Workholding in the lathe

Hi,

Question for you peeps, was wondering if anyone can come up with a better way.

I have 10 steel discs, about 20mm diameter, 4mm thick, that I need to hold & put a groove in one face of.

I was thinking of making up a collet out of ali, just boring a deep enough hole, slitting with a hacksaw and just clamping with a hose-clamp.

Is there a easier way to do this?

Ed

Reply to
zedbert
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Is your three-jaw accurate enough? You could maybe make something smaller in diameter so it was loose in the jaws and thick enough so that the disks were parallel to the face/at right angles to the center of rotation, but so that there was still room to plunge the groove and the jaws didn't get in the way.

Reply to
Peter Fairbrother

Yeah. Just hold them in the 3 jaw. 4mm is plenty to grip on. Now you're gonna ask but how do I ensure they're held square. Put a chuck in the tailstock. Turn up a small top hat bung 19mm od and with a shaft small enough for your chuck to hold. Drill a hole into its centre to remove any pip from the facing operation. Put it in the tailstock chuck. Now grip your disc lightly on about 3mm of its length, push it back a bit more with the tailstock bung until it's true, tighten chuck.

The proper tool for a job like this is 'soft jaws' which you bore out to suit the washer diameter you want to hold. You can hold a job on 1mm of its length with those.

-- Dave Baker Puma Race Engines

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Reply to
Dave Baker

In article , snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

Or, as an alternative to the other suggestions, glue them to a faceplate. Works for any thin stuff down to almost zero. Tubal Cain wrote a fairly detailed description of the methods of doing this; ironically enough, ISTR it was in his book called "Workholding in the Lathe"....

David

Reply to
David Littlewood

One piece of homemade tooling I've seen but not yet made is to make a taper for the spindle, drill and tap to to take a threaded rod. Turn a bung, drill and tap. If you assemble taper, threaded rod, locknut, lock nut, bung you have an adjustable back stop for thin stuff. To be sure the bung is square you need to lock it at the appropriate depth and face-off.

Steve

Reply to
Steve W

Many years ago I made one for my Student to take the 1/2" Whit studding the mill clamps use. It never got used for anything though because it's so much faffing about to set up and make special end pieces for. I bought soft jaws instead when I was doing a lot of work with 4mm washers and to be honest they're worth their weight in gold.

-- Dave Baker Puma Race Engines

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Reply to
Dave Baker

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