johnsmachines

I am in the process of collecting all of the components for the conversion.  Parcels are arriving from South Korea, Taiwan, China, USA and Australia.  Next post I will take a photo of the bits, before I commence assembly.  I have spent a lot of hours on the computer drawing up the positioning of the new components, deciding which components to get, then communicating with the sellers and making the purchases.  Not to mention hanging around home when parcels are due.  If I duck out for 10 minutes, that’s when the delivery van arrives.  And of course he leaves his little card “sorry we missed you”.

This post I will show you some of the drawings of the proposed conversion.  Of course the first step is to strip the lathe of all of the old manual controls, gears, motor, Digital read out, carriage apron, lead and cross slide screw, electric control box and contents.  (taking photos of every component insitu in case of a change of mind, and restoration required later).

Then measuring the bed and carriage in minute and accurate detail, and drawing it in CAD.

This is the lathe side on and end views, showing the new lead ball screw in red and green.  The cross slide ball screw is also there, but not well seen at this scale.  The 4 ball screws at top left are the possible combinations for eventual installation.  The second red one is the position eventually decided.  The green ones are with the nut re-installed in reverse direction.   I really did not want to remove and re-install the nut, because it is pre-loaded, and I do not want to risk disturbing the setup.

Many drawing versions are required, and as the components arrive, I find myself making changes.  This is definitely not the final version.   The two carriages show the carriage in its extreme positions on the lathe bed.

This was an early sketch of how I thought I would arrange the cross slide motor and lead screw nut.

This is a fairly accurate drawing of a cross section through the cross slide.  Black is existing.  Red is the new nut and ball screw.  You can see that removal of some of the cross slide bed iron will be required.  After looking at this I decided to move the nut and screw up a couple of millimeters.

The Internet has been very useful in showing what fittings are available.  These are a few of the catalogues and tables which I have downloaded.  Some sites even provide CAD drawings so their components can be inserted into my CAD drawing to see if they will work together.