Lathe Chip Shield?

Maybe some has already worked this out - I have my lathe and mill in the same shop I do my electronic stuff, and, strangely enough, metal chips are not a good thing re equipment. Running the lathe at its slowest speed keeps them controllable, ie they don't fly across the room, but slow speed has its limitations. (And even with slow speed and meticulous cleanup, its only a matter of time before Mr Murphy visits)

So, has anyone devised a simple, cheap, drop down chipguard that will prevent this - its a 9 by 20 lathe, possibly hingeing something off the back chip guard would do it. Home made preferably...

Andrew VK3BFA.

(My apologies to the group - no OT political rants this time...)

Reply to
vk3bfa
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Maybe someone has a solution, but I doubt if you can really shield the output from a manual lathe. My worse problem has been with my two grinders and my woodworking equipment. After years of fooling with a plastic shower-curtain arrangement around one of the grinders, and finally giving up, I've just settled on cloth covers for my 'scope, signal generator, etc. I never use them when I'm using the chip- and swarf-making machines, anyway.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

ENCO has a chip guard that is intended for mills - it was on sale for some really cheap price a few months back - it has a magnetic base and an articulated arm, and a polycarobonate window with a rubber wiper on the base - I removed the magnet and attached the whole thing to a piece of steel bolted to the headstock of my lahte and it worked pretty well - I now have one of those semicircular things the "real" lathes have (pulled it out of the trash at a machine dealer) which is nice - looks like you could make one of those out of an old 5 gal water bottle, or heat/bend some Lexan - the lexan will be more durable

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Reply to
William Noble

Here's a nice homemade one:

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guy has a some pretty neat projects.

Reply to
Charles Rowe

Ed - point taken, in a "normal" workshop, no worries - but mine is full of "junque" with no covers etc etc....vintage stuff and "oneday" projects, as well as customer stuff with the covers off waiting parts...the test gear is pretty well shielded anyway by its covers (and its stacked) - but theres always the niggling doubt about WHERE the chips are going...

And I have my grinder set up in the garage, that would be REALLY pushing it to run one inside - but we don't have below zero winters, perhaps you do.

A reference to Steve Bedairs website looks good (and realizable)

Andrew VK3BFA.

Reply to
vk3bfa

Thanks Charles - looks good. Will have a go at it.

Andrew VK3BFA.

Reply to
vk3bfa

I'd go for polycarbonate over acrylic. The polycarb wont shatter at all. Bunnings have the polycarb.

I ended up splitting my workshop in two with a partition wall to stop this problem, the rooms are too small but just useable.

Reply to
Den

Good luck with it, Andrew. If there's room to get your hands in to work, and it really stops the chips and flakes, maybe that will do it.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

How about a pull-across "shower curtain" that divides the shop, floor to ceiling when you are doing metal work?

Pete Stanaitis

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snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:

Reply to
spaco

I broke down and bought one of the lathe gaurds like these

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don't you just love people that make url's like this ... to me this says " Please do not refer anyone to our web site"

try this

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It at least keeps some of the chips onder control. Not by any means perfect.

Thank You, Randy

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Reply to
Randy

I have a flat clear plate lathe guard that is on a Loc-Line articulated hose. It works OK, but when you really need it is when you are cutting SS at a good clip and the chips are coming off smoking. Given that all of the important controls for the carriage & crossfeed are on the front of the carriage, this menas that the hot chips bounce off the shield & land on your hands! I haven't crashed my lathe yet by having to dump hot chips off my hands just when I need to shut off the feed, but I can see it happening.

As long as the radius is small enough to avoid extending past the bed in front (which could be tricky), a curve one might work better than my flat one. I don't want to wear gloves for safety reasons, but I haven't come up with a fix for this issue yet.

Doug White

Reply to
Doug White

The shield doesn't have to be curved. Three flat pieces joined by bent aluminum angles would stop chips just as well and be much easier to custom-fit or change after some use.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

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