Thread: Faceplate and angle-plate won't play together

angle plates are consumable items anyway, turn them into swiss cheese, the more holes the more chance those holes will line up with different jobs...

Originally Posted by .RC.

angle plates are consumable items anyway, turn them into swiss cheese, the more holes the more chance those holes will line up with different jobs...

I don't know about turning my Moore and Wright plate into gruyere but I'd have no qualms about perforating something Chinese.

Originally Posted by jack620

If I use the curved slots in the faceplate the crankcase sits too low.

Measure how low it sits and turn up a spacer?

I'd at least think about using the clamp set off the mill, but
that maybe frowned upon.

Stuart

Why don"t you just use the four jaw chuck to mount it ?

Use some soft metal strips to avoid the jaws marking it and run a test gauge against the end face to check it's square.

Face plates are more trouble than their worth for small stuff like this.

Use one external jaw and three internal.

Rob

Originally Posted by nearnexus

... run a test gauge against the end face to check it's square.

That won't work Rob. I'm not squaring off the end face, I'm squaring off the back. The back face and the crankshaft journal were machined in the same setup, ensuring that they are 90 degrees to each other.

I'd never thought of an angle plate as a consumable item. I will give my angle-plate the "swiss cheese" treatment.

If nearnexus idea does not work, you could bolt a plate of a suitable size that can be held in your four jaw chuck to your angle plate to give you plenty of adjustment.
Bob

Chris
I had exactly the same problem when building a No 7 Bolton Horizontal Steam Engine.
Ended up using a simple piece of mild steel square tubing, the stuff with about a 1/8" (3mm) wall thickness.
Machined 2 faces square, drilled suitable clamping holes in it to suit the Hercus 260 faceplate, & Bobs your uncle.
The job went well & there was no cost, no fuss, & no beaut angle plates destroyed.
Much lighter weight compared to a lump of cast iron angle plate spinning !!!
regards
Bruce

Bob,
that would certainly make it easier to centre the crankcase. I would still need to make sure the angle-plate was perpendicular to the lathe's axis though. I guess if I turned and faced a decent sized piece of Ali and bolted it to the angle-plate, the 4-jaw chuck should hold it "true".

Hi Bruce,
Thanks for that. I think that's how I'll do it. My motor is so small I will probably just mill a block of aluminium into a small mounting block. I have some odd sized pieces 25mm thick plate I bought for $7/kg at Action Aluminium.

Why not just scribe a line at the correct PCD and drill and tap holes to suit on your face plate,if your concerned about it making it out of balance drill and tap 4 holes.

If you have provision to mill the angle plate would you have enough movement in it to locate the slots if you workpiece was mounted on the inner face rather than the outer.

Is this the way the machining instructions advised or your own method.

Have you given consideration to a counter weight.

pipeclay,
Are you suggesting I mill the inner face of the angle-plate? If so, I don't think I would be able to do that as I only have a milling attachment for my lathe. It may be an option if I remove the vice from the milling attachment and bolt the angle-plate directly to the milling attachment's vertical slide. A lot of work though.

The method I'm using is the one recommended by Ron Chernich for building this engine.

I have considered a counterweight, but to date I haven't been able to find anything heavy enough. All my large chunks of metal are ali.

While searching for Bruce's No7 Bolton steam engine I came across this setup. Something like Bob's suggestion, only using a home-made angle plate.

I'm with Stuart, use the clamping kit to hold the angle plate. Standard practise.

Phil

Have you given any thought to setting this up on your Dog/Drive plate rather than the face plate.

If you were able to either source a suitable piece of angle iron or fabricate a piece you could face it in your milling attachment,1 leg would have to be long enough to allow for an elongated hole for set up.

You would need to drill and tap a hole in Drive/Dog plate to allow for centreing via the elongated hole.

With this method it would elinate the use of a counter weight in my opinion and also reduce the OD of the work holding.

The job looks to me to be fairly small and I would think it would be turning fairly quickly for the machining,the smaller Drive/Dog plate would be better suit to high speed compared to the face plate.