Thread: Voest Lathe Rebuild

Goodin. If you are a hobbiest, another trick you can try for the steel is to use expendable hss tooling. Use simple tool geometry and visit the bench grinder when your cutting edge gets too nasty. Run your machine so the chip comes off the part tan and turns blue as it falls (run it dry). Finish with non-crappy tooling and some good cutting oil of your choice. Dry chips are much less of a pain to clean up than nasty soggy ones.

I have a "free" supply of inserts. my son works for a company that does really high end CNC work mostly in aluminum.
They "time life" the inserts in the machines tooling, and change it when it reaches a set number of cycles. Its usually still very sharp and like new. Its cheaper for then to discard "as new stuff" than have one dull or chip and ruin $$$$$ dollars worth the parts

More voest pics. I left the cross slide nut blank I created at a local job shop for the internal acme threading earlier today. It should be back within a week or so.

Gib adjustment screw I machined


New carriage lock screw


Gear cover rescued from Warner Swasey chip pan


Carriage stuff


Messy shop


Please pardon my phone's focus in a few of the pics. Don't know why it does this.

Here's my bandsaw getting beat up by a piece of ductile iron.

Here's the improvised gearbox in place. This one came out of a john deere la. I welded up a mount plate that goes on the back of the transmission. The bevel gear has been machined off to a .75" stub. This will attach to a drive a chain and sprocket connected to a secondary upper shaft running above the gearbox. There will be a 4 groove sheave on this secondary shaft that connects to the spindle belts.