Hobbymat lathe and milling machine modifications

[optima21]

I've got one of each of these that Ive had over 20 years, and are much smaller than the majority of lathes and milling machines on here. both have been modified to a certain degree over the years, and I've decided that Im doing a few more mods to them in the near future, so if anyone is interested, I'll post on here as I go along what I'll doing to them (and mods that Ive done in the past). so here are two machines in question

while a larger lathe and milling machine would be nice I don't have the space for them, so I need to make the most of what I have got.

more information about them can be found here

http://www.lathes.co.uk/hobbymat/

 

[MattF]

Seeing some of the stuff you've made, I'd say you manage perfectly well with those. Definitely post the mods and info as you go.

 

[Spark plug]

I used to have one of those mill drills, not a bad pics of kit for the size just should have had a mt2 spindle IMO.

Decently post the mods, it may inspire others.

 

[MattF]

Decently post the mods, it may inspire others.

There was me hoping there would be a bit of indecency about it too.... Spell check/predictive text on overtime I assume?

 

[Spark plug]

There was me hoping there would be a bit of indecency about it too.... Spell check/predictive text on overtime I assume?

Oops that predictive text makeing me look the fool again.

 

[optima21]

I used to have one of those mill drills, not a bad pics of kit for the size just should have had a mt2 spindle IMO.

Decently post the mods, it may inspire others.

yeah most of the milling heads are 1 morse taper, the later ones were 2 morse taper and had belt drive instead of geared drive as the earlier heads

thought I'd post my thoughts on electrical supply and power transmission for the lathe

as standard the lathe has the slowest speed of 250 rpm, but there used to be an aftermarket slow speed attachment made by essel engineering (and think they may still be available, that gave a 156 and 78rpm speeds. I got one of these when I first got the lathe and for somethings 250rpm is far too fast.

so this is the slow speed atachment, which is basically a new motor drive pulley, (top left) and new reduction pulley on a mounting plate (bottom left). I was turning some 100mm dia steel bar last week and was suffering from one of the belts slipping, so had to increase the tension on them and a belt slip spray too.

also shown in that picture is the crank for operating the lathe by hand as I need to do some screwcutting in the near future. Id have done that years ago,but I has to make a new spindle drive pulley as the original ones are made for resin and fibre ( new and old next to one another)

the drive belts have a spring loaded tensioner, and normally I have is set pretty loose so its easy enough to alter the speed, but with turning the 100mm bar it became difficult and I was having to loosen the adjustor before changing speed. as all the fasteners on the lathe for normal use are cap head screws, I ened up replacing the adjusting nut with a 4 inch length of bar,with a cap head screw loctited into it, so now I can easily adjust it without having to use a long socket (sometimes its the little things that makes life easier

I've also fitted a NVR switch as the original rotary on/off switch was playing up. they are straightforward to fit and should improve safety in the even of power failure.

for years I had a fear of parting off in the lathe, and would often take the part of the chuck and cut the part off with a hacksaw in a bench vice.

I now use one of the parting tools (10 x 100mm size), and havnt had an issue with it. Ive managed to part off 60mm steel bar without problems, although it did take a while, and using one of the slow speeds

http://www.chronos.ltd.uk/acatalog/...ool-s-with-Chipbreaker-Blade--5--cobalt-.html

 

[optima21]

I was looking for a recently ended auction on ebay and it threw up a picture of a hobbymat faceplate which was much bigger than mine, so I thought I'd make my own and decided to use a 125mm chuck backplate. at the same time I ordered a 160mm faceplate to be used with my 100mm rotary table.

on the ebay listing it said the backplate casting was oversize, so I was expecting a couple of mm, but it was 140mm diameter but the maximum swing of my lathe is 130mm. so how do you turn something thats too large a diameter to fit in your lathe, the answer is you don't, you use your milling machine instead.

milling the boss so I can hold it in a chuck.I didn't have toolmakers clamps big enough, so used my milling machine clamps with studding to mount the backplate onto the faceplate.

milling the outside diameter so I can mount it on my lathe

next I had to machine the boss down to size and machine the register for mounting on the spindle nose. I ended up using external lathe jaw chucks and a cut down M12 bolt (the bolt head was removed) clamped in them to hold the backplate (this had a matching M12 thread cut into it)

turning the back of the backplate to size and boring out the register.

then cutting the slots on the faceplate and the bolt holes for mounting it to the lathe spindle nose. the faceplate was held in a 3 jaw chuck that was mounted on a rotary table on my milling machine. the slots were chain drilled and the joined by end milling. unless I'm plunging the cutter I prefer to use end mills to cut slots rather than slot drills.

and the back of the finished faceplate

and mounted on the lathe, so I can also use it as a catchplate if I need to turn things between centres

 

[lchris21]

Brilliant ingenuity

 

[optima21]

one thing that's annoyed me for years is the tailstock travel being a bit short at 40mm. most of the time its not a problem with a live centre or drilling, but if using dead centres of half centres it's too short, when I saw a new tailstock spindle and barrel on ebay, it made sense to modify mine as if it went wrong it would be easy enough to get another.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272030090015

first thing to do was to bore out the threaded part of the barrel to so I could fit a longer threaded section to it

trying out the modified barrel with a longer spindle (using connecting nuts as spacers)

seemed to work fine, so made a new endcap for the tailstock,which was bored out for the longer barrel, longer spindle and the lengthened barrel. the spindle is also fitted with thrust bearings,which the lathe doesn't have as standard.

and fitted to the lathe

so now I've got over 60mm of barrel travel (compared to 40mm as standard). there is still over 30mm of the barrel still in the tailstock at that opening, so still plenty of area to clamp the barrel in place.

 

[addjunkie]

Nice work, i lack the patience for such things, but am fortunate enough to have space for bigger machines. Just need some time and mojo to use them.

 

[DanielW]

Must be a smaller? lathe than the sieg and its clones,arc eurotrade do a 160mm backplate for £23 and the face plate clamps for £10

Thats probably less than the steel billet you may have bought?

 

[optima21]

yeah it is a smaller lathe, its centre height is just 65mm, the backplate casting I started off with was £19.50 and so was the 160mm faceplate for the sieg and clones that I got for use with my 100mm rotary table (to increase its mounting area.

I've made a new topslide this week, as the standard one can only rotate 30 degrees so has limited movement. a few years ago I got a unimat 3 lathe topslide (was a cheap copy of one) and used it on a spacer to bring it up to the correct centre height.

as the base is aluminium I made a new one a couple of years ago from steel black bar so it was stronger and I didnt need the spacer. the tool post section is still a bit thin in places so I decided to make a new one. first of all I thinned the steel base down I made earlier using a flycutter and old bearing outer as a parallel by 3mm so that I could make the new toolpost section 3mm thicker.

then I made a new toolpost block from a peice of 32x32x25mm steel (machined from black bar). and shown here is me cutting the dovetail.

and turning the centre of the toolpost part. I ended up clamping the topslide base to the faceplate and tightening up the gib strips on the toolpost part to clamp it in place. its an akward shape to hold, so this seamed like the best option to me

I also needed to make a new feedscrew. I would have used the old one but didnt have a M6 left hand thread tap, so made a new one from M6 steel studding. I needed to turn the end down to 4mm diameter so mounted it in a collet chuck to prevent damage to the thread. and used a half centre to give me clearance for a lathe tool.

and the finished assembly for mounting on the topslide.I decided to use a clamping plate to hold the lathe tool in place so that the tool can be used at a angle (for thread cutting etc).

now that I had the new topslide made I was able to make a ER collet chuck for use with my rotary table. I decided to use er20 collets as I didnt think I'd need to hold something larger than 13mm. it appears that they do the lathe collet chucks in er16, er25, er32 and er40 but not er20, so I made my own.

http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue/Collets/ER-Lathe-Collet-Chucks

so first of all I needed a peice of bar......who says you can't use a parting tool on smaller lathes, this is 60mm bar being parted off, I leave it 20mm diameter in the middle and finish it off with a hacksaw.

setting up the standard topslide for taper turning the angle of the collets. I normally never use the standard topslide as its too big and bulky and normally just use the toolpost in this thread

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/...ool-post-for-a-small-lathe.52932/#post-615348

and boring the taper for the collet holder. the handwheel on the topslide is a bit fiddly to use, so its easier to get a better finish by using a cordless drill driver for turning the toplside handwheel.

and using the small topslide I made earlier to cut the the thread for holding the collet clamping nut in place. the thread is cut using a handle for turning the lathe, rather than the electric motor.

and the finished item bolted to the rotary table. when I got the rotary table I made use the centre was running true, so anything that needs mounting accurately is mounted on a close fitting spigot. the spigot I will use for this is mounted in the collet and goes though the base of the collet chuck. the spigot is tightened in the chuck before the chuck is clamped onto the rotary table. once thats done the collet is undone and the spigot is removed, leaving the chuck mounted centrally on the rotary table.

 

[addjunkie]

Impressive....

 

[gaz1]

very good there optima been watching this thread often since you posted it

im so gonna enjoy visiting you for some advice

 

[optima21]

very good there optima been watching this thread often since you posted it

im so gonna enjoy visiting you for some advice

yeah you can visit any time, and as for advice, I'm no expert, I just make it up as I go along

as I was saying earlier about about rotary tables, here's my tiny 100mm one with the spigot on it that I use for centreing it. its been drilled with a centre drill so I can use a lathe centre in the milling machine to line it it and then clamp it down to milling machine. also shown is the collet chuck and spigot, backplate and spigot for mounting my 3 or 4 jaw chuck and the faceplate to increase the clamping area and spigot

the round column on the milling machine has a few issues, the column has had to be shimmed in its holder to correct for the front to back alignment, its 0.02mm over 100mm out, so I can live with that. to keep the head aligned there is a key that goes the length of the column (on the right in the picture below), unfortunately when they machined the keyway it was 0.3mm shallower in the middle, so that needed a couple of hours with a file to correct.

as standard the gib strips for the head are only on the keyway, so that as hole in the head wears, it gets harder to keep the left and right alignment. I ended up filing a hole in the head mounting and using a brass block to take up the wear. its under the the wingbolt on the left. the wing bolts are used to lock the head in position when milling. the wing bolts are made from wing nuts with the thead drilled out and loctited onto cap screws so they can still be used with a hexagon wrench if necessary.

raising the head by hand is hard work using the standard hand wheel, so I use a 10.8v drill/driver to raise and lower it which makes such a difference to using the milling machine

for clamping things on the milling machine I use clamps and t bolts made from 1/4" steel bright bar and M6 studding.

and I have a couple of vices that I use . the larger one is made in 3 sections and clamps into the t slots, the clamping head on the right has a metal strip that is a tight fit in the t slots so that it correctly aligns and with the jaw clamping in the same t slot, I could clamp something almost the length of the milling machine table. this vice started off as 3 chunks of steel.

Below that is a machine vice with the body made from one one piece of steel. both of these were made on the milling machine

and the small vice again showing the slots in the side for clamping it down

if you have a smaller lathe or milling machine sometimes the feed screws dont have any thrust bearings in them.my lathe didnt have them in the top slide, cross slide or tailstock. in my case they were easy enough to retro fit, but makes the slides so much smoother to use, and in the case of the tailstock prevents jamming when ejecting a morse taper. and the thrust bearing I've used are rediculously cheap on ebay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5pcs-Axia...040359?hash=item567ac6dc67:g:3igAAOSwu4BV081H

you can just about make out the 4mm bore thrust bearings I used near the handwheel on this topslide

 

[Shox Dr]

Just goes to show what work can be achieved, on a lathe this size.

 

[optima21]

I decided that I needed a digital depth gauge on the milling machine quill, Ive seen it done before with dial indicators, but decided against this as 50mm ones are quite expensive (for me) and the scale goes in the wrong direction, like the ones below:-

(I still havn't worked out how it was modified to work)

or this one

So I decided to use a 100mm vertical digital readout from ARC Eurotrade and use it in a similar fashion to the second photo.

http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue/Measurement/Standard-Digital-Readouts.

so then I had to decide on how to get an accurate reading from the quill and how mount the gauge to the milling machine, and also how to get an accurate reading from the quill.

I was originally going to mount the digital readout to the drawbar in the quill but decided against that as the metal particles would get into the bearings etc. also the drawbar would be turning when the milling machine is working, but the readout needs to be stationary.

my solution to make spring loaded nylon coupling using bearings to connect the drawbar to digital readout. just for scale the nylon peice is 10mm diameter and the bearings are 6mm o/d and 3mm bore.

and assembled and next to a new drawbar that runs true in the quill.the nylon peice just pushes onto the end of the drawbar and is easy enough to pull off, and the spring is there to pre-load the bearings.

the mounting bracket was made from 2 peices of aluminium fastened to together, I decided that it needed to clamp over the bearing housing on the milling machine.

I started off by facing the end on one of the plates (I do like using this 25mm shell end mill)

and boring the plate out to fit over the bearing housing

and then cutting it with a slitting saw so it can be clamped in place

the sides of the other plate were faced and used old bearing outer races as parallels

and the two plates clamped together with an angle plate with the holes being drilled and tapped for some cap head screws

and the finished assembly in place. in early testing it seems to be working well.

this now gives me the option of fitting a fine feed to the quill rather than having to move the milling machine head up and down to do milling. I'm still trying to decide to use spur and pinion gears or worms and worm wheels. having seen videos about gear hobbing using taps, I'm tempted to try that, as I already have a suitable gunmetal blank

 

[optima21]

I'm currently fitting some digital scales onto the milling machine, but its ended up being a rebuild. I'm wanting to lubricate the x and y axis leadscrews, but not sure what to use. I've got slideway oil, car gearbox oil, car wheel bearing grease or cv joint grease to choose from. it might be another 20 years before I get to lubricate the y axis again, so what do you guys think will be the best option. the leadscrew thread is 14mm x2mm pitch trapeziod thread. ohh and a piccy of the stripped base

 

[addjunkie]

Id stick some oilers on some where, those little brass ones that are drilled and tapped in with a ball bearing in them. Have seen them on evil bsy before

 

[optima21]

I ended up using cv joint grease on the leadscrews.

I've now fitted the digital scales and readout that I got from arceurotrade a few months ago

http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue/Measurement/Standard-Digital-Readouts

as talked about in this thread

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/...-for-small-milling-machine.52558/#post-608406

I ended up using a couple of 300mm scales and a 150mm scale

it tool much longer to fit that expected as I kept changing my mind how to fit them. in the other post it was said that the original mounting brackets flexed, I did use so of the original ones and replaced others with 1.6mm stainless steel sheet.for adjustment some of the holes were slotted and the gap to the mounting face was adjusted by using locknuts on threaded rods. this may be changed later if flexing is an issue

fitting the scale to the column involved making a clamp to arround the base of the column. I did originally make a fitting to go into the base of the column, but if the column is moved in the base, then the alignment of the scale would be out.

the clamp as made from 1/2" aluminium and Im boring it out, I couldn't use my lathe as it didn't have a large enough swing. it was later cut with a slitting saw.

and the scale fitted to the column (and the readout fitted to the head) at its lowest height

and a stainless steel cover (U section bent from sheet) fitted around it to prevent it being covered with swarf and oil

this is the x and y axis scales fitted, the leadscrew for the x axis still needed to be fitted. the scale couldnt be fitted to the from of the x axis as there wasn't enough space due to the adjusting screws for the gib strips

and a close up of the y axis fitting

and clocking up the y axis for alignment (was done for the other two axis)

and the covers fitted to protect the scales

and the display fitted to the head. its just my luck that it has a magnetic fixing, but the head is made from aluminium, so I had to make another stainless bracket to attach it to.

the original wires were too long so were shortened and new connectors fitted using these connectors (and a suitable crimping tool)

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200573501318

and I waiting for some spiral usb cables to fit as it might make the wiring a bit tidier.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121740137476