Thread: Let's see what we can do.....

Made a new bench for the lathe today, it sits on the back wall. I love free timber! Will buy some MDF to clad the walls before tackling the ducting.

Some progress on the shed. MDF is up and painted with insulation also, what a difference a bit of white paint makes [emoji41]
Ducting journey has begun, I still need to create a bell mouth and new cover plate for the DC, figured I would get duct over to the lathe and use the DC while I create the mandrel on the lathe. Need to buy some more bends and "y" pieces. It is slowly getting there.

Cal, if that horizontal ducting arm is going around the wall just to service the lathe then the best place for the Blast Gate should be near the junction and not the lathe.
As shown here
CalDC.jpg

However I would serious reconsider running that ducting arm at that height around the wall because it encroaches into high priority shed space along the wall. I would look at getting that arm up much higher (above that switch even)and then dropping down to the lathe. This frees up the valuable wall space.

Originally Posted by Cal

I still need to create a bell mouth ....., figured I would get duct over to the lathe and use the DC while I create the mandrel on the lathe.

Cal

A mandrel is the way to go if you need quite a few BMs, but if you only need one or two ot then turning them out of wood will be just as quick.

Originally Posted by NeilS

Cal
A mandrel is the way to go if you need quite a few BMs, but if you only need one or two ot then turning them out of wood will be just as quick.

It depends to some extent what they are made of.
If an MDF sandwich is used as the turning stock then this takes time to cut/glue/turn and this will definitely be slower than turning a mandrel.

A good turner will no doubt be much faster than myself but I reckon turning a mandrel takes less time (I reckon about half as long) than turning a complete hood because there is now hogging out of the middle.
The heat forming time of a PVC hood only takes about 5 minutes.
By the time the second one is made you should be well in front.

The advantage of turning them individually is they can be tailored in shape to the situation which otherwise would require individual mandrels to be made..
For example minimum radiuses edge hoods work better behind lathes and in tight spots.
Where there is room you might want to look at turning a more tapered hood (5B) and/or with a wider lip (next one down).

Screen Shot 2017-06-17 at 9.42.19 AM.png

Bear in mind that the bottommost profile cannot be formed from PVC pipe without tearing the edge.

The arm in the previous post is just to the sander. I am running another duct up high (see below) for the lathe.



Bugga, didn't think about the blast gate for the lathe, will have some fun getting that apart now!

I am by no means a good turner, will try my best and see what comes of it. Otherwise I will have to put my order in for some hoods.

And another pic, just temporary at the moment so I can start on the mandrel.

Mandrel roughed out from two pieces of poplar. Will need to mount some mdf to the base to add some width and strength as there are a few cracks in it and I am at about 210mm not 225mm as per Bob's former. The core is approximately 160mm at the moment.

Well I didn't get much done today, the better half wanted to make some jewellery so the dust making stopped. That's okay. I finished off a clock face instead.

Success! Bell mouth hoods worked, pushed it to see how far I could go. Used a ceramic heater and hot air gun to get it all hot. Run a cake of soap over the mandrel to get it slippery and off I went. The hoods once formed and cooled just fell off no force required.









I did have a couple of small splits and one major one, once you get a feel for how fast to wind the tale stock you really don't have any issues.

On to the blast gates! [emoji1]

Good to see the production happening.

I notice some of the lips are rolling over, one quite a long way - this is not a good idea as it will result in more air being drawn in from the back of the hood - this means this will find it harder to get around the 180º turn and collide with other coming straight into the hood air and result in turbulence. If you want to err on the side of caution then turn the wooden former so the edge of the lip is less than 90º to the side of the pipe.
m cut the make the final

And here I was thinking I was clever ☹️
Will see if I can trim them off, if not will make more as I need them.
I have modified the DC inlet, ended up cutting the original cover and inserted a hood in an mdf/melamine sandwich. Bit of fiddling but hope it's ok.

And a couple of blast gates. The one in the foreground has ended up too flimsy as it's using 3mm acrylic and the hole doesn't leave much meat on the sides. Will possibly replace with mdf.




How's that Bob??

Bewdyful .

I have a bit of time off work this week and have made yet another blast gate. I am working very close to the wall so a swing gate or sliding gate is not going to work on two of the machines (sander and lathe). Here is what I come up with.







I placed a dowl in the back of the centre piece to locate the closed gate, hope this won't upset the flow too much.