stiffen up as lathe

[HIGHtungsten]

anybody have any ideas on how to stiffen up a 7x10 lathe?

[Kipper]

Jerry Ryan?

[HIGHtungsten]

what if your engine is deaf?

[tobyaxis]

Originally Posted by HIGHtungsten anybody have any ideas on how to stiffen up a 7x10 lathe?

Use the mounting holes on the bottom of the lathe and bolt it to a plate of 1/2-5/8 thick aluminum plate. Make sure the plate isn't extremely warped. I believe the bolts are 6mm. You may have to buy longer ones.

[BobWarfield]

1. Clamp the toolbit carefully with an external clamping device.

2. Loosen the bolts holding the toolbit to the 7x lathe.

3. Carefully extricate the 7x lathe from the vicinity of the toolbit, taking care not to disturb the toolbit.

4. Install new 9x30 lathe in same locale as 7x had been.

5. Clamp the turret to the toolbit, taking care not to disturb its position.

6. Remove the external clamping arrangement.

Voila, you will find you have a much stiffer lathe.

Sorry, couldn't resist. It's hard to think of investing a lot of extra work in the really small lathes when an 8x18 or 9x30 is very stiff and not a lot more money. Your old tooling should work fine with the new lathe as well.

Appologies for being a wise guy again. My response was motivated by the old joke, "How do I make this car faster?" Answer: Jack up radiator cap and drive a new faster car under the old cap.

Best,

BW

[Kipper]

Originally Posted by HIGHtungsten what if your engine is deaf?

It'd still have ears :shrug: As for the lathe stiffening up i'd think about getting some 4" wide 1" deep and whatever length of steel the lathe stand is and bolt that under it...or buy a bigger one as they are designed/made to work up to a certain size of material. Once you start to exceed that the problems start.. Good luck :beer:

[Ron111]

Bob,
I loved it, had me wondering what wisdom you were passing on!!!!!!!.

As you know I had the HF 9X20, but it was not too rigid, so I would recommend the 9X30 if they were to upgrade. I saw where on one of the conversion plans actuall bolted the smaller lathes to a maybe 1/2" steel plate.

Bob, you had once mentioned to me about a "four bolt modification" for my 9X20 and other smaller lathes and never looked into and now I forget what area of the lathe it pertained to (was it the cross table?), but maybe it would be of interest to this question.

Ron

[HIGHtungsten]

Actuall i had in mind a more intersting method. unbolt the headstock, tailstock, and other stuff so you have a bare ways and bed.
attempt to melt solidify metallic lead up to the lead screw.
now who makes screws out of lead?