Leon Dionne’s Taig Lathe Leadscrew

Leon sent his latest Taig modification, a leadscrew.

 

The lead screw on my lathe is a slightly modified version of the one by Dean Williams. Details for its construction can be found here on his web site. Thanks Dean. The hand crank mounted at the tail end of the lathe does not hinder the removal of the carriage, as I will show in the following photos.

A 1/4 inch drive was cut, drilled and mounted to the lead screw at the tail end of the lathe.

A socket (any size will do) was machined and silver soldered to the hand crank.

The hand crank can be installed and removed without the use of any tools for easy removal of the carriage. A .010 shim (not visible in the photo) was superglued to one face of the shaft to eliminate crank wobble.

Half nut assembly shown in engaged position.

Half nut shown in disengaged position.

Leon Dionne's Mill Tooling Plate

Leonne Dionne's latest, his tooling plate and mill tooling:

My Taig mill is mostly unmodified except for the tooling plate I made for it.

Tooling plate is made of 1/2" thick aluminum, 5 inches wide.

The Sherline rotary table is shown here mounted in the vertical position.

This riser block allows me to use the Taig tailstock with the Sherline rotary table on my tooling plate.

Vee blocks (or should I call those X blocks) made from 1" square aluminum stock.

Leon Dionne's Taig Lathe

Leon Dionne sent in some great details of his Taig Lathe setup.

My lathe is powered by a 1/4HP 220 volt 3 phase motor with a jack shaft attached to the motor

The motor is controlled by a VFD (variable frequency drive), which gives me speed control from zero to max, forward and reverse, controlled start and stop, and a number of other features which I have as yet not found a use for.

Why the need for a jack shaft?? At very low RPM, the motor also produces very low torque. With the reduction in speed, and conversely the increase in torque I get with the jack shaft,(a factor of approx 2.5), I can get a spindle speed of approximately 50 RPM and still get plenty of torque (the belts will slip before the motor will stall)

This method of mounting the dial indicator allows the use of the carriage stop.

The tailstock has the usual modifications, the lever extension is simply a 5 inch piece of 1/2 inch copper pipe with a brass knob locktited at the tip. A tommy bar replaces the hex screw.

Simple tip: Sliding a 7/8 inch ID O-ring over the carriage hand wheel, provides the friction required to prevent the hand wheel from "creeping" out of adjustment.

My motor mount is made of 2 inch angle iron and 1/4 inch slide rods mounted on a wood base.

A front view shows the belt tensioning screw.