Mini lathe (and mill) discussion.

[dhal22]

Was working on my 1440 lathe yesterday. Chuck is 8"!!

 

[TonyHallo]

That 11 x 30 looks real nice Steven.

 

[TonyHallo]

David,
What is to finish on the OD of the material?

 

[dhal22]

.75" aluminum rod.

 

[dhal22]

That 11 x 30 looks real nice Steven.

That was going to be my choice if I couldn't find a used lathe.

 

[Stevendavis]

Made a sheer pin for work on the mini lathe. They ordered me up some 2017 to make a bunch of them for our wicket gates. Hit all my marks.

 

[TonyHallo]

Steven,
I all the power plants that I worked in, we drilled for bigger shear pins and used full sized stock!

Did you order the new lathe yet?

 

[Stevendavis]

Hey Tony,
I've got two horizontal Francis units at my plant and they are only 4650kw units each. Did you use the same sheer relief on the sheer pins? I have not picked up the new lathe yet. It will be Fall time when I can order it. PM is out of stock on the 11 X 30 right now, and I still need to save a few pennies before I can get it on order. I'm hoping to get it coming by mid October.

 

[TonyHallo]

I managed two run of river sites that each had two units. They were low head units, about 11', 3 MW's each on a good day, I believe they were manufactured by Voith. They were horizontal flow through units, the wheel looked like a giant 3 bladed boat prop. Don't remember anything about the gate linkage so it must have not been a problem. One thing that stands out was the emergency oil supply for the gates. It was a giant ball shaped oil over air vessel that took about two days to pump up if the pressure was released for an outage, over 1000 psi.
My reference to the shear pins came from from coal days mostly on the coal feeders, these were drilled over size and cold rolled was used for the shear pins, needless to say they didn't shear often!

 

[Stevendavis]

I know Voith. I helped with the restoration of Barber Dam in Boise Idaho. It had two Voith horizontal low head turbines installed during the restoration. They had variable pitch kaplan runners, big boat prop, so the blade pitch adjusted automatically for max efficiancy. The power plant also had a DC overhead crane, with solid bar track and brush so anytime it was moving, sparks were flying. We break sheer pins alot in the Spring time due to debris getting in the canal during high water. Then it gets stuck in the wicket gates and we have to dewater and clean it out. I've made a special tool for pulling the broken pieces out and drawing the new ones in. It was a real pain before that. It's a small world!

I think I'm going to get the lathe on backorder soon and put a down on it, so I don't miss out on this next batch.