leveling lathe

Mar 28, 2009 25 Replies

Reread my last sentence.... Unless you really bend things you won't damage the machine but it may not be as accurate as possible, but whether that accuracy is necessary is another story. As an example, a bloke who does outboard motor repairs recently bought a used cabinet mounted lathe. I was by his shop and asked him how it was working and he commented that it worked fine and he had made a number of shafts. then he gave it a shove and commented "I really need to bolt it down one of these days". It wasn't even sitting on a level floor - it teetered. And he had already made money with it.

Cheers,

Bruce (bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

oops sorry my last should have read, "I just *wanted* to be sure I'm not going to damage it."

That's pretty good for a thin unsupported bar. Think of how well you would have to clamp the steel to remove the same size chip with a hammer and chisel.

[ ... ]

Often, in a *new* lathe, this is intentional. The tailstock center height is just a little higher than the headstock center height (0.0005" or so), on the theory that as the tailstock bearing surfaces on the ways wear, it will get better before it starts getting worse.

And height difference don't really make much error until you are turning really tiny diameters -- in which case something the full length of the bed would be too flexible to avoid taper from workpiece give instead of workpiece height.

Enjoy, DoN.

On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:04:36 +1100, "stu" scribed:

What lathe do you have? It seems like 0.02mm per 1000 mm (20 microns/

1000mm or 40 inches) is pretty close. Mebbe your reading in Metric, talking in Inch... Just like this post... ;-)

My .01 Euro...

Phred

Here's a good photo and description:

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