Mini lathe (and mill) discussion.

[Stevendavis]

The scale showed up for the carriage travel.

 

[TonyHallo]

Doesn't look long enough, what am I missing? And thank you again for the guide.

 

[Stevendavis]

Doesn't look long enough, what am I missing? And thank you again for the guide.

It's a 14" travel linier scale, and though my lathe is a 7 X 14, I don't get the full 14" travel due to the chuck and tailstock tooling. I think I could have gotten away with a 12" and been fine. I'll post some pics when I get it on the machine. Took me a couple of nights to get the tiny lathe bed done, so I don't know how soon I'll tackle this. I still have a 70mm slim scale on the way from China, for the cross slide.

And your very welcome. Thank you for all your help!

 

[TonyHallo]

Built this mechanism for the power feed on my mill x axis. The power feed was made from a windshield wiper motor, 15 volt 20 amp power supply and a pulse width dc motor controller. An 1 1/8" socket is used to engage and disengage the feed, it slides on a half inch piece of key stock fitted on the wiper motor shaft. Without the mechanism I had to slide the socket onto the hex from the underside while wiggling the handwheel on the opposite end of the table. I had to turn the feed motor off to engage and disengage. With this mechanism I can engage and disengage while the motor is running. I'm dragging my feet on the Champ!

 

[TonyHallo]

Where did you purchase the slide, have a link?

 

[Stevendavis]

An auto feed setup on the X axis is most likely the next upgrad I'll do on my mill. After all the back and forth while I was cutting in the ways on the tiny lathe bed really made me want one. Here's the link to the linier scales I purchased. There's a drop down box you can choose from. So far I'm really happy with what I've got from them.

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[TonyHallo]

I pulled the trigger on a 5" magnetic scale, hopefully it will work with my display. I will need to rewire the plug because my display uses a different pinout. With a little luck the 6" chuck will clear, if not I will gain 1" of travel, the glass scale is 2 1/4" while the magnetic is 1 1/4". Found a few posts that stated magnetic and glass scales are interchangeable. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Stevendavis]

I've also watched a couple of videos of how people cut the glass scales. It can be done.

 

[TonyHallo]

I used a glass cutter to cut the glass, very easy to do. All of my scales were cut to length.

 

[Stevendavis]

I'm hoping the 70mm slim will have enough travel for my cross slide. If not, I'll have to pick up a 5" and cut it. I think it will work though. I only have about 2.75" of travel on the cross slide.