Thread: teacher needed

Shame youre not near griffith, Id happily do it

If I was close by I would help no problems at all.

Not sure on the lathe you have but with a imperial lead screw you need to leave the half nuts engaged when doing metric and reverse the motor to get it back, and the opposite for a metric lead screw.

It sounds like you end up dropping it in in the wrong spot messing it up, so either you are dropping it in on the wrong number on the dial, or you are trying to use the dial when you cant like said above.

You can leave the half nuts locked in for either thread no matter what lathe you have and just reverse it back, this will eliminate any mistakes with the dial etc. Try that and make sure you go back past the start about 10-20mm to take up back lash when reversing.

You can just use PVC pipe from the hardware to practice on, lots cheaper and easy to cut until you get used to it.

Hope that helps a little

Dave

Do you feel like a trip to Ballarat

Hi


I was in your situation not long ago .... I just had a go , and I made quite a few stuffups . I am not accomplished by any standards but I'm more confident than I was . The little Sheraton nine inch lathe I was using isn't the most rigid lathe around and you soon learn the limitations e.g, what it is capable of doing .

The TAFE courses are not ideal, the teachers don't have the time to spend 1/2 hour with you on a one to one basis . You are left on your own most of the time , but they are better than nothing .

Maybe you could ask around and get to know a retired toolmaker .. there must be many of them down your way . Maybe ask at the TAFE engineering dept. , they would know where the retired teachers are .

Mike

Morrisman was in a similar boat to me by the sounds. I was teaching at a school and had all these machines and nobody to tell me how to use them. Just get something in it and have a fiddle and ask questions here. Between my fiddling, the hercus textbook of turning (seriously, I found it buried under some horizontal milling wheels that a colleage assured me have not been touched for 15 years, in the back of a cupboard) and helpful places like this forum, im on top of thread cutting now. I think there was even a thread here not that long ago of a gent refining his technique and there was a lot of good advice in that thread.

Well as usual this forum has come to the rescue and I will be receiving some instruction one on one thanks very much for the replies and the pm's
dennis