Shop Made Tools

[jbacc]

Nice work! You have quite a few chucks for your TOS Lathe, do you have a favorite? My question being favorite chuck manufacturer?

Thanks.

Joe.

I use soft jaws a lot to hold special parts and / or parts that need to be very true that collets etc can't hold.

Soft jaws are used a lot in industry but have the reputation of being for one job, long runs and the home shop guy doesn't usually do these or they are put of by repeatedly having to turn away what is basically a good set of jaws.

So how about a set that can be used for one off, delicate work of all sizes ?



Typical one piece soft jaw lying on the bed, not expensive to buy when compared to the price of hard jaws which are often 95% the price of a new chuck.

These have had a tenon machined on them and 3 tapped holes with counterbores put in, you can see these in the second pic better.

The jaws are juts lump of large hexagon from the skip of a firm that makes big hydraulic fittings, faced to length, bored clearance and the same counterbore put in then 3 grooves to match the tenons machined across each face. Last job is a small tubular dowel is loctited into the jaw.



Better pic showing the build up, now you need to stamp the number of the jaw all the way round the hexagon and then stamp 1 to 6 on each point. These are to help setup and also you can keep a sheet of screw positions and hex numbers to suit jobs that crop up often.

Going back to the first picture you can get two and even three lives out of each point so that can give you a minimum of 18 positions and if you can get 3 lives , a maximum of 54 holding combinations from one set of jaws.

They will close up to virtually nothing for small jobs and open out for large if you use the outer set of screws. because they stand out a fair bit from the chuck face you can get deep items in and also items with bits sticking out like thermostat housings.

They are not too hard to make and surprisingly versatile, i keep mine setup in a chuck all the while as on my TOS it's easier to change chucks than jaws.



Some of the chucks for the TOS.

.

[John Stevenson]

Nice work! You have quite a few chucks for your TOS Lathe, do you have a favorite? My question being favorite chuck manufacturer?

Thanks.

Joe.

Funny you should ask that
I was only thinking ,again, about this on Friday and meant to post a question on here.

But first your question, I like the TOS chucks, I find them cost effective and work well. I had a 10" Bison on the big TOS, bought new from J&L on offer and at 14 months old it broke three teeth off one jaw but in the middle ?
I can understand one end if only 3 are in mesh and you give it some pain but not in the middle when 5 are in mesh ?

Needless to say Bison or J&L wouldn't honour a claim and a set of hard jaws was more than the chuck price !! so stuff Bison products now.

All the Pratt Burnard chucks except the grip true are now made by TOS but badged as PB.

Now my question,
I have a PB chuck, old series so would have been made by PB on the dividing head on the mill, i have noticed that this chuck and the 5" 3 jaw in the picture are very high geared, one wind of the pinion moves the jaws quite a lot, more than any other chuck I have.
the result is the gripping pressure is reduced unless you really wind this tight.

Anyone else noticed the difference in gearing between chucks ?
.

[motorworks]

First I got to say that there are some great ideas here
(I will be saving some of the pics for me 2 do list)

John
I have two older PB chucks 3 jaw and a 4 jaw that came with the Colchester.
The lathe was built in 1973, so I would think that the chucks are the same.
The 3 jaw only had the reverse jaws on it when I got it and I had another 3 jaw
sitting around so I fitted to to the Colchester.I took the back off the 3 jaw and now use it on the mill. It's a great old chuck and does spin close quickly...

[John Stevenson]

I have a Fordark <sp> chuck here that uses the same set of jaws for inside as outside
They don't have curved teeth on them but parallel ones, they close up over a small amount and if you need a different size you have to set them up, they don't wind from fully closed to fully open.



You can see the scroll just starting with one parallel tooth and this then opens up to about 4 teeth and that continues for about 1/6 of the circumference. you use the gaps inbetween to manually slide the jaws to the next size.
It would be a bitch to use on a daily basis but for production runs it was probably worth it.

They are made for CNC lathes that hold the same size over and over again.
They are able to put immense pressures on material and can leave large indentation in soft steel if you dog the chuck key down.

[Timleech]

Funny you should ask that


Anyone else noticed the difference in gearing between chucks ?
.

Yes, funnily enough the Pratt which came with my DSG seems very low-geared compared to some others (lots of turns). I don't use it much, it's seen a lot of service & not very accurate with the hard jaws although I've tried reboring them. It came with half a dozen sets of soft jaws, it works well with them otherwise I might chuck it out.

Tim

[motorworks]

A few years back I picked up a magic chuck on ebay.
Sits in the tailstock and makes for very quick tool changes
Just pull back the collar, pop one out another in.
In one repeat job I can drill,counter sink,and tap a M8-1.25 hole in
less one minute

[John Stevenson]

The Pratt that came with My big TOS was also worn, never having done a chuck before I set a toolpost grinder up and gripped on an inner ring right at the back and licked the jaws out.

Stuck a bar in about the same size and ran a clock over it, bang on to 0.00000000002" brilliant.
Took the bar out, stuck a bigger bar in and started up and WHOA this thing is miles out, like miles out.

Hang on I have just ground them? stuck the original bar in and this was miles out.

Turns out the wear was in where the scroll sat on it's register in the chuck body and depending where this sat determined the accuracy.
I could have bored and sleeved the boss but to be honest a new chuck wasn't that much money and you get two sets of new jaws.

Stuck the old chuck on the slotter as this has to be set up for every job so it's no heartache.

.

[Evan]

Here are a couple:

Nothing is quite as handy as a real lead hammer. Made this a couple of years back, when the head gets to be too mashed up you just recast it.



On the subject of power hammers, this proved to be real handy for setting anchors in the shop floor. It's an impact socket with a grade 8 1/2" fine thread bolt welded in to fit the Jacobs chuck. Makes a pretty good hammer drill.

[BobWarfield]

Favorite shopmade tooling:

Ed Dubosky's Button V-Block:



Quick and Dirty Compound DRO:



Lathe tailstock camlock:



Kurt vise stop:



Cheers,

BW

[Peter N]

Vee-Plates

Here's a little set of Vee-Plates that Ii made over the Christmas holidays but haven't used yet.

I frequently need to mill or surface grind an angle on parts, and whilst I have 2 sets of the very useful Enco angle-blocks, they are a pain to use as they often slip out of place when you trying to set a piece up in the vice, and normal vee-blocks are often too wide to clamp onto thinner parts,so I made these.
They are 6" wide, 2" high, the backplate is 1/2" thick and the angle pieces are 0.254" thick. The first set of plates are at 45 degrees, and the second set I made at 15 degrees. The plates are dowelled and screwed so they can be interchanged and are obviously mirrored when set up against opposite jaws of the vice.

I made these from 2085 stainless (420 Pre-hard) as I have loads of this, and as it's magnetic you can grind it easily, and they will also hold nicely on the grinders mag chuck. The dowel pins are made from a hard Tin Phosphor Bronze as it's easier to make a new one when this wears rather than wearing the hole on the plates.
The backplates are ground square on all faces and the angle blocks were ground square and to matching heights after they were dowelled and screwed, so they match to a couple of tenths.

The Vee-Plates are ground to 0.002" thicker than the Enco angle blocks, which can be used with these plates to set a variety of angles, and they will of course retain the part and can be set up without slipping all over the place.








This last picture shows it used with a 10 degree Enco angle block to set up an angle of 5 degrees for the cut.





Peter

[Peter N]

Lathe Chuck Spider

I've posted this one on here before so I won't say too much about it, but as you can see it's another version of the chuck spider.
The 'plug' end clears the bore of the chuck by about 0.0005" to align it, and the height of the spider off the chuck is set by running the spinner part down a fine screw thread on the shaft.
Doing it this way means you only need to make one spider.





And finally this one is still a work in progress and has been for about 2 years
It's a clamp knurler made from the excellent set of plans sold by Hemingway Kits. It will be far more sturdy and less likely to deflect than the cheap and nasty Chinese one I have at the moment, if it ever gets finiished that is.....









Peter

[John Stevenson]

Here's one of my favourite and most accurate home conversions of a regular tool to make it more handy.



.

[Paul Alciatore]

Shop made tools; OK, here you go.

My collet stop.



Here's the parts:



Since it is mounted to the draw tube, it is always in the same position. It does not move in and out with the collet when it is opened and closed, so positioning is very repeatable.

The large nut is from a compression fitting: using that saved a lot of time. The draw tube was threaded to fit. The shaft is 3/8" threaded rod because I had some scraps: I ran it through a die to clean it up. The tip was turned down small enough to fit inside a 1/8" collet. The plate it fits through is brass, threaded to fit the rod and has a beveled outer edge to match the angle inside the compression nut so it fits nicely. And I made a nice knurled nut/knob to lock it in position.

Here it is assembled in the draw tube:



More later.

[Teenage_Machinist]

I made this indicator holder,

[Evan]

Here's one of my favourite and most accurate home conversions of a regular tool to make it more handy.

That's amazing John. I have one just like it but mine reads to microns.