib was hit with a dremel fitted with a 4mm diamond ball burr and a domed recess ground out where the adjusting screws contacted. The grub screws were replaced with new ones which I had machined a ball end onto. Much better control of adjustment now and travel action is now smooth and consistent with no jumping back on interrupted cuts.
Here's a shot of my gib key installed.
Compound dovetail.jpg
Notice how the original gib key doesn't even fill its slot, that's a measured gap of 2.8mm/0.110" that should be filled to within a few thou clearance for adjustment and easy assembly/dismantling. Future job.
I've also made a front dovetail cover out of aluminum and a seal to keep crap out and oil in, you can see it in the photos. A rear one is still to be made.
 
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Quite good! Especially by one who is always hanging on the bottom side of the earth. (sorry)
Man you don't rest do you? You've done more to your little lathe in no time than my G0602 received in its 12? years.
Got it used.
Couple of other things you might want to do: 1 add DRO's. I highly recommend them. Takes a lot of guessing and time out of the equations.
2: Build yourself a new more substantial base plate for your 2 bolt compound base. There are plans in the 0602 section of these forums.
It made a big difference in the rigidity of the compound. A bigger footprint, and four to six bolts holding it down. As it is it tends to rock
back and forth causing less than stellar finished. I can't remember do you have a tachometer? very handy.
Beautiful work man. Keep us up with your further escapades. Thanks.

CHuck the grumpy old guy
 
Hi Chuck, thanks for the accolades, its terrible being down here always on the lookout for the edge of the world, so I don't dropoff LOL. Lathe is an ongoing project similar to others. Just depicting how I go about things.
Can't stand things not operating as they should. DRO's are in the pipeline, only when the physical aspects are completed and I'm satisfied with its performance.
Compound base will also get modded, I'm looking around at the stiffest options and how to implement them. I've noticed a difficulty in parting off, with the blade springing around. I use indexable tools 95% of the time with hss for form tools.
I don't know whether I'll put a tacho on, can't seem to make up my mind. I looked into it during the wiring stages then forgot about it, so its still possible as I have a 12vdc feed into my headstock and there are lots of hall effect systems floating around on the net so its just in the background for now.
Once again thanks for your kind comments, I'll add more as the fog lifts.
cheers Alby
 
Had an issue with the tailstock quill being stiff to operate and also when fitting a drillbit or tool into the keyless chuck the quill would rotate slightly also upon clamping it tight. Found this highly annoying. I pulled it to bits and refitted the quill by hand and slid it in and out and round and round. It felt really good fitwise, no lash. Looking into the guide mechanism I saw the grubscrew which acted as a key was a conepoint not a dogpoint so I turned it into a dogpoint using a new grubscrew and the collet chuck to mount it. I turned the end down to 4.8mm for 3mm in length. Then I thought this was going to be worse, the keyway is 8mm across. I needed a shank of 8mm but that would prove to be too difficult to fit from the inside (not impossible but doable). I ended up turning a 1/8th thick washer out of brass with a 4.9mm hole in the center. Then filed it like a small parallel key with the top surface having a radius to match the quill bore. It looks like this.

Tailstock keyway washer.jpg

Then I slotted it into the quill keyway and inserted it into the bore of the tailstock and lined it up with the grubscrew hole and checked the grubscrew didn't drag on the keyway base. A coupl drops of oil and wonderful, no more sideslap.
I sacrificed a few millimeters in travel for it though and I have to be careful not to over extend the quill or it might fall out. It did eradicate the stiff operation of the handle which I put down to the original grubscrew dragging along one edge of the keyway.
Here's the grubscrew
Tailstock quill guide grubscrew.jpg

Another thing done was fitting a digital caliper to the tailstock.

Tailstock assy.jpg

Butchering a cheap caliper I made the clampTailstock quill clamp.jpg
and fitted a caliper stem

Tailstock caliper assy.jpg

and a stainless steel bracket bonded to the reading head of the caliper
Tailstock caliper mount.jpg

This last one was in answer to ch2co who suggested fitting dro's. So far this is as far as I've gotten mate.
 
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Since my last post I was thinking about that brass key locking the tailstock quill from rotating. I wasn't happy about it falling out so went back to the lathe and dismantled it again. I saw that it was possible to fit one in from inside the quill bore.
I grabbed an m8 socket head cap screw about 30mm long and set it up in the collet chuck, and machined most of the head off. It was reduced to 8mm od and given a 45 degree chamfer above the base and a short groove above that.
Quill guide.jpg

Then it was removed and cut to 13mm length and rechucked and faced to a length of 12mm. A junior hacksaw provided a slot for a screwdriver and then it was test fitted with the quill in the bore. I had to remove the handwheel and spindle assembly to access the hole. It turned out a really snug fit with less than 1/4 turn of the screw before bottoming out in the keyway. Job well done and I gained a couple mm's of travel and the falling of the key was eliminated.

Quill guide 2.jpg


Quill guide screws old above and new below. It still moves smoothly same as before and one part was removed.
A highly recommended mod if your quill rotates when fitting tools into a keyless chuck.
Quill guide screws.jpg
 
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Wow, Fitterman, this was a new lathe? with a factory installed cone point setscrew in the tailstock? Big blunder.
Your fix, as usual, was elegant. See you also have a first step into the DRO world with your calipers. Only 2-3 more
axis to go.
 
No ch2co, not completely new when I acquired it, I'd call it brand new secondhand. Yes a conescrew was found guiding the quill. I'm also surprised to hear about the forums that other G0602 owners have sockethead capscrews clamping the headstock down to the beds. I found studs on my machine. To me it doesn't matter because everything gets upgraded anyway somewhere along the line. I put the digital caliper on a couple of months ago, an easy mod and handy as well. It was only yesterday that I was adding the quill mod featuring the brass key and dogpoint screw, that I had done recently when I realised that I could insert a screw in from the underside via the bore and so less than an hour later it was completely done. Very satisfying this type of work.
 
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Another requirement when I initially went to variable speed on my lathe, was that the spindle had to stop inside of a second when I switched off or hit the e-stop. I built this in to take advantage of the fact that the G0602 doesn't have any form of braking, so screwcutting becomes a hairy proposition. So taking advantage of the contactor which is used for powering the motor I put a resistor rated at 10 Ohms/ 100W across the terminals so that when the contactor is de-energised the motor terminals are shorted through the resistor. Conversely when energized, the resistor is isolated from the circuit and power feeds the motor. This acts as a brake when connected to a DC motor and the energy directed at the resistor is dissipated by a heatsink externally mounted. I also drilled a series of breather holes on that back contactor cover to allow some convection cooling for the contactor and its coil as otherwise temperature buildup would cause the
coil to fail over time.

Contactor.jpg Contactor resistor.jpg Contactor resistor heatsink.jpg

The contactor is a quality unit so coil replacement shouldn't be difficult. This is also the original contactor by the way.
The resistor choice was my decision and works efficiently. If I had wanted a more gradual ramping down of spindle revs I would have gone for a higher Ohms value but kept the same Wattage.
This mod will work on any dc variable drive unit as long as the contactor has the necessary terminals to accommodate it. Please consult a professional sparky if you don't know what you're doing in this department because electrickery is unforgiving.
 
Here's something I did to pass the time this morning. Fit some lube points for the compound seeing that none exist. One for each side of the dovetail, and one for the compound spindle nut.
20mm in from the edges and 80mm in from the chuck end were the positions for the dovetail oil points. And the spindle nut hole was in the center about 111mm from the chuck end. The spindle nut is just a brass cylinder of 16mm diameter, drilled and tapped m8 x 1mm pitch perpendicular to its axis and slotted into a neat fitting hole. If this nut is a poor fit into its hole then no amount of adjustment will rectify any backlash. So my plan is to open up the nut bore to 22mm and fabricate a new nut to suit. This new nut will be slit on one side and fitted with one or two small m3 countersunk screws for nipping up any backlash.
Here's some shots of the topslide.

IMG_20170212_144633.jpgIMG_20170212_144655.jpgIMG_20170212_144735.jpg
IMG_20170212_144817.jpg IMG_20170212_144846.jpg IMG_20170212_160129.jpg

I drilled and tapped my oil ports 1/16th bspt. I used a tapered tap so I could adjust the height of the plugs so they were flush with the top of the upper slide. I'm not a fan of ball oilers because I believe you will be pushing a small amount of microswarf into the oil galleries and that will form a lovely grinding paste. An airline will take care of swarf buildup in the sockets. The ports were positioned so the qctp could swing and not foul on them anyway.
 
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The big problem that I've had with the ball oilers, is the ball with its spring falling out of their holder INTO the oiler hole, leaving an unplugged open hole
and the ball and spring lying loosely in the oiler hole. When I got my used lathe, there was a bag of new replacement ball oilers in the parts box. None
of them any better than the ones that they are supposed to replace. Probably just cheap ball oilers. There must be good ones out there or nobody would use them.
 
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