Anyone build their own lathe before, and have any tips?
I found a busted electric lawnmower free online, and I want to harvest the 56V DC motor.
I've used lathes before, but never made one. Are the plans in pic related probably fine to start with?
to build a lathe
>Are the plans in pic related probably fine to start with?
Yes.
In short its not worth it. The "plans" are only useable to make dowels or other decorative fittings you can then shove up your ass.
I wouldn't turn anything bigger than 4" diameter on that insult to firewood. Get 3k in the bank and buy the typical home shop lathe. If you want pain buy the sub 1k chinkoid garbage. Alternative try to source a not too beat up "large" watchmakers lathe. Anything with the name Myford or Emco provided it isn't rusted to shit everywhere or covered in a layer of mixed dust/grease/oil covering nearly every spot on it.
Dying a lathe is possible but will cost you nearly double the money you could have used to buy a new somewhat decent one.
Nice bait thread homosexual.
>Get 3k in the bank and buy
>PrepHole
Making everything is a great way to have nothing. Effective DIY is not autism, it's a mix of using resources wisely. Used woodshit is often cheap if you look for it. A few hundred should get a used lathe or Shopsmith with tools, and that's couch money. If utterly poor fix that first before indulging in time-wasters.
I don't have hundreds or thousands of lathe-dollars.
What I have is a box of hardware, a box of electronics components, a big ass motor (with fricking ANTS living in it, God damn it), and some 2x4's & aluminum rails.
I'll build a lathe out of garbage to make $3k worth of Etsy shit and buy a better one later, how's that?
>etsy
so i assume this is not about spindle type objects?
what you nibber dont understand is that even if you stick to medieval workholding jigs, lathe tools are so expensive it will dwarf the cost of an entry level one.
even a piece of drill rod or hss that you have to grind yourself and make a handle for is easily 30$ per tool
>steal raws from garbage
>make trinkets with garbage
>sell garbage
>buy better tools
>buy better raws
>make better trinkets
>make more money
>buy better tools
>make better trinkets
>repeat
real live is not an mmo
Not with that attitude it isn't.
it literally is tho, unless you're a solipsist
Even with that view,
is a pretty inefficient method when OP could get a job/save his tendie money and buy a decent lathe, then recoup the costs afterward. Building your own version of common tools is good diy if your end goal is to build tools. Buying them and getting to work is for when you want to earn money, plus OP will still have lots of jigs to build.
I'd suggest getting a cheap one from HF or craigslist, running it til it dies and using the money earned to buy better equipment.
>craigslist
this
boomers are dying or going into homes
their wives or children are unloading them all the time
>real live is not an mmo
and yet I am surrounded by scores of NPCs
Yes, homosexual, you need to buy the tool so that you can make things with it. That's how it works
This homosexual is just pissed because he bought and overpriced tool for a job that could be accomplished by Black personigging something together out of scrap.
Unless you're a pro who is using the machine every day for your livelihood there is no justification for spending 3k on any piece of equipment.
whats wrong with the chinese lathes?
If im buying a machine eating a square meter of space and weighing a couple dozen kilograms it better is more handy and faster to use than a file and a drill chuck coupled with sandpaper.
Time spent babysitting the cheap garbage could have been spend on focussed manual labour achieving the same result as a cheap sub 1k lathe and would be cheaper.
The lathe is the means to an end for DIY and better not half a DIY project itself. I want to be able to hit 0.05mm tolerances using the dials and measuring once only, which is possible on a proper non worn to shit machine, otherwise I don't need one. I've done a year of filling, sawing, riveting and brake bending for my apprenticeship as a turbojet mechanic and you can work very quickly and precisely with hand tools only once you get the hang of it.
Like getting aluminium sheets into dimension down to 0.05mm tolerance over spans of a foot and longer.
The lathe or even a mill must exceed the performance of that and sandpaper with a drill or its a waste of time, money and space.
It's a tool making projects and not a project itself.
So are you going to tell me what the problem with the chinese lathes is?
read it again. he said "it better is more handy and faster". Now stfu.
Hes not describing anything specific just saying "chinese lathe bad".
In what way are they bad, huh?
Seems like you'd be better off hooking the motor to a headstock with some sort of belt and pulley.
wood lathes aren't even expensive unless you get some brand new laguna shipped right to you or something. they're also not nearly as complicated and don't have all the requirements of a metalworking lathe.
so if you just want a project to kill some time, sure go for it. post pics. if you actually want a lathe and want to start turning, just buy one. you can get a little wen or something off Amazon for 2-300 bucks.
i would do more like a pole lathe design out of massive timber.
What the op pic tries to achieve is moronic, why mimic a cheap lathe with short angle iron toolrest if you could simply do a full length one.
that is if you can live with the simple drive mechanism and no chuck, because even buying accessories like spindle would be more expensive than a hf one
It'll work fine and probably be bretty handy. Nice thing about a design like this is it's easy to modify if you want to do oddball stuff like pattern following or cutting threads
Can you work on metal in a wood lathe if you take it extremely slowly or what's the difference?
This isn't bait I genuinely don't know.
Wood lathes just spin a workpiece, you can't cut metal by holding a bit by hand.
You can with small tools like gravers which is how old israeliteelers lathes work.
You can do a shocking amount of large turning with hand tools, modern lathes are just not really set up for it - I've got a 7x18 gut belt treadle lathe I turn stuff in that way all the time mostly roughing out work before I get more technical / precise with more conventional methods, I've turned Brass, Bronze and Mild Steel this way but nothing harder.
There is a old booklet called Simple Turning that covers it, and a section in Paul N Hassluck's Metalworking book about it, and Moxon touched on it when describing his Turning Bench.
Can you tell me more and post some links/videos about turning metal by hand?
I believe people can just press a file against a spinning rod but that can't be accurate without measuring diameters hundreds of times
now you know why it fell out of style
Very slowly and with very soft metal. It’s how they used to do in the 1600s. You shouldn’t do that, however, because it’s very dangerous.
>want to build a lathe
>need a lathe to create the pieces
>wat do
A S C E N D
Replicate the making of simple bow lathes then work your way up through all the industrial revolution stuffs or just go primitive. They do work fine:
you can use some lead containing brass alloys with carbide inserts. watchmaker do this too.
the downside is you will not get any dimension right and a proper 3 jaw chuck with handheld tools is stupidly dangerous
Another bullshit thread from an OP that has intention of ever trying to do what he asked about.
Not OP but i have built a few shitty machine tools as a hobby, knowing they were shitty. I make new versions and they get better. My goal isnt using them, just knowing how to build them.
Got the motors out today, dipwad
Next I need to make sure the motor is alright, and try to figure out the specs of the self-propelled motor
I used a chinese milling machine once and the motor controller was terrible, some component would burn and i had a friend come fix the electronics. Mechanically it was fine, i didn't do any scientific testing on it, it just felt fine because it could make parts to size.
Heres a gingery lathe actually in use.
Not a fan of aluminum for sliding parts, i prefer steel+turcite