On 6/12/2013 11:35 AM, andy pugh wrote: > I accidentally bought another lathe from eBay. > It is beautifully made, in the 1920s, with no regard to cost > practicality or logic. One of these: > http://www.lathes.co.uk/rivett/page2.html > > It isn't quite as nice as the one in the pictures, and has no > changewheels or screwcutting box. (imagine is stops short at the back > of the headstock). > > Should I CNC it? > > If I do, I would have to do it sympathetically. (My other hobby is > vehicles from the same era). > As the entire cross-slide pops off at the flick of a lever, it is not > difficult to imagine a slot-on CNC cross-slide, possibly incorporating > a tool turret. In this respect the conversion is easier than the > Chinese lathe I converted. > > However, the Z-axis poses something of a quandry. There is no way at > all to swap the leadscrew to a ballscrew. It sits snugly in a > semicircular slot in the bed. > So, perhaps I could mount a ballscrew on a bracket at the back. Then I > could slot-on the CNC top-slide and bolt it to the nut, and if I > wanted to use the lathe in manual mode I could unbolt it, swap back to > the manual toolslide, and resort to craftsmanship. > > Or, I could just convert it to an electric leadscrew with an Arduino > and sell it on as a working lathe. > > I do think it needs to be mounted on an oak cabinet like the original > Rivett ones. I think that looks great :-) > (Then flat-belt drive to a motor/vfd mounted underneath) > >
I think that a lathe has to have a power feed on the Z to be useful, so I would add that. And that is pretty much all I would do to it. You may end up selling that lathe to a tool collector sooner or later. There are a number of them here. Dave ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: Build for Windows Store. http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
