Thread: Selling the Stubby

Where do you mount the lever?

..

Just joking.

On this unit there ain't much clearance for the swivel lock rod bar; using the inside hole already fouls the handwheel.

Originally Posted by rsser

Where do you mount the lever?

.....in the place where it can do the most damage, of course

You're a wag Ed!

Braking is a serious issue though; turn the unit off with a middling bowl blank on it and it takes 40 sec to stop. Same as pulling the plug, so there can't be any electronic ramp down control.

I saw an interesting modification made by a bloke who only has one arm.

He needed a way of easily holding the spindle still so he rigged up a brake off a push bike on a disk mounted on the hand wheel.

You can buy the whole lot, calliper, cable & hand lever as a kit from a bike shop.

He mounted the lever on a bit of wood on the floor so he could use his foot on it.

So now, when he turns the lathe off, he sticks his foot on the brake to stop the lathe & hold the spindle still to adjust the chuck or install remove chuck/faceplate etc.

Neat idea.

Can't see why T/tool won't program in a ramp down control though. Can only be paranoia.

They dont want to do that as you will get guys playing with it and bowls flying of the lathe due to stopping too suddenly.

Safety comes first.

You find they run on more than a standard motor due to the set up of the windings like a 3 phase motor they have a longer run down due to having more torque.

Jim, I can understand the dilemma here. There are two risks to factor into the design.

But, eg. the Stubby had a ramp down of about 8 secs and I never had a problem with that nor heard anyone speak of an unwind problem with theirs.

If there's a problem like a blank making an ominous noise a 40 sec wait is itself dangerous.

hmm,
I just slow it down by lightly grabbing the handwheel and increasing the pressure. Works fine for me even with big jobs. Often wondered whether it does any damage to the motor though?

Cheers,


FrankG

Doubt it Frank if there's no ramp down control. You'd feel it if there was.

K, made up a handwheel as recommended by the experts.

Bit smaller than Jim's so as to leave good access to the main switch, fuse etc.

The hole's there so the vac coupling can be jammed in the socket.

Pic 2 is the vac chuck. Intended for use on nat edge bowls. It's an MDF disc mounted on the std 3" faceplate provided with the lathe. Glued into a groove on that is a 100 mm DWV coupler that I cut the screw thread off. That was done gently by mounting it in Titan supergrips and turning it off with a narrow parting tool.

Once mounted it was a little out of true and I faced it off with a scraper and light cuts.

The gasket is U section rubber from Clark Rubber. It doesn't have a square inside bottom so I scraped some bevels on the coupler to enable it to sit properly.

On previous lathes I've held the vac pipe cuff on the coupling to the lathe with a baby okky strap but the handwheel is too big for that. Expect a hose clamp will do.

Looks good Ern

I'm such a copy cat! That's as big as will fit without fowling the motor when changing speeds. Still an improvement over grabbing the handwheel though.

I'm working on vac chuck coupling too but I've been held up learning to make boxes! I've got a bearing which fits inside the handwheel and is held in by a grub screw. That's it so far.

Yeah, T/tool have done a nice job of the handwheel in some ways, including that threaded hole for a grubscrew. At a guess it's intended for their own vac coupling. The transverse holes are useful for holding the wheel while removing a tight faceplate or chuck so you're not tempted to use the indexing pin. The outside of the holes has been chamfered to make rod threading easy.