How far do you go cleaning after grinding on a lathe?

Tonight I set up a sort of home made tool post grinder using a die grinder pencil wand and 1/2 AO “drum”. The 3 jaw Buck (Logan) that came with my lathe has a set of hard jaws that are bell mouthed and TIR *at the chuck* was 0.003+ if your lucky and could get a bite over half way back. Chucked a 3/4” hex nut at the very back and ground away till I got a good pattern along all 3 jaws. First pass told the story as one jaw was not even touched as the other 2 (one in particular) were taking most of the grinding. Results are less than stellar, but at least it will make a somewhat decent chuck for small non-precision stuff without having to use the 2 piece jaws all the time (I don’t like them for small stuff).

Anyway, I covered the forward part of the ways and as much of the cross as was convenient without getting in the way. Still, there was quite a bit of powdery abrasive residue all over and inside the chuck as well as on the saddle and elsewhere. I carefully wiped everything down with dry paper towels, making sure not to push gunk into the wrong places. Then wiped down with an oily rag to hopefully trap any stray particles. But I did not disassemble the chuck or carriage for thorough cleaning. Sometimes I go to greater extents, sometimes I’m less diligent. But I wonder if I shouldn’t go further to protect my newly refinished lathe.

For jobs like this and many others you can imagine, there is no option BUT to grind on the lathe, as much as I prefer to avoid it. How far DO you go in cleaning and what tips do you have for doing a good/adequate job?

Searching didn’t turn up anything, so I figured it might be useful to discuss...

How far do you go cleaning after grinding on a lathe? Almost obsessivly. Hysterically.

The dust produced by dry grinding is the harshest and most durable there is. A light dusting on oily way bearing surfaces will act as lapping compound until its wiped off and the bearings purged with repeated applications of oil and wiping while cycling the bearing surface back and forth. For this reason bench grinders are located some distance from machine tools in commercial shops, usually in a sheltered niche or in their own room. I've been in shops where the grinding room had a blower that exhaused outside to ensure no dust drifted out the door.

That drifting dust is a mixture of hard steel and aluminum oxide. When dry grinding on a lathe you have to "tent" the machine with plastic like a surgical patient leaving only the work and the grinder exposed. Operate the machine by reaching under the tent edge. Suck the dust up continuously as it's generated with a shop vac equipped with a dry-wall bag inside.

When the job is done the tenting has to be misted with a mixture of dish soap and water to "set" the dust. Then roll it up from the edges to the center to confine and contain the dust and debris. Dismantle the spindle tooling (chuck) to the last fastener and wash it out in a solvent wash tank same with the tool post. If the compound is exposed, dismantle that too. When the exposed parts are clean, oil and reassemble.

Be careful of tramp abrasive on your shop apron and exposed clothing and of drifing dust if other machine tools and sensitive equipment are nearby.

If you elect to avoid the fuss and bother of tenting the machine for dry grinding you can give it a thorough partial disassembly and cleaning including a way wiper replacement. If you look for it, I believe you will find sharp abrasive has drifted as far as five feet from your lathe.

I'm not saying you can't grind on a lathe. I'm suggesting that you employ the most effective abrasive dust control methods possible if the longevity of it and nearby machinery is to be protected.

are there any other alternatives,i'm currently making reamers and agter heat treating need to finish with toolpost grinder,what options do i have?

And you should have taken the chuck apart before you ground it to make sure that no swarf was in the scroll. You don't want to true the jaws to a scroll with junk in it. Like it is impossable to level something sitting on a water bed.
And as far as grit clean up, I am MORE serious about clean uo than Forrest. Really. Grit on the lathe is like grit in your eyeball. Avoid it at all costs. And if it gets there, get it off. Get it ALL off.
--Doozer

I echo everything Forrest said, but would like to add that the best approach is to make sure you don't have to clean up the "lathe," afterward.

Take your precautions first. Take a little time before the grinding job to protect the lathe and you'll be better off.

When I grind I "package" every bit and piece of the lathe with plastic and cloth. Even the chuck gets enclosed in a plastic bag. The kind you get your groceries in will work for the smaller chucks. The only thing thing exposed on my compound is the handle and the dial. Another plastic bag encloses the tailstock. Etc. etc.

After covering the ways with plastic, I lay a wet terrycloth towel underneath the grinding wheel. This catches a considerable portion of the dust.

To catch the dust that floats around--and believe me, it floats--I lay old cotton sheets over the plastic encapsulation. The cotton traps the grit.

Some folks advocate using aluminum foil to protect the lathe. Whether it's aluminum foil, or plastic, when the job is done and one starts ripping it off the lathe, the grit will merely slide off and fall onto your lathe! That's the purpose of the sheets. The cloth will trap the grit. The plastic fends off what filters down through the cloth.

Forrest used the words "obsessively" and "hysterically." They are perfectly appropriate.

I have an old-fashioned light over my lathe that has a big reflector. After grinding, it will be covered with grit! There is no direct line of trajectory that the grit can take to get there. It has to float through the air to land on that light.

So, wipe down your lights and shelves, too, before you uncover your lathe.

Regards,

Orrin

I recall going to the local South Bend distributor (back in the late 70s when there were still SB distributors) and asking about a tool post grinder for my SB. His reply was that he loved selling tool post grinders becasue he knew that shortly thereafter he would be selling a new lathe.

Pete

Try covering the ways with aluminum foil, you can fold it like an acordian so it dosen't get caught up in the work and the sparks won't burn through. Just carefully roll it up and throw it out when your done.

I like to use old bath towels and wet them down with kerosene or light oil and cover the ways with them. I have a oil can looking thing that I put kerosene in and hook up to my air hose and it blows a mist that I wash the lathe off with. I remove the jaws and wash the chuck out with the mist then blow everything off and oil everything except the chuck. I do not oil a three or four jaw chuck. Once a year I disassemble the three jaw and clean and regrease the gears on the back of the scroll plate. I don't really like to grind on a lathe. Filings are not good either and I always wipe the ways after filing and oil them. I was that way at work and never got much flack over it and that's how I do it at home as well.

Hmm, seems like I've been a slacker on this. And I've JUST finished cleaning and putting it all together. Oh well, I suppose I'll tear it down again...

Speaking of wipers, the new saddle had brand new felt strips, which apparently need replacing, though it might be possible to wash them with soapy water and re-oil? I would readily replace them, but have no idea where to get the heavy felt like that.

McMaster-Carr has the felt you need
Bill

Well, I disassembled the entire carriage yet AGAIN. I could do this in my sleep now...

I started by cleaning the welding table carefully. I had everything quite oily, so as I disassembled, I wiped off everything with clean paper towels and placed each dry wipped piece on the clean table. I then vacumed and dry wiped down whole bed, including chip tray and head stock, ran rags through the spindle bore, and generally went over everything. Then I wiped everything with a lightly oiled paper towel, and repeated. Each part of the carriage got the same treatment of double wipes with clean oily paper towels as it went back together leaving only a light oily film on everything. The only thing left is to deal with the felt way wipers. If I can’t find a local source for the felt so I can finish it tomorrow, I may just wash them out with soapy water, then re-oil and re-use.

While I was at it, so as not to feel like I totally shot myself in the foot, I did a few things I was wishing I had taken the time for earlier when I went through it all before. Since I was in no rush today, I went ahead and used Scotchbrite to polish the protractor on the compound, all the bare ground surfaces that previously had “patina”, and generally did some cosmetic stuff that I was too rushed to fool with last time.

I also took time to lap the gibs on my granite surface plate, which made a surprisingly huge difference in the feel of the compound. I had noticed a couple of spots on it where someone in the past had installed it backwards and it got marked by the screws. As I started to lap it, it became very apparent that there was far more metal displaced (and high) around those spots than I ever imagined, and it brought out other high spots that I didn’t even guess at. I knew when I went to adjust the gibs and it would almost instantly from loose to tight that there was likely a problem with the dimples on the gib, but WOW what a difference.

Oh well, so much for my “day off”...

Thanks for the advice guys. I knew that grinding dust was bad, and have always cleaned carefully on the rare occasions when I had to do something, but I guess I underestimated the required effort. Fortunately, immediately after starting with my machine tool sickness, I moved all my belt grinders and other grinding tools (several angle grinders, die grinders, etc.) to a heavy rolling cart so that it goes outside whenever they are used. So hopefully what limited grit rides back in on my clothes, tools, and parts will not cause a problem, particularly with “home shop” usage levels. However, partly due to the pervasive dust in the air around Phoenix, I am planning to get some of the shower curtains with embedded magnets (my wife’s suggestion) to provide a cover for when they are not in use.