I bought another lathe...I need therapy

[LittleWatchShop]

Well...at least I recently sold one.  I can blame it on my Dad.

[oldhippy]

It's no good just telling us. Let's have a look at it.

[watchweasol]

What make is it, and some pictures please.

[Michael1962]

I am still trying to work out what to get. There is not much to be had on the secondhand market here and new are the usual suspects from China.

I found Cowells in the UK as well. Machines look lovely but a lot of money to get sent here. No Australian distributor.

[jdm]

26 minutes ago, Michael1962 said:

I found Cowells in the UK as well. Machines look lovely but a lot of money to get sent here. No Australian distributor.

Even if there was one you would be paying the same. For example the American Taig baby lathe is sold in the UK by an individual for twice the US price. 

However as some told me before I bought my first, any lathe is better than none, if your objective is to learn and use it as opposed to collecting you can do that on pretty much anything for a resonae cost. 

[Michael1962]

It should be less than the price for me to import one as opposed to a distributor being able to import many? and so being able to offset some freight cost.

I don't need to learn how to use a lathe, I've got that bit. Just want to make sure that what I get will do what I need now and in the future. Do I get one that can have a milling attachment added or do I get two separate machines? I saw one combo that said that the milling head can rotate +- 90deg. It would not be able to rotate that far toward the chuck end as the top of the mill would hit the lathe head.

The search continues.

[jdm]

18 minutes ago, Michael1962 said:

It should be less than the price for me to import one as opposed to a distributor being able to import many? and so being able to offset some freight cost.

I am afraid, that is not how importers set prices. 

 

Quote

 Do I get one that can have a milling attachment added or do I get two separate machines?

Everyone agrees that two machines is better but for space or cost reason combos are always popular. That's what I have and so far I am happy with it.

 

Quote

I saw one combo that said that the milling head can rotate +- 90deg. It would not be able to rotate that far toward the chuck end as the top of the mill would hit the lathe head.

No matter the inclination, in practice tilting the head is very impractical also because it has to be precisely reset after that. 

For oblique cuts one should use an adjustable vice, as even the humble manual suggests. 

Then setting it at 90 deg. (with the milling ngh ead at the right) for horizontal milling is more theoretical than else, as the machine doesn't have the rigidity and power needed for that type of work anyway. 

[LittleWatchShop]

3 hours ago, watchweasol said:

What make is it, and some pictures please.

Will post when it arrives!

[LittleWatchShop]

2 hours ago, Michael1962 said:

price for me to import

I have never shipped anything to Australia.  Is it prohibitively expensive for shipping, or is there a big import duty?  Seems like a country should not have a severe import duty on products not manufactured in said country.  But then that may be just too logical.

[LittleWatchShop]

I have four lathes now.  Two of them were inherited.  I will probably sell one after this one arrives.  My reasoning is a little goofy.  Some lathes are coated with nickel and some with chrome.  Some have pitting in the chrome/nickel and some do not.  One of the two I inherited shows loss of coating due to just regular use I guess.  The other one was in possession of my brother and not taken care of.  It was a mess but I cleaned it up pretty well.  Neither are bright and shiny.  I will never get rid of them because they were my Dad's.  But I am in collecting shiny ones.

I bought a gauge to measure runout.  All of my lathes come in around 10-15 microns.  I don't think a WW lathe can do any better, but who knows, the next one that arrives may be better.

For my inherited lathes, I have both headstock, tailstock, and bed with matching serial numbers.

[jdm]

27 minutes ago, LittleWatchShop said:

I have never shipped anything to Australia.  Is it prohibitively expensive for shipping, or is there a big import duty?  Seems like a country should not have a severe import duty on products not manufactured in said country. 

"Import duty" properly called is small and usually waived for low value, personal imports.
As an American, you're probably not familiar with the concept of VAT (Value Added Tax) which present in almost all countries, the USA being an exception. Basically the consumer pays this tax on every good or service he acquires inside or outside the country. VAT in Australia is called GST and amounts to 10%. Traditionally, almost all countries used to have an allowance under which which no VAT was due for low amount items, but these have been reduced or eliminated in a lot of countries. Australia used to have a generous allowance of AUD 1000 for goods received by post, however since 2018 that is no more and is not even clear what the allowance is now, if any.

https://www.abf.gov.au/importing-exporting-and-manufacturing/importing/cost-of-importing-goods/gst-and-other-taxes/gst-on-low-value-goods

Of course Australia is also one of countries where is most expensive to ship from Europe and the Americas.

[LittleWatchShop]

Here are my lathes.  The picture showing two are the two I inherited.  The other two, I bought on ebay.  The one with the black base did not come with a tailstock, but the serial number of the headstock matches the bed.  I have a Borel base coming for that one.

I also have an extra headstock not shown.  Noodling on the idea of somehow using two headstocks on a single bed, but have not figured out how to make that work!

[nickelsilver]

43 minutes ago, LittleWatchShop said:

 

I bought a gauge to measure runout.  All of my lathes come in around 10-15 microns.  I don't think a WW lathe can do any better, but who knows, the next one that arrives may be better.

 

What type of measuring tool did you buy? Typically one would use a dial test indicator, or DTI. These come in many styles and levels of precision, the ones I use most are like in the pic. You have to watch out the angle at which the contact point meets the surface you are measuring, it should be 12 degrees.

 

10-15 microns seems excessive to me, but with plain bearing machines this can be due to a number of factors and the actual "in use" runout might be practically much less. I like to see no movement of the hand with the 0.002mm Interapid on a precision spindle, haha.

Edited July 7, 2021 by nickelsilver

[LittleWatchShop]

29 minutes ago, nickelsilver said:

What type of measuring tool

Am I doing this right?  Prolly the wrong angle.  Looks like my runout is better than I said.

[LittleWatchShop]

Each tic mark is 0.5 thousands of an inch or about 12.5 microns...if I read it right.

[nickelsilver]

It looks OK, if you want to dig into the subject look up "indicator cosine error", lots of info and images. But, you really want to know how the inside of the spindle is, also, I couldn't tell but are you running the lathe or turning by hand? You don't want the spindle running, unless you can creep it down to like 15 rpm. Turn it by hand, and check the taper at the front of the inside of the spindle.

 

A 0.0005" indicator is for "rough work" when dealing with something like a precision spindle (and yes your math is right), the one pictured above is more in line with what you want to measure, it is 0.002mm or about 0.0001". Generally you want your measuring tool 10x more precise that the tolerance of the piece. With a 0.002mm indicator, and no movement, I'm confident that I am under 0.004mm runout and probably much less.

 

End of the day the lathe would have to have been severely abused to have any real wear or show up any unusual runout.

[LittleWatchShop]

8 minutes ago, nickelsilver said:

It looks OK, if you want to dig into the subject look up "indicator cosine error", lots of info and images. But, you really want to know how the inside of the spindle is, also, I couldn't tell but are you running the lathe or turning by hand? You don't want the spindle running, unless you can creep it down to like 15 rpm. Turn it by hand, and check the taper at the front of the inside of the spindle.

 

A 0.0005" indicator is for "rough work" when dealing with something like a precision spindle (and yes your math is right), the one pictured above is more in line with what you want to measure, it is 0.002mm or about 0.0001". Generally you want your measuring tool 10x more precise that the tolerance of the piece. With a 0.002mm indicator, and no movement, I'm confident that I am under 0.004mm runout and probably much less.

 

End of the day the lathe would have to have been severely abused to have any real wear or show up any unusual runout.

It was running at the slowest speed.  Another issue is the surface being measured.  In this case, at high magnification, the surface is not perfectly smooth. 

I will run another test on the inside of the spindle.

Fun stuff.

[LittleWatchShop]

37 minutes ago, LittleWatchShop said:

I will run another test

 

[Michael1962]

As far as I can tell, if you have pressure on the measuring arm of the DTI and then you are running the lathe, you are looking for movement of the needle as the spindle rotates. The needle will oscillate between two values on the scale.

From what I can see from the videos, you have zero runout. The runout is not the value that the needle is sitting on when you run the lathe. It is the difference between two readings when the needle oscillates.

So if the needle where to oscillate between 10 & 15 on your DTI above (10 divisions), the runout would be

10 x 0.0005" = 0.005"

I am not seeing any oscillation of the needle so you have zero runout.

[LittleWatchShop]

14 hours ago, Michael1962 said:

It is the difference between two readings when the needle oscillates.

Correct.

 

14 hours ago, Michael1962 said:

I am not seeing any oscillation of the needle so you have zero runout.

Yes.  At least with the resolution I have here.  Previously, I measured at a different place and got what I thought was more runout.  Rust, scratch, or dust can perturb the reading.

[LittleWatchShop]

I have also been trying to acquire a full set of integer collets from 1 to 50.  I am almost there. #23 is in the mail and I am monitoring ebay for #39.  You never buy one, so as a result of my shopping, I have lots of duplicates at various levels of quality.  I also have a few half sizes and a few over 50.  One is 1/4"  lol.