E T
Member
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- 465
- Location
- Netherlands
I had this minilathe sitting idle on my workbench for quite some time.
The motor or the electronics went belly up shortly after I bought my South Bend 9A. It went a bit too early because the South Bend was still completely dismantled for cleaning.
Up to now I never got round to fixing that minilathe and this week decided to try and make it into a welding rotator.
I had the leadscrew drive converted to electric instead of change gears with a cheap wiper motor, 12V power supply and speed controller from amazon and now use the wiper motor to drive the spindle via a reduction made from the original change gears.
Drilled out the biggest gear(84T) and cut a new 4mm keyway so I could fit that on the spindle instead of the standard 40T gear.
I ground a hss tool and cut the 4mm keyway with a 20mm boring bar
Made a combination of the smaller and bigger gears to get a good reduction and drilled and tapped the headstock casting for a stud for an idler gear so the gear train could connect with the 84T gear on the spindle.
The gear quadrant was now occupying the same space as part of the steel plate that originally holds the motor, electronics and gear cover, so I cut a big chunk out of that with the plasma and then cleaned up the edges on the mill.
Machined a slug with an MT3 taper and drilled and tapped that M12 so I could fit the rotating ground I made a week ago directly to the spindle so the welding current won't go through the bearings.
And I got myself a nice foot pedal switch from amazon
If my calculations are correct the total reduction is now 38:1 which, when I time it with a stopwatch, resulst in a speed range from about 0.20/0.25 rpm to a hair over 3 rpm.
Did the first test today with stick on a piece of 100mm pipe and that went quite well. I'll give tig a try later this week.
The motor or the electronics went belly up shortly after I bought my South Bend 9A. It went a bit too early because the South Bend was still completely dismantled for cleaning.
Up to now I never got round to fixing that minilathe and this week decided to try and make it into a welding rotator.
I had the leadscrew drive converted to electric instead of change gears with a cheap wiper motor, 12V power supply and speed controller from amazon and now use the wiper motor to drive the spindle via a reduction made from the original change gears.
Drilled out the biggest gear(84T) and cut a new 4mm keyway so I could fit that on the spindle instead of the standard 40T gear.
I ground a hss tool and cut the 4mm keyway with a 20mm boring bar
Made a combination of the smaller and bigger gears to get a good reduction and drilled and tapped the headstock casting for a stud for an idler gear so the gear train could connect with the 84T gear on the spindle.
The gear quadrant was now occupying the same space as part of the steel plate that originally holds the motor, electronics and gear cover, so I cut a big chunk out of that with the plasma and then cleaned up the edges on the mill.
Machined a slug with an MT3 taper and drilled and tapped that M12 so I could fit the rotating ground I made a week ago directly to the spindle so the welding current won't go through the bearings.
And I got myself a nice foot pedal switch from amazon
If my calculations are correct the total reduction is now 38:1 which, when I time it with a stopwatch, resulst in a speed range from about 0.20/0.25 rpm to a hair over 3 rpm.
Did the first test today with stick on a piece of 100mm pipe and that went quite well. I'll give tig a try later this week.