The above dowel is the biggest milestone yet. I made this today on the Goodspeed in the manual hand position "jogging" the carriage across the stock. There is a video below. It took me the better part of the afternoon to get to this point and here it is.
| While I was on my way to and from my gig last night I was doing some thinking about the challenges I had with the Goodspeed lathe. I was having troubles getting the stock to load without hitting the carriage along with the stock hitting the the roughing knife when it was chucked between the spindles. It seemed that the tooling die was not allowing the carriage to retract far enough on its return. I had a brainstorm. Why not try the setup die since its 7/8"? |  |
I got to the shop today and got my trusty calipers. They have helped me tremendously throughout my trials with this machine. Low and behold, the setup die was just a tad larger than 7/8" and the tail spindle was just under 7/8." I had confidence it would work, so I removed the 3/4 die I had on the machine, removed a setup pin and placed the setup die in the carriage. I bolted it in finger tight and jogged the carriage back toward the tail spindle. I did a good job aligning it with the tail spindle. There is evidently something not right with the setup center and set up die, since the tooling die and head spindle are not in alignment after setting up with the setup components.
After a few adjustments to the roughing knife, I was ready to make a trial cut. Of course everything is really slow right now in set up mode. The run went good until about 1/4 in and I noticed a familiar sound from working with a regular hand lathe. It started making the dreaded noise I call "the jitters" or "chatter." It's a vibration that occurs when the spindle is not being cut correctly. I promptly stopped, shut it down, and made and adjustment. I started it back up and the video that follows is the result.
After a few adjustments to the roughing knife, I was ready to make a trial cut. Of course everything is really slow right now in set up mode. The run went good until about 1/4 in and I noticed a familiar sound from working with a regular hand lathe. It started making the dreaded noise I call "the jitters" or "chatter." It's a vibration that occurs when the spindle is not being cut correctly. I promptly stopped, shut it down, and made and adjustment. I started it back up and the video that follows is the result.
After this first dowel, I was excited to move to the next step.... automatic mode. The following video shows one of four failed attempts with automatic cycling on the lathe. I have a kink to work out and I think I know what the trouble is. I'll find out tomorrow. 'til later, Frank
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