What drives a BS-0 drive dog?

[dewbane]

After literally years of anticipation, I finally have a shiny new BS-0 dividing head. I took the chuck off, put the center in, and I've been scratching my head trying to figure out how the dog is supposed to drive. I figured the Chinese manual was worthless, so I downloaded a copy of the real Brown & Sharpe, only to find that the Chinese manual is actually better.

I can find endless pictures of the dog mounted on this thing, but I can't find one picture of how the dog connects to whatever it supposed to drive the thing. One of the holes in the direct index plate, I'm assuming, but how on earth?

It looks like the Chinese copy is true to the original in this respect. I can't find any pictures of the real deal performing this action either. I'm just baffled. I mean I'm not totally baffled. I can invent a solution, to be sure, but one would think a solution should already be readily available, and self-evident.

Not so much.

Apologies if I picked the wrong place to ask this. Feel free to move my post to a different forum.

 

[darkzero]

Did yours come with the H looking bracket? I don't have one myself but from what I remember that H part is what drives the dog. The H part clamps onto the center (has a straight/non tapered section) & the center goes in the spindle taper.

 

[dewbane]

Yes, this is a clear case of finding the answer right after asking the question. It's not like I hadn't been looking for two hours.

I finally figured it out when I thought to look at the Grizzly G1053 manual. The H-shaped six-bolt deal does bolt to the dead center as depicted in so many pictures. You need a bent leg dog to connect to this, and actually drive the work. I never would have figured that out on my own.

It so happens that I own a dog like the one depicted in their manual. I bought it for use on the g0602, and could never figure out how to interface it to the faceplate on that lathe, so I threw it in the junk pile. Ah, but didn't I finally take that junk pile to the scrapper? Yes I did. Did I scrap the dog?

Stay tuned for the exciting resolution to this question!

 

[dewbane]

The good news is I still have the dog!

The bad news is I never used the dog, because stock has to be at least 1.5" or maybe 2" in diameter for the bolt to even reach it. This was a clear case of buying accessories for my new toys before I even understood how to use them, and that's why this dog has been relegated to the scrap bin for years. It has officially been dusted off, and summarily returned to the scrap bin.

So now I guess I'm back to forging a dog that will actually do something useful. I've been meaning to do that for years. I still haven't checked turning between centers off my bucket list, because of the Debacle of the Dastardly Dog.

 

[darkzero]

Glad you got it figured out. Dogs can be simple to make. Lots of ideas on the net to make simple ones. I just bought a cheap set from Grizzly. They work fine for me.

could never figure out how to interface it to the faceplate on that lathe

In regards to that, faceplates aren't designed for driving dogs. They're for bolting/clamping odd parts to it that can't normally be held in a chuck. These days it seems no one makes drive plates anymore so people use faceplates. But face plates may need to be modified by widening a slot in order to fit a drive dog. Or modify the dog.

Here's my drive plate. It has 2 slots but normally drive plates have only one slot. Or they can be just a flat plate with a rod sticking out to be used with straight dogs.

 

[dewbane]

Glad you got it figured out. Dogs can be simple to make. Lots of ideas on the net to make simple ones. I just bought a cheap set from Grizzly. They work fine for me.

The Grizzly dog I have is actually fine, it's just way too big, and doesn't fit the slot in my...

In regards to that, faceplates aren't designed for driving dogs.

Uh. My not for driving dogs plate. Well snap.

These days it seems no one makes drive plates anymore so people use faceplates. But face plates may need to be modified by widening a slot in order to fit a drive dog. Or modify the dog.

Or make a dog that fits the faceplate has always been my plan. There's really nothing wrong with the Grizzly dogs though. One of a more suitable size is only like $5, and I may be broke from spending $25,000 to make a $25 part, but I still have $5 by crikey I do.

So. Hmmm. The GOOD solution to this problem would be to get a hunk of cast iron, single point me some suitable threads like a real machine guy, and make a snazzy drive plate like what you showed me. What I'm thinking about instead is buying a new faceplate from Grizzly, in the hopes that the next one might not be so spectacularly crappy, and just hack up the crappy one however I see fit to make it into a drive plate.

The faceplate is definitely the weak point of my g0602. It's so ridiculously bad it's almost funny. The center isn't in the center at all. Not even close. I tried to true it up, but working on the faceplate while it's installed has obvious reach limitations, and how the heck would I work on it while it's not installed? Four-jaw maybe? I don't know. Honestly, I got frustrated with that project after covering every square inch of the shop with horrible cast iron dust. I had also just popped for a real bonafide actual lathe file, made for filing things on a lathe, of all the wonders in the known universe, and I immediately wrecked it on that stupid cast iron. Either a new Nichols file is junk, or cast iron is HARD. I'm too new at this game to know which.

Thanks for your patience though. I'm having fun. I should stop hanging out on Angry Political Rants Book, and just go back to my older self who used to make friends on forums like this, before the age of click bait media swallowed the world.

In fact, before Facebook trained me to limit myself to the 8/12th of a second attention span anybody would ever devote to anything I posted, I used to actually be a writer. I wrote a book and stuff. It had many, many pages. I think I sold at least 23 copies too. Woot!

 

[markba633csi]

Your new Nichols file may in fact be junk. I have heard stories. Apparently, Nichols took charge and fixed it. So I heard.
Incidentally, I have never used a lathe dog in my life. Looking forward to it, someday soon. Losing my lathe dog virginity. I'm tingling with anticipation
-Mark

 

[Reddinr]

I've got a few lazy dogs in my shop too that came with the lathe I think. Might use them some day.

Another lazy dog.

 

[benmychree]

Dogs used for dividing head use have flat tails instead of the oval variety used on lathes, which if used on a dividing head, the setscrew used to take the slack out of rotation, will likely bind up on the rounded surface of the tail. If the lathe dogs are not cast iron as one might expect from cheap imports, but made of steel, they can be heated to high red heat and forged down to a flat style, or one can be made in the clamp style of two pieces of square bar with a V groove to clamp the part, pinched together by two bolts near the ends and a flat bar welded on axially with the V groove to reach the clam screw on the driver (H thingie). Be sure that the center has a flat to engage the setscrew in the driver so cutting forces do not allow it to slip on the center.

 

[dewbane]

Your new Nichols file may in fact be junk. I have heard stories

What actually happened in this case was I faced the plate off, which a matter of making a ton of interrupted cuts until I skinned off the high spot, and got the face flat. So that would have left the face in varying states of having the outer layer removed, with softer iron exposed where the high spot used to be. From there, I did what I could with the outside diameter of the plate. Chicka chunk chicka chunk chicka chunk. It was bad, and I was just tearing up tools while making little progress truing it up.

It was at that point that I produced the brand new shiny lathe file, with the intent to round over the sharp corner I had just turned. I've used a standard file on the lathe to do similar jobs plenty of times, and I'm sure there was nothing particularly crazy about my technique. It was, admittedly, a much larger workpiece than the last thing I rounded over with a file, but still, I don't think that explains the damage.

When we were kids, we used to be unintentional hooligans. There was a row of industrial air conditioning units along the side of a building at the end of the street, and we used to draw random things by taking a stick to the heat exchanger fins. It still makes me wince to think about that today, but it is what it is. Well, that's what the file ended up looking like after this operation. The teeth are just, well, gone. You can see little arcs in the teeth that show the path of every stroke.

I guess when I look at it again, I'm thinking it looks like I tried to file some kind of grinding wheel. Now, I'm not metallurgist or anything, but if I was able to remove material from that plate at all with any kind of lathe tool, then it can't have been THAT abrasive or hard. If I tried to use carbide or HSS to true up a grinding wheel, I feel like I would have a pretty good idea some grinding was going on, with little sparks shooting out and so forth. None of that happened here. The faceplate just wrecked the teeth on the file very unceremoniously.

I'm going to go with the opinion that I think the file is just junk.

Incidentally, I have never used a lathe dog in my life. Looking forward to it, someday soon. Losing my lathe dog virginity. I'm tingling with anticipation

Neither have I. If I beat you to it, I'll have to post pictures. I actually did order a replacement faceplate and a couple of the factory dogs in smaller sizes. I can move forward with the plan to turn the original junky plate into a drive plate. Especially if the replacement is closer to running true. Who knows. My experience so far is that Grizzly replacement parts tend to have better chances of passing some quality control tests than the parts that ship with new Grizzly machines. I am hopeful.