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9th March 2015, 10:10 PM #1
First time use of fixed steady :)
As the title says, I used my fixed steady for the first time yesterday. Ive read many a post about the steady chewing the bar stock under the fingers, so approached it with some care and caution.
To my surprise it was all pretty easy & straight forward and the steady fingers left very little marking on my aluminium stock.
Fixed Steady in action by Jon_Kelly, on Flickr
The biggest problem I had was that I couldn't centre drill the free end to support the stock with the tailstock whilst I adjusted the fingers to support before moving the tailstock away to work on the end.
After some head-scratching I resorted to putting the ally into the 3 jaw (unsupported at the free end) and adjusted the bottom two fingers to meet the stock whilst eyeballing the live centre in the tailstock close to the end of the stock. This was just about accurate enough for the washer that I needed to cut off the end but is defiantly a "Heath Robinson" approach.
Question:
How do you centre drill the end of the bar stock / how do you align the stock to enable you to adjust the fingers into position?
Maybe I should Youtube it, but Im away from home with work and haven't got any Youtube bandwidth
Thx
Jon
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10th March 2015, 07:08 AM #2SENIOR MEMBER
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Hi Jon,
It might just be the photo I looked at, but do you have the 260 fixed steady? The bar looked a bit skew-if. I bought a 9" steady and have to use a riser to get it to the correct centre height.
Ben.
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10th March 2015, 08:26 AM #3GOLD MEMBER
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If the stock is long and cant be fitted through the spindle you would normally mark out for the centre and drill it in a drill press or drill it with a hand drill. ( a pair of jennies,centre finder or vee block and height gauge for marking out ).
A 3 jaw chuck is not really a good choice when working with a fixed steady with the job unsupported with the tailstock as the stock can have a tendency to walk out of the chuck.
If you use a 4 jaw and indicate near the jaws to get it almost running true and then move to the outboard end near your steady and adjust the bottom fingers to a similar reading it will be pretty close,you would then need to return to the chuck end and repeat until true,you could set up 2 indicators to save time if available,almost the same way to set up a longer piece of stock if not using a steady.
If you have room when using the fixed steady place a piece of cardboard or similar on the tailstock end of the steady to reduce the chance of swarf getting between the fingers and the job,the top adjusting screw on these steadies makes it easy to hold something in place.
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10th March 2015, 09:42 AM #4
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10th March 2015, 09:46 AM #5
Thanks Peter,
As you eluded to, I couldn't get the bar through the headstock, hence my problem. I did think about marking our with a pair of jennies but as I couldn't get the stock into the drill press abandoned that idea. Never thought to drill by hand!
Advice noted re 3 & 4 jaw's.
Good advice / tip re card-board - I'll be sure to do that next time.
Thanks
J
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