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First lathe project
Regulars have seen my various postings here. Well, I finally have something to show for the shop time with the new lathe. I got this thing a little more than 2 months ago, and have pretty much self-taught. It's a South Bend 9C, and this is my first project ever with it, done with, dare I say, billet. (Aluminum rod, actually.)
I had a coworker whose brother was a dentist. His brother gave him a set of "surgical telescopes" to aid in some of the small work he did. I thought these scopes were pretty slick, so I found a pair on eBay. New ones are thousands, so of course, I didn't pay anything like that, but they were customized for someone with very bad eyes. I had to uncustomize them. The problem was that the adjustment threads were glued solid, and no amount of solvents, heat, force, etc could get them loose. So I made new ones. The first picture shows the frames with my new parts, and in the foreground is the two original parts. Note that one is black and the other isn't. Note also that the silver one is dented, pitted, and otherwise just messed up. This is the one I tried all my disassembly efforts on. I figured there was no sense in wrecking both of them. They were both orignally black, but one of the solvents I tried was attacking the aluminum, with the side-effect of stripping off the anodization or dye, or whatever that was.
The second image is one of the disassembled scopes. I made the two large barrel type things. The rings that secure the lenses were secured with CA glue (superglue) which came loose easily with acetone. I didn't remake them - I used the existing ones. Oh, that's 52 TPI on those rings.
Long ago, a neighbor threw out a 4'x8' dry-erase board, and I grabbed it and put it up in the shop. This is the drawing I made of the old parts so I could reproduce them. No, it isn't "official" drawing format, but it had the information I needed. I taped a photo of this to the wall behind the lathe while I worked.
I wanted to share this, and yes, gloat a little. I think I did a decent job for my first time out. Now I have to either black anodize or dye these somehow, and they'll be good as new.
Oh, I've already used them a bit. The magnification is about 7x, and being in stereo, makes it easy to work on the small stuff. Like removing metal splinters.
-M
I had a coworker whose brother was a dentist. His brother gave him a set of "surgical telescopes" to aid in some of the small work he did. I thought these scopes were pretty slick, so I found a pair on eBay. New ones are thousands, so of course, I didn't pay anything like that, but they were customized for someone with very bad eyes. I had to uncustomize them. The problem was that the adjustment threads were glued solid, and no amount of solvents, heat, force, etc could get them loose. So I made new ones. The first picture shows the frames with my new parts, and in the foreground is the two original parts. Note that one is black and the other isn't. Note also that the silver one is dented, pitted, and otherwise just messed up. This is the one I tried all my disassembly efforts on. I figured there was no sense in wrecking both of them. They were both orignally black, but one of the solvents I tried was attacking the aluminum, with the side-effect of stripping off the anodization or dye, or whatever that was.
The second image is one of the disassembled scopes. I made the two large barrel type things. The rings that secure the lenses were secured with CA glue (superglue) which came loose easily with acetone. I didn't remake them - I used the existing ones. Oh, that's 52 TPI on those rings.
Long ago, a neighbor threw out a 4'x8' dry-erase board, and I grabbed it and put it up in the shop. This is the drawing I made of the old parts so I could reproduce them. No, it isn't "official" drawing format, but it had the information I needed. I taped a photo of this to the wall behind the lathe while I worked.
I wanted to share this, and yes, gloat a little. I think I did a decent job for my first time out. Now I have to either black anodize or dye these somehow, and they'll be good as new.
Oh, I've already used them a bit. The magnification is about 7x, and being in stereo, makes it easy to work on the small stuff. Like removing metal splinters.
-M
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