When parting on the lathe, avoid letting the parts fall.

shooter123456

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I was parting a piece of 3" aluminum round on the lathe. The chuck was spinning around 150 RPM and I turned the machine off as soon as it finished parting. I just let the part fall, thinking it would plop down like every other thing I have parted on the lathe. Unfortunately, the piece was too wide to fall down through the bed, instead it fell on one of the ways, caught a rotating jaw, and got jammed between the chuck jaw and the carriage. Luckily nothing was damaged but the chuck being forced to stop by the shiny new part you just finished isn't pleasant and could easily have broken something.

Here are some pictures of roughly what happened. I didn't think to take pictures right after, but this is a dramatic re-enactment hoping it will stop someone from repeating it in the future.
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If you stick a drill bit in the chuck backwards and slide it in the hole (if you are parting something with a hole) it can catch it just fine.

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Good try on the re-enactment. Next time try the csi method. Use a bit more blur and grain in your photos, crank up the saturation. Maybe tell the story from the jammed parts perspective, and some expensive camera cinematography angles.
 
Good try on the re-enactment. Next time try the csi method. Use a bit more blur and grain in your photos, crank up the saturation. Maybe tell the story from the jammed parts perspective, and some expensive camera cinematography angles.

LOL: And don't forget to interject commercial advertisements every 60 seconds followed replaying the last 40 seconds of the production when the commercial ends.

To the OP: Glad you posted this. It's a good thing to watch for.

Ray
 
A good lesson to learn. I usually use a pin or drill bit in the tailstock chuck to catch small parts so I didn't have to fish them out of the chip pan. I never really thought about rogue large parts doing their worst.
 
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