What's new
What's new

My Way Grinder

4GSR

Diamond
Joined
Jan 25, 2005
Location
Victoria, Texas, USA
There's been several discussions about using "sleds" to reshape the bed ways of a lathe here on PM in the past years. Well, I'm been at the point of "what to do next" on my L & S rebuilding project which I will discuss later in another section.
I've been watching what other have done and playing around with a fixture that would work for me. Finely came up with something that will work. Mine is set up using one my routers I have from woodworking modified to do grinding. About six months building the fixture in my spare time. Took me about five months to get the front vee way ground.
Attached are some pictures of the grinding fixture and the results of grinding!

Ken

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i108/packrat2006/Way Grinder/DSCN0605.jpg
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i108/packrat2006/Way Grinder/DSCN0606.jpg
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i108/packrat2006/Way Grinder/DSCN0608.jpg
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i108/packrat2006/Way Grinder/DSCN0611.jpg
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i108/packrat2006/Way Grinder/DSCN0643.jpg

Mr montorator, feel free to move thread if you like. Pardon my spelling, I don't have my spell check working yet on my new computer.
 
Thanks John,

Had to take a break from the computer to eat!:D

Here's some more pictures of the final grind of the front way. The finish is not all that great:skep:, but will work just fine for what I want the lathe for. Anything is better than what it was before. I had to take .015" off of the front surface and about .012" off the rear surface. You only remove about 50 millionths each couple of passes!:crazy:

Ken

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i108/packrat2006/Way Grinder/DSCN0704.jpg
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i108/packrat2006/Way Grinder/DSCN0703.jpg
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i108/packrat2006/Way Grinder/DSCN0702.jpg
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i108/packrat2006/Way Grinder/DSCN0701.jpg
 
I like your apprach. Simple, practial, workable, minimum equipment and that used is already available in the home shop.

Only one thing that give me pause, I see the rollers on the top of the ways and that controls vertical plane but what is keeping carriage way linearity linearity in the horizontal plane? Tailstock ways?
 
Did you give any consideration to the use of a small cup wheel? might save cranking the "compound" up and down so much--although the router would have to be swiveled 90*

What do you intend to do where the portion of the ways are that cannot be ground in the first setup are? Turn the whole sled around and pick up the cut?

Interested in following this--have had thoughts of doing something like it at times in the past.

Herb
 
...what is keeping carriage way linearity linearity in the horizontal plane? Tailstock ways?

1st, 2nd and 5th pictures show rollers that would locate the sled along the horizontal plane, in the photos you can see the surface that the rollers glide upon, they look to be machined surfaces but not being familiar with this machine I can't say for sure.
 
Let me add some detail that yaw have figured out. The fixture is guided up and down the ways by ball bearings that ride on the very top of the vee's and two bearing in front that ride on the front side of the harden vee way, and last a set of spring loaded bearings that ride on the inside edge of the front bed wing to keep it pulled against the bed while traveling up and down the ways. The reason I picked these surfaces is the had no wear and they are ground as part of the original "alignment system" of the lathe. After grinding, I should have very close to the orginal accuracy the lathe had when it left the factory.

The two biggest problems I have so far is keeping the bearings clean along with keeping the surfaces clean where the bearings ride too. The grinding grit coming off is like very fine "dust" and it collects on everything. It's so fine I doubt a vacumm cleaner would do any good, it would go right through the filter bag! Second problem is keeping the grind stone "dressed". For every .0015-.0020" removed, the stone get very loaded and I have to redress it, if you don't it starts leaving black marks on the work. I sure if i had coolant it would help a bunch.

As for using a cup wheel, I wanted to, but the only thing I could find was shank mounted cup wheels small enough. My router motor I don't think would handle a 3-1/2" cup wheel without lots of excitement and injury!
Yea, it's slow, but for the home shop machinists, we don't get paid for it. But it's the enjoyment that pays for it. Other family menbers just don't understand!

Oh, I forgot to mentioned what to do with the tail end of the bed the grinding fixture did not grind. The fixture is designed where I can flip the cross slide and compound to the other side of the fixture to finish grinding the last 11" of bed. Or I can leave it as is. I highly doubt that I'll ever have the need to crank the carriage out to the tail end of this bed for any work in the future. Saying that, I'll probably leave it alone for now.

Thanks for all of the nice comments,

Ken
 
I forgot to mentioned this lathe has about 6 foot of center distance, so, loosing about 6-8" of carriage travel at the tail end I don't think I'm going to loose any sleep over! The carriage on this lathe will stop about 4-5" before the end of the bed due to the outboard support that holds the leadscrew and feed rod in place.
The cross slide and compound used is off of a 9" South Bend Lathe salvaged from one of my many eBay buys!:D

My day to day work schedule has been very busy, I don't see that easing up anytime soon. But as I have time to work on my restoration, I'll keep you guys informed on how it's going!

Ken
 
Last edited:
not even going to do the end?

I started down this same route. I got as far a a few test cuts. I'm glad I stopped and trucked the entire bed off and for about $200 I had it reground properely.
 
Outstanding!

Designing, fabricating, testing and executing a project like this is really quite an accomplishment. I work with a mob of engineers who wouldn't be able to puzzle out what the apparatus did if they were in the room with it - much less have any notion regarding machine tool geometry and parallelism and co-plane-e-ality.

Nice job.
 
Outstanding!

Designing, fabricating, testing and executing a project like this is really quite an accomplishment. I work with a mob of engineers who wouldn't be able to puzzle out what the apparatus did if they were in the room with it - much less have any notion regarding machine tool geometry and parallelism and co-plane-e-ality.

Nice job.


Motomoron,

Thanks for the kind comments,

Thank all others for the "I Likes" love those, too!:D

Ken
 
Mt Way Grinder

Neat Neat Neat Neat Neat...
I like it....
Some time ago I recieved a call from California and they asked if I wanted to go to Hawaii....

Then they got down to brass tacks and explained they wanted to grind the azmith runner bearing under a telescope......
Well the surface to be ground was 24 inched wide and about 5 feet long. They wanted this done 8 times....
I thought up and built a grinder and I used a 4 inch wheel, 1/2 inch wide. Mounted on a Dumore quill.
Anyway, looking at you araingment I would say only to get a hydraulic cylinder (long as possible) to stroke the ways. You can regulate the speed and it would be more even. Slow it down and you get a better finish. Let the hydraulics run an extra hour if you want to, better finish with out the elbow grease.
Other wise, nice job, I really like it.
Regards Walt...

It don't really matter what it cost, you built it, you used it, you made it work. Just try to think about what you learned in the process.
How many times did you say, "You dummy, that won't work"?
I know I said that bunches of times...... Walt.
 
Neat Neat Neat Neat Neat...
I like it....
you built it, you used it, you made it work. Just try to think about what you learned in the process. .. Walt.

And think of what we all learned because you went the trouble of both posting but also making the video. Bet ya there half a dozen members right now going to try a similar process.

Thanks,

Denis
 
I'm not trying to be mean, but is the lathe really more accurate after this grinding operation or just shinny?

Maybe a little bit of both...

Definitly will be more accuract than before, and yes, much more shinnery than before too!;)

There definitly was several learning curves. One learning curve was "how to grind" and I leave it to that! Lots of trial and error all the way to the end.:eek:

Again, thanks for all of the kind comments you guys have made.:)

Now, for cleanup, How to cleanup all of that black crud that has collected on everything in the shop!:o Can't touch anything without getting dirty!

Ken
 
Good stuff Ken, a substantial effort to be very proud of!

Fine time for suggestions, (my first look at this post) but the wheel looks to me to be a bit fine, great for finishing but fine wheels load up much worse than coarse wheels and coarse wheels give surprisingly, (to me) good finishes.

My "utility", most often used grade on my surface grinder is 46. Makes for great "flat" but doesn't qualify as "bling". But then your wheel may be more open than I can tell from the pics.

I need to do that to one of my lathes and inspired by your thoughtful implementation, couldn't help my mind from wandering to some method of power brushing, (as opposed to inneffectively just pushing with a stationary brush) just in front of the top rollers and a snow plow like sheet metal shield between the sparks and the control surface of the Vee way top.

The shield easy, the powered brushes no doubt fussy time wasters. The vision, a soft brush like they use to dust for finger prints but with the handle coming down through the center of the bristles, maybe powered with a rubber wheel against a vertical way surface, bounced through my addled, Rube Goldberg-esque mind.

The difference between us, I dream and you git'r done, looks like a great improvement for a worthy machiine. Like I said, good stuff.

Bob
Oooh, shiny, shinny then shinnery, a poetic wordsmith too.....
 
Robert,

The grinding wheels are average grit, similar to ones I've use on the T & C grinder. it says 46 but more like 80 grit. They loaded quickly. lots of dressing of the wheels. Compressed air help a little, but once the wheel lost its sharpness, it would load. I used four wheels that started out about 1-1/2" diameter, changed them out when they got down to around 1-1/4" dia. Had one that would not stay balanced, chunked it! Luckly, I did not have any explode. These wheels were a eBay buy, at the time sounded good, but after reading some storys about "old stock" wheels, I began wondering if that was some of the problems with loading and not holding an "edge".

Talking about some kind of brush behind the grinding wheel or in front of it. I thought of some wiper, but I said the heck with that and started. Each time I dressed the grinding wheel, I wiped down the ways and removed what crud I could from the bearings that "rolled" up and down the bed. That worked pretty good for the course of the grind.

Oh well, its done. Definitly one hell of a learning experience. Now for the moglas application!;)

Ken
 








 
Back
Top