New guy looking for lathe alignment help

[jim rozen]

"The problem with the "two collar method" is it only makes the lathe cut true at those two positions."

Not a bug. It's a feature. Most of the machines we are discussing are are worn, and only *will* cut true in two positions. You can't do that unless you actually test the cutting performance in real world conditions. Levels and chicken blood don't work as well. Most folks put the level on the tops of the ways (bad) or on the regions between the V's (worse) Hardly anyone will try to build a proper sled to check on the part that's actually worn, to see the real situation.

There's a reason why lathe manufacturers use that two collar test as the ultimate acceptance test of a new, installed machine.

 

[TeachMePlease]

"The problem with the "two collar method" is it only makes the lathe cut true at those two positions."

Not a bug. It's a feature. Most of the machines we are discussing are are worn, and only *will* cut true in two positions. You can't do that unless you actually test the cutting performance in real world conditions. Levels and chicken blood don't work as well. Most folks put the level on the tops of the ways (bad) or on the regions between the V's (worse) Hardly anyone will try to build a proper sled to check on the part that's actually worn, to see the real situation.

There's a reason why lathe manufacturers use that two collar test as the ultimate acceptance test of a new, installed machine.

Man, I know we were all just talking about Thermite in a different thread.... But this was like a slight channeling of him, like he possessed your keyboard for a few seconds...

 

[jim rozen]

Termite or not, it behooves the original poster to put this in a thread on the machine rebuilding sub-forum as there's some pretty savvy folks who could suggest an approach for this.