Continuing my break from working on the Micromouse, I’ve decided to take up yet another lathe project.
I’ve decided to make a bearing to go inbetween the nut and tool post for our South Bend lathe (I might make another for the Trak, maybe). When aligning the tool post on the lathe, it is quite frustrating when my attempts to tighten the nut also rotate the tool post, forcing me to restart the alignment process. This bearing should hopefully allow the nut to rotate without also rotating the tool post, and should make the process of aligning the tool post much easier.
The first part of this project is a simple spacer, which was rather quick to turn. The important part is the tolerances, which I hit using a boring bar.
Because of how narrow the spacer is, I wasn’t able to securely remount it in a chuck. Fortunately, the finish from the parting blade isn’t too bad, and will work fine when facing down.
The second part of this small project is the holder for the bearing, which I will order from McMasterCarr. The notable thing about this part is that it has an interior pocket, as seen from the scribe lines on the part. What’s called a trepanning tool is needed in order to make cuts like this, but we didn’t have one.
While we probably could have bought a trepanning tool, it would have been a bit expensive, especially for a single project. However, one of the great things about lathes is that it is relatively easy to grind custom tools. As such, we instead bought some tool-blanks and I got try to grinding my own trepanning tool. I haven’t tested it yet, but it look right and I’m hopefully it will work.