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- May 3, 2017
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I love the Eisen 1440 lathe that I bought last year, but there's one feature on it that has been frustrating. The linear scale on the tail stock is very nearly impossible to read - especially while under power. I have toyed with the idea of trying to mount some sort of DRO but never really made much progress with it. That is, until I ran across the design that Randy Richards posted on youtube (
). I decided to try to make something similar. I made a few modifications that I'll describe in the pictures below.
I recently bought about a two foot section of 3"x3" 6061T6 aluminum. I cut off a section, scribed it and began milling off the excess. Many thanks to Mikey who recommended a Tormach Superfly and Sherline flycutter. I bought both several months ago but never realized what monsters they are at hogging off metal! I put the Tormach through its paces on this project, and it actually performed better at high RPM's and depths of cut than I had been using. I'm impressed:
Next step was to mill the profile to fit onto the tail stock. It would have been easy enough to mill a 90* angle, but using an angle gauge, I discovered that Eisen's tail stock has an angle of 96*. After scribing with a granite plate and height gauge, I began milling. Not too difficult, but I needed to get a little creative to mill it precisely:
Once I had that critical feature milled, it was easier to visualize where, and how much, excess metal needed to be removed. I used parallels to orient the part in my vise and milled away. This part went rather quickly:
Here's the finished product with the digital scale attached (the ring that I fabricated to hold the stop is on the quill). The angle of the readout is set for optimal visibility. I didn't take any pictures, but the vertical face of the stop has four magnets pressed into it, and the horizontal face has three:
The final step was finishing the magnetic stop. Here's where I deviated from Randy's design a little. Instead of welding the wing onto the ring, I milled a slot, pressed it in, and pressed some bronze dowels into it. (Randy's definitely a better welder than me.) Also, I chose to not mill a recess for the magnet. It's easy to place it where I want it, and cleaning up the magnet will be much easier if it's not pressed in. And finally, instead of slitting the ring and incorporating a socket head screw, I drilled and tapped two holes and used set screws.
Turned out pretty nice. I have a short (30 second) video demonstrating the features but don't have a clue how to post it.
Regards,
Terry
I recently bought about a two foot section of 3"x3" 6061T6 aluminum. I cut off a section, scribed it and began milling off the excess. Many thanks to Mikey who recommended a Tormach Superfly and Sherline flycutter. I bought both several months ago but never realized what monsters they are at hogging off metal! I put the Tormach through its paces on this project, and it actually performed better at high RPM's and depths of cut than I had been using. I'm impressed:
Next step was to mill the profile to fit onto the tail stock. It would have been easy enough to mill a 90* angle, but using an angle gauge, I discovered that Eisen's tail stock has an angle of 96*. After scribing with a granite plate and height gauge, I began milling. Not too difficult, but I needed to get a little creative to mill it precisely:
Once I had that critical feature milled, it was easier to visualize where, and how much, excess metal needed to be removed. I used parallels to orient the part in my vise and milled away. This part went rather quickly:
Here's the finished product with the digital scale attached (the ring that I fabricated to hold the stop is on the quill). The angle of the readout is set for optimal visibility. I didn't take any pictures, but the vertical face of the stop has four magnets pressed into it, and the horizontal face has three:
The final step was finishing the magnetic stop. Here's where I deviated from Randy's design a little. Instead of welding the wing onto the ring, I milled a slot, pressed it in, and pressed some bronze dowels into it. (Randy's definitely a better welder than me.) Also, I chose to not mill a recess for the magnet. It's easy to place it where I want it, and cleaning up the magnet will be much easier if it's not pressed in. And finally, instead of slitting the ring and incorporating a socket head screw, I drilled and tapped two holes and used set screws.
Turned out pretty nice. I have a short (30 second) video demonstrating the features but don't have a clue how to post it.
Regards,
Terry
