Upgraded tail stock or bigger is better.

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mredburn

mredburn

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I had posted in a prior thread where I had bought an Atlas 3950 6 inch lathe to replace the Sherline I started with. I have been very satisified with the Atlas except for one thing. The tail stock sucks. It has a whopping 1 1/4in. of travel.
(40mm) I decided to do something about that. I bought a Logan tail stock for a 9 inch lathe off Ebay and took the bottom base off of it. I made plugs for both the quill hole and the handle hole and when I did a facing cut on them I left just the smallest of **** in the center. Measuring carefully I determined I needed to cut .685 off the tails stock to center it on my Head stock. I need to take this time to give a huge Thanks to Mike Roux (BluWolf) for allowing me to use his mill, make a mess of his garage for two days and dull one of his end mills. We started by clamping the Tail Stock in the vise and milling a flat on top and both sides of the quill area .
logan5.JPG
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We then flipped it upside down in the vise and using the plugs and a Laser center found the center of the quill. We then milled the base away to fit down between the rails of the lathe.
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When I got it home it snapped right onto the lathe. The fit was a hair snug, you could slide it with a little force. A light stroke or two of a flat file and it slides like its supposed two. Its perfect for height but needs to come towards me about .003 to be perfectly centered. Before I do any more adjusting I will have to double check the bed for twist. I did put the laser center finder in the chuck and a 60 degree tip in the quill and checked it both at the front by the chuck and at the back of the lathe to make sure the quill was parallel. It was perfect and didnt matter if the quill was extended or pulled back in, it stayed the same. I cut a notch out of the front corner it so that it will slide all the way up inside the saddle to get as close as possible to the work.
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the last two pictures are of the two tailstocks for comparison. The original Atlas and the adapted Logan. The Atlas has an mt1 taper, 1 1/4 throw. the Logan 2mt taper and 2.5 inch throw. The next step will be to put the quill clamp back in and to make the adapter for the tail stock DRO.
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comments and questions?
 
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That's a very impressive chunk of engineering guys. Well done.
Mike, I hope you cleaned up the mess in BluWolf's shop. :biggrin:
Because I don't have the machinery to set it up accurately like you did, then I would have had to approach it differently.
I would have milled the base completely flat and made a removable block that fit snuggly inbetween the bed ways and was then bolted to the bottom of the TS with either slotted or clearance holes in the base into threaded holes in the block. This would allow you to set it up with a dial indicator and then lock the bolts in place. There would still be a hole through the block for the original TS locking bolt.
It would also give you the option of off-setting the TS if you wanted to do tapers etc.
 
Very well executed job there Mike, it certainly helps when you have friends with the right equipment, as it makes it a lot easier to do.:biggrin::biggrin:
Hope you offered to clean up the mess or a drink or 2.
Down under, the cost of getting things done, is usually measured in cartons,or slabs.
Kryn
 
Too late now as you guys have already achieved your goal, but here is a quick sketch of what I meant.
 

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Mike always offers to help with the clean up. Man, that cast iron is messy:biggrin: I'm glad the front to back alignment is good. It tells me my vise is aligned pretty well.

Mike, I think Skip has a pretty good idea there if you decide it's not quite the way you want it.

Mike
 
SKip I would have had to do it your way if I did not have Mike Roux to borrow his Mill. I have a couple bench top cnc mills that would cut it but not the vise large enough to grip the tail stock by the base. Your way would actually have an advantage. The only difficult part with yours is getting it dialed in the first time so that the quill is parallel with the headstock. After the first time you would make aligning marks on both ends. I have not had a reason to cut tapers up to now so I didnt really bring that into the equation. I can always stick the original back on if I have a need to do it.

Like the original tail stock the new one takes only a quarter turn of the wrench to release or lock it down. Only now I can put the wrench handle out the back and get it completely out of the way of the cross slide/compound
 
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mredburn said:
Only now I can put the wrench handle out the back and get it completely out of the way of the cross slide/compound
Click to expand...

This is a great advantage and one of these fine days I'll try and mod mine like that. I have been caught out twice :redface: by leaving the spanner on the nut and then when you are concentrating on the job and wind the carriage back out of the way, it nudges the spanner loose. Next cut, all hell breaks loose:eek:
Of course, a quick fix to solve my problem would be to have a left hand thread on the lock down bolt.:wink:
 
I have to clean up the notch cut out today and square it off. I did it quickly last night with a portable hand held metal band saw and it is crooked. IT is Functional but looks sloppy next to the rest of the work. Its already driving me nuts looking at it.
 
I cant believe that they even designed a tail stock with that short a throw. Even Sherline is an 1 1/2 with a 0 mt taper. I would have used an Atlas . Yeah Skip I have done that myself once or twice, although I caught it before it ruined the project. Most of the time I found that the larger Sherline Handle I adapted for the compound slide would run into the spanner wrench making me redo the set up so I could make the cut. The logan has a nice pretty looking wrench I may use rather than the cut off Craftsman Im using now. Might help make me look like I know what im doing.
 
bluwolf said:
Mike always offers to help with the clean up. Man, that cast iron is messy:biggrin: I'm glad the front to back alignment is good. It tells me my vise is aligned pretty well.

Mike, I think Skip has a pretty good idea there if you decide it's not quite the way you want it.

Mike
Click to expand...

Mike Cast Iron is the third nastiest stuff you can machine the second nastiest is Mehanite, and THE VERY WORST is EDM Carbon, But with a good helper cleaning up it's all good.


Mike I think you did an excellent job both on the engineering side and the work, wanna come down and figure something out on my Piece of Junk Shop Fox, (a 16x42 inch lathe with 1-1/2 quill travel ) how lame!!
 
Mike I think you did an excellent job both on the engineering side and the work, wanna come down and figure something out on my Piece of Junk Shop Fox, (a 16x42 inch lathe with 1-1/2 quill travel ) how lame!![/quote]

How about cutting the groove longer for the stop bolt and drilling the stop bolt hole forward. That is what I did with mine (not a shop fox though) and picked up about 2" more.
Kryn
 
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