Anyone have a good scrap bin to scrounge from?

I have a piece of steel that I could give you for free, it is a Franklin Treefarmer pin. About 1.25" thick. You would pay shipping.

i

Order a 1/2" x 1-1/2" alloy steel oversize dowel pin from McMaster.

98385A716 Alloy Steel .001" Oversized Dowel Pin 1/2" Diameter, 1-1/2" Length In stock at $5.40 per Pack This product is sold in Packs of 5 98985A721 Alloy Steel .002" Oversized Dowel Pin 1/2" Diameter, 1-1/2" Length In stock at $10.63 per Pack This product is sold in Packs of 5

Is the lathe functional enough to make it out of a 9/16" Grade 5 or 8 bolt?

Jim Wilkins

I have a lot of brand new 1/2" dia.(nominal) S1. It is usually about 10 thou oversize (to account for decarb). If you don't see what you want here, email me and I'll send a foot of it to you. Or, if you want, I will turn a 1.4 inches of it to 3 or 4 over a half, just tell me which size you want. I will do the 1/8" X 45 degree chamfer on both ends, but you get to do the spline, as needed. This steel is in its "fully Sphereoidized" condition, so it will file just fine.

Pete Stanaitis

------------------------

Prometheus wrote:

Or a Chinese cold chisel from Wal Mart? Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Perfect! That'll work.

I thank you for the offer, but the problem is that I need the part to fix the lathe that would be able to make the pin... Kind of like when you've working on your car (assuming you've only got one) and discover that you need a part when half of the engine is disassembled. You're either walking to the store, or you can ask around to try and catch a lift, right? (In this case, walking to the store would be grinding out a pin with abrasives, and that's a real PITA.)

Thanks Pete- though I think I'm just going to order the McMaster Carr ones- I should have thought of that first, but it completely slipped my mind that those guys have everything.

That way, there's no worries about hardening, I can just press it in and go. Though as a point of interest (more interesting to me as the guy with the torn apart machine, I'm sure) the chamfer I'm talking about isn't the same as what you've got in mind. In addition to the shallow one all the way around that you'd expect, there is a flat chamfer on each pin that goes almost to the center of the pin. All the flats face towards the center. It's just for clearance, I'm sure, as the turret head rotates on a truncated cone.

It is rolling along pretty well, though- I cracked open the turret gearbox this evening, and it's all in working order. Some spots of surface rust on a few of the teeth, but nothing dramatic. If you were wondering, the knob on that one is a speed selector (with an odd pattern to it- all the way in is medium, the middle setting is low, and all the way out is high, with idle spaces between each.) and the big lever with the spring clip is to engage the autofeed clutch. If it feeds in reverse at all, it must be switched on the headstock end somewhere- the lever that is engaged when the feed stop hits it only appears to be a brake.

I was looking at McMasters for you yesterday but I didn't see oversized rod. Pete's idea on the oversized dowel is excellent! UPS on that is likely only going to be 5 bucks in most of the country.

Wes

Actually, I got it figured out, and figured I'd share in case anyone else runs in to one of these type situations, where the lathe needs a turned part but you've still got a mill availible.

Turns out the hole was a .060" smaller than the visible pin diameter, so it needed to be turned. I actually used a hitch pin from the hardware store, cut it off with the notion of trying to very carefully grind the pin down and then realized that a .500" pin would fit in a

1/2" collet just fine. So I stuck it in the collet, and mounted a left-hand lathe cutter sideways in the milling vise and turned it to size using the quill as a feed. Worked pretty good- I got everything to within .003", which was close enough to push it in with an arbor press and some effort, and it plenty accurate for something that is simply a point for the lathe to push against to rotate the turret.

Probably something most of you guys already know to do, but I'm fairly new to manual milling, having had most of my working experience with CNC machines.

And, it beat *any* kind of mail- $1.29 at the hardware store.

There's a lot to be said for rediscovering old tricks. It keeps the mind fresh. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

I had to do that a few times when I ran a model shop that didn't had room for a lathe (They surplused the 13" South Bend just before I took over). Once a long stringy whirling chip chased me too far back to reach the switch but otherwise it worked OK.

Jim Wilkins