Thread: Mill as Lathe

Hi BT,

Great work, thats a handy little base you have there(whats the off again?), now look the other way while I slice 20mm off the shank of the Taster
Is there a grub screw some where?

Stuart

very nice. great solution from Pdw. Great photos. I agree with stu about the base plate.
Know i now a little about the haimer taster. which a first i thought was hammer tester.
I thought why mount a hammer tester in the milling machine.
that tester doesn't spin in the spindle?
lookes like fun

Bob
Very nice & innovative work, with great photos, as always.
This set up for machining in the mill looks very solid, with obvious self generating accuracy.
Good thinking!
regards
Bruce

You're forgiven Bob - I had thought that holder was hardened, so glad to see the result you wanted coming from it.

(for everyone else, I mentioned to Bob that the second hand table at one of my usual tooling haunts unusually had a quantity of 30 taper stuff on it - he said that he was looking for a 20mm holder to mount his taster in, but after a quick rummage the most suitable I could find was this one with a 25.4mm bore. An inch sidelock is not a common beast, hence the suggestion)

Michael

Mighty fine work there.Necessity always been the mother of invention.I used this method 25 yrs ago and was laughed at by my then munitions trained toolmaker bro in law.It worked for me and did it well,making him eat his words.L N E here [late night engineering] solves most things nothing a beer a fag and some reflective thought makes it happen.Have used this method many times since and told others with mills how to do it. I admire the collective mind set on this forum. John.

Nice work Bob.

Since headroom is such a valuable commodity for you every bit counts, and you certainly got the most out of the holder.

I was going to mention in Michael's thread when Peter suggested turning on the mill, there was an mew not so long back where an old mill was made into a faceplate lathe.

Cheers,
Ew

The credit must go to PDW. He suggested to solution that was staring us in the face. A solution made easy for me because I had that base I'd made for a Hercus tool and cutter vice. The vice uses the same dovetail mount as does the lathe compound.

It was fortuitous that the Michael G supplied tool holder was M12 draw bar threaded. Matched the existing draw bar and saved me half a day's work had I had to make a new bar.

In hindsight, I should have used the compound to set the depth of cut while boring rather than moving the mill table. I crept up to the finished size using a W20 collet as a gauge. Both the collet shank diameter and the Taster arbor were a thin whisker under 20mm. I could fit the collet between the boring bar and the bored hole without upsetting the depth of cut position of the boring bar.

Stu, you mention a grub screw. I thought initially you had seen the one in the end of the Taster arbor but then realised you would be referring to one required to lock the Taster into the adapter. Today's job.

Hacksawing off 10mm of arbor would give me more breathing space but I'm hesitant to fiddle with the Taster. Back when I acquired the Centricator I fiddled with some grub screws I thought secured the arbor to the Centricator body. They didn't. I asked Frau Goericke at work to translate the page of the German instructions pertaining to the adjustment and alignment of the arbor. After reading , she shook her head and said, rather insensitively ,"Well Bob, you f...ed it up! ". I fixed it. There is a cap screw in the rear of the Taster arbor. I have not yet attempted to ascertain its function. The Taster was not accompanied by instructions.

And Aaron, there will be plenty of BTs but I'd be the only dickhead calling himself Anorak Bob. Toyed with the idea of a name change but thought there are plenty of strange names out there. At least you blokes know my name's Bob.

ps. responding to Aaron's mention of the Taster in the spindle. It was just test fitting. Frau Goericke's exclamation would be ringing in my ears if I turned the motor on!

Bob,
Very nice machining work and great photos as usual. You certainly could not get a more rigid platform for mounting you lathe tools than the mills table. Good advice from the experienced PDW.
Bob

I do feel like I'm squandering ten or so millimetres. Still, I'm better off than I was before.... the final photo is for Stu.

Thanks for the compliments Boys but the machines did the work.

Bob,

That's amazing. Everything you touch seems to turn to gold! I wish you would post a failure every once and a while to make people like me feel better!

The finish on that holder is pretty good. I never thought you could get such a good finish doing it that way.

Simon