The various goings on in my workshop
To date I have not had my Mellor lathe running under power, the motor works and I could turn the lathe by hand, however I was missing a suitable belt to connect the motor to the lay shaft. I have plenty of ‘fan belts’ unfortunately they are all of a similar length, of around 850-950mm,…
Following on from my previous post, I decided to have a go at making a new lead screw nut for my Mellor lathe. I purchased a piece 300mm length of 36mm round Acetal bar from ebay seller diamondengineeringsupplies for £5.99 along with a few other pieces of Acetal that I intend to use for some other…
Everyone expects a certain amount of wear in an older machine, and I was expecting all sorts of issues with my Mellor Lathe, but in most areas have been pleasantly surprised. The tailstock has a 2 morse taper fitting, is smooth in operation and ejects tooling without the need for a tang, which is an…
I have slowly been acquiring some more tooling, both for the lathe and for the milling machine. it is so true that you will end up spending the cost of your machine and then some acquiring tooling, at least if you are careful with your spindle choices you can re-use these items on larger machines…
First off I cut a couple of pieces of timber to rase the Mill up so that I don’t hit my knuckles on the bench every time I try to use the Y axis, they will also provide clearance for the stepper motor once that is installed. Suitable 10mm holes were drilled in the raising…
A while ago I finally moved my Mellor lathe from where it has been sat at the back of the garage since I bought it. Now the bed alone weighs over 200lbs (90kg) even without the saddle and tailstock, so this was not a simple task, especially without any help. First I needed to move…
I decided that my Garage/Workshop could do with some light – it could do with some electricity too, and I am working on that. I have run 4mm 3 core SWA cable from the house to the garage where I have a second consumer unit, this will be further encased in Unistrut bolted to the…
I spent a very enjoyable day at the Model Engineering Exhibition at Alexandra Palace on Saturday with my son. There were large stands for several of the big name vendors RDG Tools, Axminster, Warco, Chester Machine Tools, as well as many club stands for model trains, both electric and steam static displays for model boats, traction…
My new bearings arrived today from engineersmateltd on ebay, nice fast turn around. I ordered 1 x 6206-2RS (30x62x16mm), 1 x 6007-2RS (35x62x14mm) deep groove bearings and 2 x 30206 (30x62x17.25mm) Taper Roller bearings for a combined cost of £11.57 with free P&P. I decided to dismantle the spindle head and then compare the spindles before…
I have had a few deliveries of items I ordered recently. Firstly a couple of ebay purchases – a 19 piece set of ER32 collets (2mm-20mm) and a bunch of 52 solid carbide 2, 3 and 4 flute end mills and slot drills ranging from 2mm to 16mm, including various ball nose items. The mills are mainly brand…