Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Ron Kiely's Taig Lathe and Bicycle Lights

Ron Kiely writes, "Thanks for posting the picture of my new Taig lathe back in May. I have done a lot to it since then and also a lot with it as I use it to make high power mountain bike lights and the housings have to act as a heatsink. I stole some ideas from others on your site and all is working nice and smooth, great to have the "T" slot on the new carriage to mount the dial as I didn't want to drill holes in the lathe. The dials were very important to me as I am in the UK and can only work in metric. "

Top View

Front View.

Bicycle Lights, Rear View.

Bicycle Lights, Front View.

Added to cartertools.com as well.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

New Pics and Links Galore

I fell a bit behind last week so here are a bunch of pictures.
Lew Bishop sent these 4 pictures:

"The first group of pens that I turned. The interesting part of this project is that I have much better luck (control) of the shape and finish of the pen barrels by using the metal cutters purchased from you . By setting up a right hand cutter almost parallel with the work and using a fairly high speed, the cutter makes a very smooth finish and gets the size down quickly. "

"We took the shop apart and redid the benches, storage, shelving and the rearrangement of all the tools. It is working really well. he shop is 7'-5" x 9'-7" inside. Marilyn and I did a lot of thinking and planning to get it all in. There are still some additions that will need ot be made as more things get sorted out. I have already replaced my old belt/disc sander and done an additional rework of the band saw with new blades and a fresh alignment by my son-in-law ( an ex cooper). The base of the lathe is a work in progress also - built from left-overs and other scrap to provide a convienient drawer for all the attachments and to raise the work to an acceptable level for an old guy. "



Rick Kernell sent these great pics of his motorized top slide.

"the project that used the spare compound that you sent to me. The idea is to create a smooth movement when cutting precise tapers. I want to produce very precise pivots that will fit into sapphire bearings. I have cut them but I found that hand cranking the compound gave inconsistent movement. The thought is that the motor will move at a steady rate therefore making the cut into the rod cleaner. I am using a 5/12/24 component power supply and the 12 volt tap for this motor drive. I have set the pot prior to the DPDT switch and then the leads go to the motor via Radio Crap connector. This allows me to change the voltage feed linearly to the motor regardless of which polarity that the DPST switch is selected. The inductance of the motor is the primary current draw so the pot isn't much of a limit in comparison, but it is enough that I will change to a PWM driver pcb when I have all of the control components ready for the lathe and the mill. "




Also two new blog/pages of Taig related stuff:

Dennis Schissler's blog shows his awesome digital clock built with the help of the Taig CNC mill.

Wei Terk Mok's CNC page shows off his Taig modifications, also check out the jewelry he makes with the mill.

All the above added to Cartertools.com as always.

Monday, September 21, 2009

A Short Talk with Taig

Had a short conversation with Taig just now. The power feeds are almost (a few more weeks/month out) done, assuming all goes well. It will be difficult to retrofit the power feed to existing lathes. You either have to flip the bed around so the foot is at the tailstock end or you'll have to mill/file the lip that holds the rack off.

They also told me they are almost done with boring heads that have 3/8" shanks. I don't know what they'll look like but they're sending me one so I'll report on that when I get it.

I also asked about the rack/pinion pitch for a customer - turns out it's 64 DP 20 deg although the rack itself is off slightly (like 63.4 DP he wasn't sure) having been threaded on a special fixture. But close enough.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Taig on semi-vacation, etc.

The shipping dept. at Taig is going to be on vacation next week so nothing will ship during that time (Mon 14th- Fri 18th).

I have a terrible cold so I haven't done much of anything beyond treading water, metaphorically speaking.

My friend Derrick shows some Taig milling attachment action in his post over on the airgun blog:
http://anotherairgunblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/modified-mount-for-crosman-steel-breech.html

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Free 4th Axis Conversion Program

Surfing the internet this morning I came upon this thread on the Vectric forum talking about a nice bit of freeware for 4th axis G-code conversion. Here's another thread about the use of it. I haven't played with it yet but it looks good!