Our lathe is finally getting some good use! This time, a small part
was made from aluminium, a coupling for connecting two pieces of tubing for the water cooling system in the upcoming CNC router project. It will replace the existing temporary hose-and-clamps hack.
A piece of bar stock was clamped in a 4 jaw chuck, made into a cylinder and turned down to about 16mm diameter. Next we turned half of it down to about 6mm and drilled a 4.5mm hole through it, using a drill chuck. Lastly we smoothed the edges slightly and parted the whole thing off.
The end result is more f
unctional and looks a lot better!
The whole operation went smoothly in overall retrospection. However, we had few small issues to deal with on the way. Firstly, it wasn’t obvious how to set gearing for the power feed, as the manual wasn’t very clear. Another problem was that the square shape of stock, required the use of a 4 jaw chuck, which is not self-centring. That adds a couple of extra steps to set up, as centring of the stock has to be done manually in such a case.
Last night we had our lathe up and running for the first time since we moved to Blackpitts. We were using it to centre-drill some rollers that are part of a 100 year old mangle. One of our members is restoring the mangle to use as a printing press. Keep an eye out here on our website for details of the project.