17-03-2021, 02:22 AM
I had a little Chinese lathe I used to make little things on. Small steam engines and parts for my little props and gadgets. I 'upgraded' to a Emco which isn't much bigger but more solid and better built. Still not big enough but it has been invaluable with my Riley 9 build once I set it up for thread cutting. I've made a gearbox mount and the rear suspension mounts and other things for it. I am getting far more confident on what I can do now.
The Emco was missing most of the change gears so I 3D printed a set (first in PLA then in Nylon which is much stronger) and it works very well. But it is a faff having to manually change gears (it's not the gearbox version unfortunately) and not having a thread indicator is very annoying. I have to stop the lathe, pull the tool back to a known mark then reverse the carriage all without disengaging the lead screw. Once my move is complete I can foresee an upgrade to a bigger machine one day.
And that still won't be big enough...
Simon
The Emco was missing most of the change gears so I 3D printed a set (first in PLA then in Nylon which is much stronger) and it works very well. But it is a faff having to manually change gears (it's not the gearbox version unfortunately) and not having a thread indicator is very annoying. I have to stop the lathe, pull the tool back to a known mark then reverse the carriage all without disengaging the lead screw. Once my move is complete I can foresee an upgrade to a bigger machine one day.
And that still won't be big enough...
Simon