It has been about a month since the last update. I this time I have been able to get the lathe back into working condtion.
The first job was to repair the chowdered cross feed wheel.
I milled the top flat and drilled and tapped three M3 holes to attach a new pointer. The replacement cover/pointer was made from some 2mm aluminum I had laying around. I used a 45 degree router bit for the chamfer and to engrave the line. The Corners were hand filed to fit.
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| Before - Looks like somebody ran the compound over the dial at one point |
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| Surface milled and drilled |
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| Indicating in the new cover on my mini pallet |
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| Cover installed on compound |
The next job was to install my Phase II BXA toolpost. I just needed to mill the T-nut to fit.
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| T-Nut after milling - will it fit?? |
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| Nice Snug fit :) |
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| A BXA seems to be the perfect size for a Clausing 6300 |
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| Plenty of room left for up and down adjustment |
Next, I finally got my replacement worm gear. I still needed to make a bushing for one end. Since I didn't have a working lathe yet, I needed to "Turn" the bushing in the mill using my boring head. So I made a V-block soft jaw to hold on to the stock for this operation. I cut a slot in the back of a 2x2x6.5" aluminum block that was just wide enough to fit over the rear jaw in the vise.
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| V Block showing side walls to keep it from moving |
After that, I set up the block on a 45 degree angle and cut the V with a big endmill.
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| V Block installed in vise. |
Now I could start "turning the bushing. After indicating the raw stock, I ran the boring head in reverse to get the OD sized correctly.
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| OD Turning on the Mill :) |
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Next, I drilled a 61/64" hole through the part to clear the Leadscrew. The final step was to bore the bushing 1/2" deep to hold the worm gear in place.
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| Drilling through bronze - only grabbed the drill twice :) |
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| Final fit check - Pass :) |
Now the apron can finaly be fully re-assembled.
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| Something was missing here.... |
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| Worm Gear Back In place |
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| Bushing back where it belongs. :) |
With the lathe looking like a lathe again, it was time to move everything into it's final place, level the machine and wire up the Variable Frequency drive.
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| Leveled out in its new home |
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| New home - different angle |
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| All wired up wit control panel prototype |
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| VFD installation inside the base |
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| Final motor mount setup |
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| This will turn into a cover for the base to protect the electrical system. |
The current version of the control panel has a Pot for speed control, a 3-1/2 digit digital panel meter as a RPM display, the Start, Stop and Fwd/Rev switches as well as a lit switch that is used as a fault indicator and reset switch for the drive.
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| Closeup of Control panel |
The final test conists of turning down a ~1.75" aluminum bar to check the bed for twist. The fist pass showed about 0.01" of taper over 6" but I was able to get this down to .00015 in a couple of tries. I think I will let things settle for a bit and then test the alignment again.
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| Test bar - Currently showing .00015" taper in 6" |
